Websphere 6.1.0.13 Win 2003 Server Nodeagent will not stay on line

Hello,  

I am new to experts-exchange and this is my first post in the Websphere forum.  I support a reporting tool called Lawson Business Intelligence which runs on Websphere 6.1.0.13.  I am not a websphere admin other than what I have learned by installing and supporiting the LBI application.   The main enterprise application for LBI is called Framework Services.  Framework services serves up Crystal reports data to the users web browser.

I need your help on how I can trouble shoot my issue.  My framework services page times out after about 4 hours.  The Websphere app server is on line and I can log into the websphere console.  I toggle down to nodeagent and the node agent shows off line.  I have a case open with my Lawson ERP vendor but I am not making much progress.

Here is what changed on the server recently.  Microsoft Windows security patches were added, these patches set Microsoft Data Execution Protection (DEP) to defaults.  I switch it back to exclude services used by the application.  

Websphere security was disabled - no password required.  This is a test system and I am the only user.

I tried to set up dmgr, server1 and node agent running as a windows service.  I didn't have the log file directories set up correctly so I removed the services.

I installed a websphere enterprise application server distributed single sign on (DSSO) so that the users credentials would integrate with the Lawson ERP security system.

The issue is intermittent and hard to trouble shoot.  

Any general troubleshooting instructions would be most helpful.