SharePoint Reported Error (0x8000FFFF)

We were experiencing the error below when trying to Connect to Outlook from SharePoint, via the drop down actions menu.
















In the case of contacts we were trying to sync, sometimes the 1st connection was successful, but subsequent attempts failed. Outlook seemed to recognise that the a sync was trying to be established as the pop up list box was appearring in Outlook. Syncs from Outlook to SharePoint always failed with the same error: SharePoint reported error (0x8000FFFF): An error occurred either in Outlook or SharePoint. Not much help!

After drawing blanks on searching the web for people with the same problem, we performed a packet capture using netmon (Microsoft utility) and performed a Connect to Outlook. From the packet capture we found that SharePoint was trying to sync to the wrong url. We checked in the Alternate Access Mappings in Central Admin and found that we had an old url (one found in packet capture) in there (amongst the correct urls). Once this was removed the sync worked fine. Hope this helps anyone else who has experienced this issue.