jtgerdes
asked on
SBS 2000 Server shuts down intermittently - not a hardware issue
I have a client with a Dell PowerEdge 2500SC Windows 2000 Small Business Server that for the past couple weeks has been shutting itself down for no apparent reason. The logs show only two things before shutting down:
Information type log entry - event ID 26 - Application popup: java.exe - DLL Initialization Failed : The application failed to initialize because the window station is shutting down. (this repeats 6 times)
then 20-30 seconds later it shows the typical:
Information type log entry - event ID 6006 - The Event log service was stopped.
When you boot it back up all the log entries are normal and nothing mentions an unexpected shutdown.
Here are some steps I have taken:
- I ran a full virus scan (Symantec AV Corp. 10.0) which came up with only a rather benign trojan which after it was removed made no diffence in it shutting down.
- It being a Dell, it has a diagnostics utility partition you can boot into and after running the full hardware tests it came back with no errors or warnings.
A server rebuild does not sound appealling to me or my client so I'm throwing this out there to see if anyone has any thoughts or suggestions. Thanks.
Information type log entry - event ID 26 - Application popup: java.exe - DLL Initialization Failed : The application failed to initialize because the window station is shutting down. (this repeats 6 times)
then 20-30 seconds later it shows the typical:
Information type log entry - event ID 6006 - The Event log service was stopped.
When you boot it back up all the log entries are normal and nothing mentions an unexpected shutdown.
Here are some steps I have taken:
- I ran a full virus scan (Symantec AV Corp. 10.0) which came up with only a rather benign trojan which after it was removed made no diffence in it shutting down.
- It being a Dell, it has a diagnostics utility partition you can boot into and after running the full hardware tests it came back with no errors or warnings.
A server rebuild does not sound appealling to me or my client so I'm throwing this out there to see if anyone has any thoughts or suggestions. Thanks.
ASKER
Well that's the thing, it's nothing out of the ordinary, and nothing consistent that is right before it. In fact there's no errors at all - just information events. It might be a print job sent 10 minutes earlier or some other normal everyday event that may have been 1 minute or 30 minutes prior to the event 26 errors.
Are you looking in both the application AND system event logs?
Jeff
TechSoEasy
Jeff
TechSoEasy
ASKER
yes - I was looking in all the logs for some kind of clues.
Why do you think that this is not a hardware issue?
Jeff
TechSoEasy
Jeff
TechSoEasy
ASKER
Two reasons:
A. It passed all hardware diagnostic tests with no problems.
B. As I mentioned earlier, it is aware of itself shutting down according to the logs, and upon reboot gives no "unexpected shut down" type error log.
In fact, I rebooted it on purpose to compare the log entries from an unwanted shut down with the log entries of a purposeful reboot and they are identical.
A. It passed all hardware diagnostic tests with no problems.
B. As I mentioned earlier, it is aware of itself shutting down according to the logs, and upon reboot gives no "unexpected shut down" type error log.
In fact, I rebooted it on purpose to compare the log entries from an unwanted shut down with the log entries of a purposeful reboot and they are identical.
Do you have any Event 5000's in your logs?
What service pack do you have applied?
Jeff
TechSoEasy
What service pack do you have applied?
Jeff
TechSoEasy
ASKER
Without looking at it again to double check, I'm fairly certain that there are no event 5000's.
However, interestingly enough, I uninstalled Exchange from it several days ago and it has not shut down since. It had not been used for a number of months and was not going to be used again. The services had all been disabled, but I thought I'd give it a shot anyway. So far so good. I'll update this if in a week or so if it doesn't shut down again, but so far this is the longest we've gone in a few weeks without it spontaneously shutting down.
Thanks for the suggestions so far though.
However, interestingly enough, I uninstalled Exchange from it several days ago and it has not shut down since. It had not been used for a number of months and was not going to be used again. The services had all been disabled, but I thought I'd give it a shot anyway. So far so good. I'll update this if in a week or so if it doesn't shut down again, but so far this is the longest we've gone in a few weeks without it spontaneously shutting down.
Thanks for the suggestions so far though.
ok, good luck!
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Jeff
TechSoEasy