When I open Outlook 2003, I get the following: Configuring Outlook Accounts -Creating welcome message. After awhile I get: The connection to the Microsoft Exchange server is unavailable. Outlook must be online or connected to complete this action. I'm having the same error, the only thing is that I am connected to the an Exchange server. So I purposely do need to have exchange as default. I've created a new profile, when it ask for the Microsoft Exchanger server: I did put the ip address of the server, then user name, selected search for name. Everything came back underlined and with the name of the exchange server instead of the IP address. I did go ahead and removed the old profile so there is no conflict, I also selected always use this profile. So that was great, now I go and try to open outlook and I get the same error. What could it be?

Hi, I had the absolute IDENTICAL problem. After a long while of being confused and looking at threads. I narrowed it down to an rpc error. I looked all into replacing rpcrt4.dll and looking into the registry (on the advise of other posts). I reinstalled SP4 and it worked! I hope the fix is this simple for you too.