XIMS: Clients Being Disconnected or Receive Channel Collision Messages from Microsoft Exchange Chat Service (235619)

SYMPTOMS

Chat clients may receive Channel Collision messages when joining a persistent channel or room. Or, they may be unexpectedly disconnected from a channel or room while connected to the Microsoft Exchange Chat Service.

CAUSE

A user has created a "rogue" channel with the same name as an already existing persistent channel using the "e" mode to clone the channel. This person thus becomes the channel owner, and all connected users are "kicked" from the room and receive Channel Collision messages when they try to rejoin.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Exchange Server version 5.5. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

191014 XGEN: How to Obtain the Latest Exchange Server 5.5 Service Pack

The English version of this fix should have the following file attributes or later:

Component: Chat Service

File name	Version
Chatsvc.exe	5.5.2646.0

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in Microsoft Exchange Server version 5.5 Service Pack 2. This problem was first corrected in Exchange Server 5.5 Service Pack 3.

MORE INFORMATION

NOTES:

The "e" parameter in the Create command allows an owner or host of a channel that is clonable to clone it.
A channel is considered clonable if and only if the administrator of the chat server marks it as clonable--no one else can make a channel clonable.
Currently, Chat Server 5.5 only allows persistent channels to be marked clonable. Therefore, all dynamic channels are consider not clonable.

The only time this is a problem is if the channel name ends with a number, for example:

#Testing01
#Testing123
#Testing1