Hammermaninmd
asked on
Users Getting Dropped Off of SBS / Windows Domain
Let me start off by saying I'm not a network guru - but know enough to be dangerous. We have a SBS server that I inherited. Its running on a Windows 2003 box.. I keep it patched up and take Exchange offline every month or so for an offline defrag. I'm having a persistent problem that I don't see anything in the event viewer that points to what the problem is... Clients (10 XP clients and 1 Vista client) during the course of the day get their connection to the domain dropped. In the morning when they come in they log into the domain and they can access sharepoint etc.. sometime during the day they loose connectivity to the domain so they can't access any network resource. Also can't ping IP addresses. If I have them disable and re-enable their NIC connectivity is restored. As much as I HATE vista I will say this problem happens much less on the Vista workstation than the XP workstations.
I was in a meeting last week and our conference room PC sat idle for a while (15 minutes or so) and I a little networking box popped up saying connections to domainname.local was dropped. Internet access was still working but couldn't access any server on the network. Any ideas?
I was in a meeting last week and our conference room PC sat idle for a while (15 minutes or so) and I a little networking box popped up saying connections to domainname.local was dropped. Internet access was still working but couldn't access any server on the network. Any ideas?
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
ASKER
ok.. I ran a DCdiag on the SBS server.. everything seemed to pass except for systemLog - so I ran DCdiag /v /test:systemlog - and got back a bunch of error that all seems to say the same thing..
* The System Event log test
An Error Event occured. EventID: 0x000003E9
Time Generated: 12/14/2007 14:42:56
Event String: Your computer was not assigned an address from
the network (by the DHCP Server) for the Network
Card with network address 001346E6C5E0. The
following error occurred:
%%121. Your computer will continue to try and
obtain an address on its own from the network
address (DHCP) server.
We have 2 nics.. one goes out to our switch which which provides connectivity to the internet through our PIX... the other NIC isn't even plugged in and it had 'Obtain an IP Address Automatically' selected so I disabled that NIC. But I'm still getting this error- should I remove the NIC from the box? or is there something else I should check out?
* The System Event log test
An Error Event occured. EventID: 0x000003E9
Time Generated: 12/14/2007 14:42:56
Event String: Your computer was not assigned an address from
the network (by the DHCP Server) for the Network
Card with network address 001346E6C5E0. The
following error occurred:
%%121. Your computer will continue to try and
obtain an address on its own from the network
address (DHCP) server.
We have 2 nics.. one goes out to our switch which which provides connectivity to the internet through our PIX... the other NIC isn't even plugged in and it had 'Obtain an IP Address Automatically' selected so I disabled that NIC. But I'm still getting this error- should I remove the NIC from the box? or is there something else I should check out?
You disabled it in BIOS?
Go into the router configuration and remove any instances of that disabled NIC from the LAN's DNS server. After removing that NIC's addresses from the router, make sure there isn't a Network connection for that NIC card that exists. After deleting that network connection, remove all DNS and DHCP instances of the NIC. After removing DNS and DHCP entries, run a IPconfig /flushdns to flush the DNS cache on that machine. Once done, go into the command prompt and type IPconfig /all to see if it is listed as a DNS server or as an IP address for that machine. If not, then procede to replicating.
Once you cleared the DC of all metadata, force replicate these data changes to the other Domain controller, if applicable.
After that, see if the server is still getting the errors.
Go into the router configuration and remove any instances of that disabled NIC from the LAN's DNS server. After removing that NIC's addresses from the router, make sure there isn't a Network connection for that NIC card that exists. After deleting that network connection, remove all DNS and DHCP instances of the NIC. After removing DNS and DHCP entries, run a IPconfig /flushdns to flush the DNS cache on that machine. Once done, go into the command prompt and type IPconfig /all to see if it is listed as a DNS server or as an IP address for that machine. If not, then procede to replicating.
Once you cleared the DC of all metadata, force replicate these data changes to the other Domain controller, if applicable.
After that, see if the server is still getting the errors.
ASKER
No not in the BIOS - I disabled it by going to Network Connections - choose the adapter and clicked disable. Looking at Routing and Remote Access - The only interfaces it is showing is 'Server Local Area Network' (this is my active NIC), Loopback, Internal. I don't see the one I disabled. In the IP Routing / General the Internal status is Unknown and the Operational Status is Non-operational - and incoming and outgoing bytes are both -.
It looks like that disabled NIC is trying to get a DHCP address. Even disabled the network connection still exists. delete the network connection for that disabled nic and see if these errors are still popping up.
ASKER
Thanks... was a NIC problem.. we teamed the 2 NICs and now no one is getting dropped...
ASKER