An I/O operation initiated by the Registry failed unrecoverably

[ackitsme]

We are running Windows Server 2003 with SP1 recently applied. The SP was applied on the 27th. It ran fine for over a week, and then on the 29th, we started getting errors.

People were unable to access applications... when they logged in, everyone was being told that their profiles were corrupt.

I was not in the office, so someone had the bright idea of just rebooting the server. This appears to have gone without incident and it ran fine until today when it happened again. Due to the time criticality of this system, I was forced to reboot again, and it appears to be working fine.

In the server log I have the following error showing up many times in the error log:

An I/O operation initiated by the Registry failed unrecoverably. The Registry could not read in, or write out, or flush, one of the files that contain the system's image of the Registry.

There are no errors before this, aside from some usual ones when people attach to the terminal server with a printer driver installed that the server doesn't recognize.

The only anomoly that I noticed is that the machine only has 1 GB of memory and it's overutilized on memory as we've been using it as a terminal server to access an application that doesn't run on some arcane (NT4) OS's that we're forced to use on some machines.

I am going to get more memory installed in the machine, but I can't imagine that is the entire problem as we've been running in this mode for quite some time.

The only recent change was the installation of the service pack.

Has anyone seen a similar problem or have any idea where to look for a possible solution?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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Charlie Silverman
Sr. Systems Administrator
Globalstar, LLC

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We now return you to your regularly scheduled reality.

 

[serverfix]

Charlie - we are experiencing the same symptom a few days after installing sp1 on one of our Windows 2003 64bit servers in a cluster. Was wondering if you found a resolution?

 

[ackitsme]

As of yet, we have not found a solution. The system in question only had 1GB of memory in it, and it ended up being used as a Terminal Server, so I assumed that it might be a memory utilization problem.

We increased the memory to 2GB and the problem lessened, but it has happened again.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charlie Silverman
Sr. Systems Administrator
Globalstar, LLC

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We now return you to your regularly scheduled reality.

 

[mdewey]

I'm experiencing the same problem - Win2003 Ent, 12GB Ram (typcially 1-2 free). Anyone?

 

[serverfix]

We were getting this error on our 8-way IBM server (Windows 2003 Server 64bit, sp1). To resolve it, we ended up having to replace one of the processors.

 

[LoveMyMVS]

We have been getting the same text, in System event messages where the "Source" is "Application Popup", event 333. Can't find anything anywhere for event id 333.

Interestingly, each time the tide of error events coincides with my having regmon.exe active in my WTS session, as I have been on the lookout for Registry operation failures.

My wild-guess hypothesis is that regmon.exe was trying to give me a modal (Application Popup) message, but regmon.exe somehow isn't working well in the WTS environment. The server admin found that at that point, his server session was illegible (video totally hosed), mouse pointer no longer responded, etc. He had to hard-start the server.

Any feedback on this? Thanks!

 

[LoveMyMVS]

P.S. Build info on the problem server:

Windows 2003 Server Enterprise Edition (w/SP1)
Java
Dell OMSA
Array Manager
Flashed BIos to A17
Flashed Perc 3DC to newest
PowerValut 110T LTO-1 Tape drive from AKCCMIS servers
Symantec AV in stand-alone mode
Acrobat Reader 7.0