[ms office - o365] Outlook Client Slow to Launch

[Boredguy]

For the past couple of months, we've noticed that Outlook 365 client can take around 60 seconds from clicking the shortcut until the loading splash screen pops up and it starts to process the profile on the majority of the stations.

 

Now I'm find with it maybe taking time to process the profile etc once the splash screen is showing, but it's damn annoying when the user doesn't even know it's launching for nearly a minute.

I know we are not the only people with the issue as there is a thread on reddit with the exact same issue from the last month.

 

Running Procmon hasn't shed any clues as it appears that its doing nothing at all in the 60 seconds until the splash screen appears.

 

Tried reinstalling stations (both physical and VM), and its occurring on both 32 and 64 bit version of the Outlook 365 build.

 

Autodetect seems fine, and rest of office applications launch within a second or two, it's just Outlook.

Edited July 8, 2020 by Boredguy

[johnathanadams]

have you tried procmon?

[Boredguy]

Yes, mistyped the name in the original post.

Nothing showing as being done for the whole of the 60 seconds.

Outlook.exe is shown as running in taskman but sits there with fingers in it's ears for a good 60 seconds.

[chaplic]

Id strongly suspect autodiscover. Can you hold Ctrl and right click on outlook icon in bottom right and select test email autoconfiguration. Untick the two guesssmart and bash your email address in

 

Review the log (failures are expected but pay attention to how long tihngs take). Post a suitably edited one here if you can.

[NK2002]

Hello Boredguy. We're having the same issue. I'm wondering if you have had any luck figuring out the issue?

[Boredguy]

No progress yet @chaplic the Autodiscover result from the Autoconfiguration test (on a station working fine, and one that takes 60 seconds + to show splash screen) shows no errors and resolves virtually instantly.

 

Between time of clicking for Outlook to launch, and the splash screen appearing 60 seconds later, there is no calls being made on the workstation from the Outlook.exe file, or anything else that appears to be looking to the DNS lookup according to procmon.

 

This is for admin level users and normal users so it makes it just as confusing.

[NK2002]

I've noticed that Outlook.exe sits with 5-6MB in RAM before eventually loading. I've also noticed that if you try to open outlook twice it loads almost instantly.

[Boredguy]

Interesting, hadn't noticed that behaviour but yes that works, then your left with 2 instances running, with the 2nd one launching and loading profile in a normal length of time.

[chaplic]

No progress yet @chaplic the Autodiscover result from the Autoconfiguration test (on a station working fine, and one that takes 60 seconds + to show splash screen) shows no errors and resolves virtually instantly.

 

Between time of clicking for Outlook to launch, and the splash screen appearing 60 seconds later, there is no calls being made on the workstation from the Outlook.exe file, or anything else that appears to be looking to the DNS lookup according to procmon.

 

This is for admin level users and normal users so it makes it just as confusing.

 

ppffft, it's always autodiscover. Third party addins?

[Boredguy]

no add-ins, as it's doesn't load that until the splash screen appears and says about loading the profile.

[NK2002]

Boreguy, you said that there was a Reddit thread about this? Have you got a link? Be nice to follow it.

 

I'm going to see if any updates have caused this. I'm pretty certain this is a recent development. I don't recall it happening when I was first testing O365.

[Boredguy]

@NK2002 the thread was Here

It only started to occur since April.

[NK2002]

I really can't find anything else on this. It's seems strange if it's quite a small amount of sites affected by this. Have you attempted to contact MS over it? I'm starting to think that that's the only way to get anywhere with this one.

[NK2002]

OK, so more testing. Have Imaged a computer with my 1909 Edu Image (March CU base ISO) and tested before updates are pushed to it and Outlook opens near instantly as expected. Going to allow it to install updates and see if that's what kills it. Will let you know soon.

 

Both OS and Office 1908 are fully patched and... It's still working fine. Well consider me stumped on that one.

Edited July 14, 2020 by NK2002

[NK2002]

@Boredguy

 

Do you use UEV? My guess is yes. I've disabled our UEV GPO and after GPUpdate/Reboot it's all good. I think MS are trying to kill UEV. Guess they've done it to us.

Edited July 17, 2020 by NK2002

[Boredguy]

Yes we have UEV as we need that for Edge, Chrome and a few other bits

[NK2002]

We're lucky enough to not need it, was more of a luxury, New Chromium edge carries sync data now so one less reason for us.

 

At least you have something to work on now. See if you can exclude anything related to Outlook from it.

[Boredguy]

Well turning the whole of UEV off for the station did fix the issue.

Monday it will be a case of turning bits on and off.

Didn't think Chromium Edge sync worked unless you had the paid for version of Azure which we currently don't

[NK2002]

Sweet! Glad you're able to confirm and gain some answers. MS updates lately... Ha ha.

 

I think it (Chromium Sync) works as part of OneDrive/SSO. TBH it was a case of it working so didn't really look further into it.

 

Please let me/us know if you have any luck with getting it to work with UEV.

Edited July 17, 2020 by NK2002

[Wubbalubbadub]

@Boredguy

 

Do you use UEV? My guess is yes. I've disabled our UEV GPO and after GPUpdate/Reboot it's all good. I think MS are trying to kill UEV. Guess they've done it to us.

MS are trying to kill UEV? Isn't UEV the replacement for roaming profiles? What are they replacing UEV with?

[MicrodigitUK]

MS are trying to kill UEV? Isn't UEV the replacement for roaming profiles? What are they replacing UEV with?

 

Yes, they have basically replaced it with a better technology that they acquired called FSLogix.

 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/fslogix/overview

[Boredguy]

well thats handy, but only if you have the right licence type to use it from how that reads.

[Boredguy]

Might have resolved the issue with a bit of tweaking of the template file and the GPO.

 

1 - Sync changes from none to SyncProvider in the workstation GPO (set delay to 2s as well instead of 10s)

2 - Copied all the MS template files to our network location and set the GPO to replace the MS Templates

3 - Updated the MicrosoftOutlook2016CAWinXX template file so that the version number inside it was 2, and the Asynchronous value was set to true

 

Workstations now loading Outlook splash screen within 3 seconds, as the UE-V template file was making the sync sit and wait for the full 60 odd seconds before failing