Outlook Anywhere stopped connecting to Exchange

I have 2 relatively new Laptops... a Dell and an HP that both connect to an Exchange Server at my job via Outlook Anywhere. Both were working fine until just over a week ago when suddenly they could no longer connect via Outlook Anywhere but Outlook works fine if I first open a VPN to the office.

The whole point of using Outlook Anywhere is that you don't need a VPN but for some reason my 2 laptops running Windows 7 sp1 will no longer connect. I took an old XP laptop and set it up identical to the Windows 7 machines and it connects via Outlook Anywhere with no problem.

I've recreated the profiles but that did not fix the problem. I've run system restores on both machines back to a time when they could connect and that didn't solve the problem either. It is as if Windows 7 has developed a problem with Outlook Anywhere and nothing I have done has fixed it.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Yes OWA is working.

There is no problem on the Exchange side, there are dozens of laptops that connect to the company Exchange server every day using Outlook Anywhere and even my own XP laptop has no problem connecting from the same (home) network using Outlook Anywhere. The problem is limited to only these two laptops and only within the past week. Something has changed, but I have no idea what.

Additional information. These laptops are joined to the Domain at the office but due to the fact that the AD is not available during boot, they have always use cached credentials to logon. Since this problem with Outlook Anywhere began I've also noticed that the laptops hang on "Please Wait" for a full minute before displaying the logon screen. This never happened before and it doesn't happen with the XP machine, only these two Laptops. I don't know if others are seeing the same behavior.

In the past the laptops would simply pass by the "Please Wait" as soon as it was determined that the AD could not be located and default to "cached credentials" but now they wait, I assume on a timeout of some kind, before using the cached credentials. I've seen other posts on this topic where people suggested that network access be disabled before the logon screen and that should eliminate the wait but in my case that does not work.

I continue to believe that something has changed in Windows 7... perhaps a recent update... but I can't pin it down. All suggestions are welcome and appreciated.

Jyuma, check to make sure Remote Procedure Call is still running. Hold down the Windows key and press R, now type Services.msc. Click on the Standard Tab and scroll down the list to find Remote Procedure Call (RPC). It should be set to Started and Automatic. If not change it by double clicking on it, Change Startup Type to: Automatic then click on start. Once completed reboot your pc and see if Outlook Anywhere works.
Let us know.

Regards,
Bigwil806

RPC is already running.

Additional information... if I leave the Domain Outlook Anywhere connects without any problem. However, when I rejoin the Domain Outlook Anywhere only connects if I open a VPN first. It looks like Outlook cannot find the Exchange server when the laptop is not directly connected to the internal network.