Random Reboots

[Michael Will_1]

My LC2000 running Windows NT4.0 SP6A randomly reboots every 2-3 days. The system specs are as follows:
P850, 640MB Ram, internal Dat40 Tape drive. Server is used as a file and print server running corporate Norton Antivirus and Formscape. When the machine reboots all I get in event viewer is the system shutdown was unexpected. This occurs a random times throughout the day and night. I have updated the Bios removed Norton Antivirus, Service Packed the machine and done all the troubleshooting I can short or reloading the server. Top Tools reports no hard ware problems. Has anyone experienced this before or does anyone have any ideas on what I can do to figure out what is causing the reboots.
thanks

[Theo Hill_1]

First off, you need to disable Automatic Server Reboot in the startup/shutdown tab under properties of my computer. This will allow you to gather some sort of blue scrren information. You can also run Diagtools on the system, to test the hardware portion of the server. You can find Diagtools here:

http://h20004.www2.hp.com/keeper_rnotes/bsdmatrix/matrix70270.html

[harry d brown jr]

And of course check your power source (make sure cleaning crew isn't unplugging server or using same circuit to vaccum) and your power supplies.

live free or die
harry

[kris rombauts]

Hello Michael,

If the above steps don't help and their is no evidence of a H/W cause then given the frequency of the issue,you might consider using performance monitor and pick out a few objects like memory, private bytes... This way you can check if their is a memory leak of some kind and if their is, then adjust the monitoring to find the one causing the issue.

All info on how to set this up is available in the online help. Use an update interval of 15 minutes i.e. so the log file does not get to big.

Make also sure that you setup the system so that it writes an entry in the eventlog when a BSOD occurs and set it so that it wont reboot when this takes place. You can do this under Control Panel/System icon/System Properties/Advanced/Startup and Recovery.


HTH

Kris

[Michael Will_1]

I have verified that power is good. The server is in a working UPS with several other devices that do not reboot. I also set the machine to not automatically reboot and recieved the following blue screen information.

The stop error was as follows
Stop: 0x0000001e (0xc0000005, oxf014ca52, 0x00000001, 0x00000000)
Kmode_exception_not_handled***
addredd f014ca52 has base f0145000-zbrak21

There are zebra drivers loaded for label printers could these be causing the problems? thanks for any help
mike

[Theo Hill_1 · Accepted solution]

Do you have sufficent disk space? Are you using the correct drivers? Are you running the latest BIOS? You can find the drivers and latest BIOS for the LC2000 here:

http://h20004.www2.hp.com/keeper_rnotes/bsdmatrix/matrix62572.html

Lastly, it could be the Zebra drivers. Are you using the latest drivers? Try removing these if possible and leave the system up to see if it reboots.

[Michael Will_1]

I have updated to the latest bios as of 60 days ago. I do not know if I am using the latest Zebra drivers but have a tech request into Zebra on this issue. I cannot disable the zebra printers or driver because the servers main purpose is to run Formscape for printing Oracle output to the zebra label printers. Is there a way to be sure that it is the Zebra drivers? I will run the HP diagnostics against the hardware later this month.
thanks

[Theo Hill_1]

The best thing you can do at this point is make sure everything is up to date on the system, and run the diags application. Check the BIOS, firmware and drivers. This should be done prior to running diags. I would also suggest running diags more than once. Memory errors are often difficult to find on one pass through.

[kris rombauts]

Michael,

have a look at this article and yes going to the supplier of the driver where the dump points to would be the best cours of action, certainly if the same BSOD occurs again.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q275678

Kris

[Frank Cifelli]

Michael,

Did you ever resolve this problem? I have a NT 4.0 server that is also ramdonly rebooting every 2-4 days. It also has Oracle running on it (our Oracle version is 7.5). I have been investigating our problem and believe it might be due to an old version of Oracle on our Pentium 4 server.