Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of Grime121
Grime121

asked on

Server Keeps Locking Up!

Ever since I installed W2k3 SP1 one of my servers keeps locking up! Every single day in fact! Sometimes twice in the same day. It's not doing it at the same time everyday though, and there are no errors in the event logs to tell me what could possibly be causing it. It could be a coincidence that I installed SP1 at the same time it started to lock up I suppose. It is an older machine, and does not have server class hardware (i.e. 1GB non-ECC ram, AMD Athlon XP 2000+, onboard IDE RAID 1 w/ 2 fairly new Maxtor 120GB drives).

Anyone have an idea as to what could be causing this?
Avatar of vtsinc
vtsinc

My first guess would be faulty RAM or overheating.  With the old hardware I'd first check for a slow/stuck CPU, chassis, or power supply fan, which is quick and easy to do.  While I had the case popped open I'd also reseat RAM and add-in boards...  Hopefully you're not offended by the "101-level" answer!

Hope this helps,
Mike
Try to unistall SP1 and tats fixs it, you know the problem is SP1. SP1 is known to break these things:

- MOM users found a bug that kills the MOM admin console
- Computer Associates' Brightstor ARCserve Backup 11.0
- HP's Compaq Insight Manager and HP Insight Manager 4.0 products
- Rockliffe Inc.'s MailSite e-mail server software breaks too
- Microsoft Application Center 2000 Service Pack 2
- SP1 breaks Cisco IUnity VOIP, uninstall SP1 to fix this
- Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer 1.2.1
- Dell's OpenManage Software, and PowerEdge Domain Controllers
- Microsoft (ISA) Server 2000 Service Pack 1
- Some clients could not get dhcp address until the firewall was off
- Microsoft Exchange Server 2003
- MS SQL Server Reporting Services
- Citrix Metaframe Remote client cannot connect to server
- MS SMS 2003
- NetIQ's AppManager 5.01 and 6.0 and GPAdmin 2.0 products
- Trend Micro's ServerProtect
Lazarus,

I'm wondering if you have a handy link to the issues mentioned above (if they are all consolidated in one place)?  I'm specifcally curious about Exchange and Trend ServerProtect sine we run those... Thanks - Mike
I had to remove sp1
Avatar of Grime121

ASKER

If I remove SP1 from this server will it effect my other server or the AD in any way?
vtsinc - Here is a link to the List of applications where a regression was found during the application compatibility tests It's near the bottom of the support article
http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;en-us;896367&spid=3198
The main thing this server is for is file replication. It houses a lot of replicated shares for the other server.
Grime121-
It shouldn't affect anything (famous last words)...
Heh... that's reasuring. Here goes nothing....
It froze while I was uninstalling SP1, and now it is rebooting every time it tries to load W2k3. I tried Safe Mode and it didn't work either.
OUCH! do you have an ASR disk?
Nope. I have a Full System Backup, but I never got around to making an ASR.
boot form the os disk

Then repair the installion
Lazarus - thx for the link!

Grime - for grins disconnect the network while you reboot - long shot but worth a try if it isn't too late.
Ok, this has got to be a hardware problem. I was running through the repair installation and it froze up again. I guess I'm going to have to do all the regular reseating the memory, cpu, video card, etc....
Thanks for keeping us informed... Have you installed any new hardware at all? Sometimes coincedence can be a bitch...
I installed a new Intel Gigabit ethernet card a month or two ago, but the problems didn't start happening until a week or two ago.
Ok, I cleaned all of the dust out and everything. Then I unplugged all but one of the ram sticks and reseated that one. I checked all of the fans to make sure they were running (which they were). When I turn it on now (ever since it locked up during the repair install) it freezes at the "Boot from CD..." prompt. If I take the CD out it will get past that part and then sit at a blank screen with a blinking cursor in the top lefthand corner.

I tried a different CD drive. Same thing. What's going on here? Is there any way that I can test it to see if it is going to lock up without actually running the repair install again and waiting for it to freeze?
I removed the drives from the RAID and put one of them onto the IDE controller. Windows 2003 installed ok, but now I'm getting a whole bunch of weird errors. For instance, every file I copy across the network to or from this computer ends up corrupt. I think the PCI bus has gone haywire.
Yeah, its definately sounds like a hardware problem. You might try sticky in one of the other Memory chips and see if its any diffrerent. If you pulled out all but one, it could be the one that is bad, if at all. Or you may have something else going on. Try making it as bare bones as possible to find the problem. Perhaps trying only one HDD not an array. There are a lot of ways things can be wrong on hardware.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of PashaMod
PashaMod

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial