Intermittant unpredictable network silence

[Ken Flickinger]

LC2000 netserver; win 2003 SBS; 3 36 gig scsi drives in raid 5; intel pro1000 NIC; gig of ram

trouble shooting so far;
replace gigabit switch between Terminal server and data server(lc2000); replaced the NIc in lc2000; updated the drivers for the nics.

I have about 12 Terminal server clients that access this server for accounting purposes, AccPac to be exact, I have a 3 FAT clients as well they access the data on this server conventionally. Both types of clients are having data transfer problems at the same time. That is how I ended up in the LC2000 box. It is common to both types of clients. This setup has been running for about 9 months. Only recently have these issues been so prevalent and they are getting worse. There are no errors being reported of any significance by the event viewer. The only evidence I have that there is a communication problem is that outlook runs on the terminal server and exchange runs on the lc2000 and the application event viewer shows that outlook lost contact with exchange and then regained contact again within the same minute.

If my accounting users are doing something they lose what ever they were working on because of coruption. The AccPac application say "oops" and freezes. Poof there goes your last 10 minutes of work. Multiply that by 12 and imagine my popularity.

Other users in AccPac who did not touch any buttons carry on none the wiser.

There are no predictors. The events occur when its idle, when its busy, One user (any user) or 20 users, whatever. They hit they're gone, we just keep working because everything works imediately afterwards we don't know if we'll get 30 seconds or 3 hrs of service till the next one. We are not happy.

No amount of reboots or service packing or up dating has any effect.

I have the ethereal network analyzer but unless I happen to be capturing data at the time one of these events occurs, it tells me nothing.

I am going to replace the server. I pray that that is the end of it. If any of you can help me resolve this maybe I can still be a hero

Thanks
wits end (3 weeks of tracking this problem to its most expensive end) ;-(
Ken

[Phil.Howell]

Does this look anything like your problem?
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=832971
Phil

[Ken Flickinger]

no

I don't use the 2003 server for terminal services. I use a windows 2000 server for that.

but thanks for the responce

[Norman_21]

SBS 2003 can not be a Terminal Services Licensing Mode server. By default, SBS 2003 is a TS in Administration mode which supports 2 concurrent connections only.

However, have you tried to update the NIC drivers at both servers.
Also, do you have the latest security patches & critical updates for the TS?

According to this MS article, there is a hotfix for such problems:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;813130

But I'd suggest to monitor the performance closely and see which processes are eating up the CPU.
You can use Performance Monitor Wizard and then analyze the log files:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=31fccd98-c3a1-4644-9622-faa046d69214&displaylang=en&Hash=99NFGL8

In SBS 2003, enable the Monitoring Tool from the ToDo Task list.

BTW: What are the clients? are they thin clients WinCE or Citrix or just workstations?

Hope this help

[Norman_21]

Ken,

Open the Performance Monitor Wizard->Advanced Options->Terminal Server->Setup the log file...

[Ken Flickinger]

latif

It may be early to say but it may have been something to do with the "checksum" settings on the NICS being turned on. Those have benn turned off now and I haven't heard a word since. Knock on wood. :)

ken

[Ken Flickinger]

BY THE WAY

I did replace the server to no avail.
The errors were only compounded by the process of moving to a new server. I have since been in contact with Microsoft support and we have possibly resolved the issue as described above

ken

[Norman_21]

That's interesting!
So turning off the checksum in the NICs resolved the issue.
I'm glad your problem is solved!

Take care

[Ken Flickinger]

So far, so good. No errors reported today.

:-)

ken