How to troubleshoot communications problems in Groove (915658)

MORE INFORMATION

If you cannot communicate by using Groove Virtual Office or Groove Workspace, use one or more of the following methods to troubleshoot the issue:

• Visit the following Groove Networks Web site:

  http://gms.groove.net/gms.dll

  You should see a Web page that states "Server is alive." If you do not see this Web page, you cannot make a network connection to the required hosts at the Groove Networks Web site. Ask the network administrator or Helpdesk whether a proxy or a firewall might be restricting this traffic.
• Perform a ping to r001.groove.net. The ping will time out. However, before the time-out occurs, you can verify whether there is a resolution to an IP address.
• Make sure that Groove is an enabled Internet application. A personal firewall or another Internet security program that blocks all outgoing Web traffic prevents Groove from working.
  
  For more information about how to install Groove on a computer that has a personal firewall, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

  907744 How to use Groove on a computer that is running a personal firewall

• If you cannot start Groove, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

  906895 You receive a "Groove cannot reach activation server" error message when you try to activate Groove

If you are using Groove Workspace 2.5 or an earlier version of Groove, you should also be aware of the following browser-related issues:

• If you have Internet Explorer and another browser installed, make sure that you have the latest version of Groove. Versions of Groove that are earlier than Groove Workspace 2.5j sometimes have proxy problems on systems that use other browsers.
• If you uninstalled the Netscape Browser or Firefox recently, search your Application Data directories for the Registry.dat file. Delete this file. When this file is left by the uninstallation process for Netscape or for Firefox, communications can be hindered with Groove Workspace 2.5 and earlier versions of Groove.

The third-party products that this article discusses are manufactured by companies that are independent of Microsoft. Microsoft makes no warranty, implied or otherwise, regarding the performance or reliability of these products.