<div>
If you still have the dell diagnostics CD or the server has a diagnostic partition I would first boot to this and run the diagnostics on all devices, especially the RAM. &nbsp;This will give you an indicator if there is something faulty hardware wise. &nbsp;Likely if the problem is very random there is a bad piece of RAM.<br />
<br />
The next thing to check is if you are using Symantec Corporate Edition, be sure you update it to 10.2 or above. &nbsp;There have been some issues with Dell Optiplex workstations and versions 10.1 or lower. &nbsp;Could be the same for this machine. &nbsp;
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<div>
I ran memtest86 on the box. it locked up during processing. attached is a screenshot of it.<br />
<a href="https://filedb.experts-exchange.com/incoming/2008/07_w30/44434/2008-07-24-1531.png" target="_blank" class="file-inline" title="screenshot of memtest86 (74 KB)"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512"><path d="M67.508 468.467c-58.005-58.013-58.016-151.92 0-209.943l225.011-225.04c44.643-44.645 117.279-44.645 161.92 0 44.743 44.749 44.753 117.186 0 161.944l-189.465 189.49c-31.41 31.413-82.518 31.412-113.926.001-31.479-31.482-31.49-82.453 0-113.944L311.51 110.491c4.687-4.687 12.286-4.687 16.972 0l16.967 16.971c4.685 4.686 4.685 12.283 0 16.969L184.983 304.917c-12.724 12.724-12.73 33.328 0 46.058 12.696 12.697 33.356 12.699 46.054-.001l189.465-189.489c25.987-25.989 25.994-68.06.001-94.056-25.931-25.934-68.119-25.932-94.049 0l-225.01 225.039c-39.249 39.252-39.258 102.795-.001 142.057 39.285 39.29 102.885 39.287 142.162-.028A739446.174 739446.174 0 0 1 439.497 238.49c4.686-4.687 12.282-4.684 16.969.004l16.967 16.971c4.685 4.686 4.689 12.279.004 16.965a755654.128 755654.128 0 0 0-195.881 195.996c-58.034 58.092-152.004 58.093-210.048.041z"/></svg>2008-07-24-1531.png</a>
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2008-07-24-1531.png

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in the process of testing the RAM in groups of four sticks at a time. it originally had twelve 256MB sticks in it. will post the outcome.
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1st batch bad. 2nd batch good. 3rd good.<br />
<br />
ran all of the sticks from the 1st batch one at a time in w/ the 3rd batch. eliminated it down to 1 bad stick.<br />
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thanks for the help! :)
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<div>
<div class="content wysiwyg-content">
I've got a system that has recently started to randomly crash. It's an older Dell PowerEdge 6450. It's not used for primary production, but it is still in use by several folks here. When it could crash, nothing was written to the event log except for &quot;last crash was unexpected&quot;, but no real diag info. I updated the ESM firmware, BIOS, RAID firmware, and RAID drivers just to catch it up to the latest releases of Dell software.<br />
<br />
It seemed to be running fine when Windows 2000 Server was installed on it. Because of a testing environment, the users needed it to have Windows Server 2003 installed a few months ago.<br />
<br />
Today it bluescreened and it actually wrote a minidump and some info to the system log.<br />
<br />
Attached is the info from the event log and the log output from the x86 Windows Debugging tools.<br />
<br />
Any additional help/info would be greatly appreciated.<br />
<a href="https://filedb.experts-exchange.com/incoming/2008/07_w30/43968/event.txt" target="_blank" class="file-inline" title="copied info from system error event id 1003 (838 bytes)"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512"><path d="M67.508 468.467c-58.005-58.013-58.016-151.92 0-209.943l225.011-225.04c44.643-44.645 117.279-44.645 161.92 0 44.743 44.749 44.753 117.186 0 161.944l-189.465 189.49c-31.41 31.413-82.518 31.412-113.926.001-31.479-31.482-31.49-82.453 0-113.944L311.51 110.491c4.687-4.687 12.286-4.687 16.972 0l16.967 16.971c4.685 4.686 4.685 12.283 0 16.969L184.983 304.917c-12.724 12.724-12.73 33.328 0 46.058 12.696 12.697 33.356 12.699 46.054-.001l189.465-189.489c25.987-25.989 25.994-68.06.001-94.056-25.931-25.934-68.119-25.932-94.049 0l-225.01 225.039c-39.249 39.252-39.258 102.795-.001 142.057 39.285 39.29 102.885 39.287 142.162-.028A739446.174 739446.174 0 0 1 439.497 238.49c4.686-4.687 12.282-4.684 16.969.004l16.967 16.971c4.685 4.686 4.689 12.279.004 16.965a755654.128 755654.128 0 0 0-195.881 195.996c-58.034 58.092-152.004 58.093-210.048.041z"/></svg>event.txt</a><br />
<a href="https://filedb.experts-exchange.com/incoming/2008/07_w30/43969/debuglog.txt" target="_blank" class="file-inline" title="output from minidump (13 KB)"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512"><path d="M67.508 468.467c-58.005-58.013-58.016-151.92 0-209.943l225.011-225.04c44.643-44.645 117.279-44.645 161.92 0 44.743 44.749 44.753 117.186 0 161.944l-189.465 189.49c-31.41 31.413-82.518 31.412-113.926.001-31.479-31.482-31.49-82.453 0-113.944L311.51 110.491c4.687-4.687 12.286-4.687 16.972 0l16.967 16.971c4.685 4.686 4.685 12.283 0 16.969L184.983 304.917c-12.724 12.724-12.73 33.328 0 46.058 12.696 12.697 33.356 12.699 46.054-.001l189.465-189.489c25.987-25.989 25.994-68.06.001-94.056-25.931-25.934-68.119-25.932-94.049 0l-225.01 225.039c-39.249 39.252-39.258 102.795-.001 142.057 39.285 39.29 102.885 39.287 142.162-.028A739446.174 739446.174 0 0 1 439.497 238.49c4.686-4.687 12.282-4.684 16.969.004l16.967 16.971c4.685 4.686 4.689 12.279.004 16.965a755654.128 755654.128 0 0 0-195.881 195.996c-58.034 58.092-152.004 58.093-210.048.041z"/></svg>debuglog.txt</a>
</div>
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copied info from system error event id 1003

event.txt

debuglog.txt

I've got a system that has recently started to randomly crash. It's an older Dell PowerEdge 6450. It's not used for primary production, but it is still in use by several folks here. When it could crash, nothing was written to the event log except for "last crash was unexpected", but no real diag info. I updated the ESM firmware, BIOS, RAID firmware, and RAID drivers just to catch it up to the latest releases of Dell software.

It seemed to be running fine when Windows 2000 Server was installed on it. Because of a testing environment, the users needed it to have Windows Server 2003 installed a few months ago.

Today it bluescreened and it actually wrote a minidump and some info to the system log.

Attached is the info from the event log and the log output from the x86 Windows Debugging tools.

Any additional help/info would be greatly appreciated.

System Error (102) EventID 1003

Windows Server 2003 was based on Windows XP and was released in four editions: Web, Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter. It also had derivative versions for clusters, storage and Microsoft’s Small Business Server. Important upgrades included integrating Internet Information Services (IIS), improvements to Active Directory (AD) and Group Policy (GP), and the migration to Automated System Recovery (ASR).