Dell PowerEdge 2300 - network server, having problems 1

[flygirl]

Hi!
I am using a Dell PowerEdge 2300 server as our PDC / network server. I have been experiencing problems on our network which seem to point to the Dell server. Some cubicles in the office can log on and have network access fine, however others cannot log on to the domain. Sometimes, users log on, but only can see and access a portion of the entire domain. We are using DHCP to facilitate connections.

Could there be some problem with our DHCP, or are there possibly some other issues with Dell PE2300's that I am not aware of that require some maintenance? ARP issues?....

Thanks in advance for your help!
Amber

 

[johnv20]

Hi,
There's a lot of possibilities here. Is this a new problem or has it being happening all along ? Do you have a BDC also configured as a DHCP server ? Is the problem intermittant on the systems affected ? Do you have workgroups set up

 

[flygirl]

This problem is relatively recent, say within the past three or four months. We do have a BDC, but there is no DHCP set up on it, though it is a DHCP relay agent. The problem is not intermitant. Machines can see the entire network, but can not access the PDC. Some machines experience partial network access, but after an ipconfig, they can see the entire network (still no PDC access, even though the DHCP is on the PDC). As far as workgroups, we have one called workgroup, but only as a result of machines not being allowed access to the PDC.

Thanks for your reply and help!
Amber

 

[johnv20]

Ok - it doesn't sound like a server problem since its only affecting some systems and not all. If you have a network tester like Compass or Fluke plug this into 1 of the affected sockets and check if it can see the PDC. Also check the span for the DHCP range that you have set up.

The bad news is that I had almost the exact same problem about a week ago where 2 systems could only see part of the network induvidually ( they couldn't see any servers or most of the workstations). The only way I could fix it was to uninstall and reload networking components. You could try this on one system and see if it fixes the problem.

 

[flygirl]

Well, that is interesting that you had the same problem 2 weeks ago...we actually tried reinstalling networking components and that seemed to be the fix for some of the computers, not all however. Would the fact that people usually have to log on to the network a couple times before it will take.....have anything to do with the current problem?

We have had our telco data techs out here to test the lines where the computers are having trouble to no avail. They said that the lines were fine....

Do you have any other suggestion?

thanks so much for your help!
Amber

 

[johnv20]

If people are taking 2 or 3 attempts to login check and see
how many connections are currently active on the server. It may be that there's too many

 

[flygirl]

Here's another one for ya....we upgraded to sp6a on this server last night, and as we have seen to a lessser degree in the past, after the restart the user list in user manager disappears which impairs users ability to log on to the network as well as services starting on the PDC.........

Any suggestions, you've rocked my world so far, so I will wait in anticip[ation!

thanks alot John!
Amber

 

[johnv20]

Hi,
I was talking to a friend of mine over the weekend and he was complaining about seeing the exact same problem. Try mailing conor.glynn@ul.ie as he has been working on this virtually non-stop for the last few weeks

 

[flygirl]

Thanks John:
The issue ended up being the fact that we were building a new server to split network server function.....not intentionally, using that DELL open manage disk, pdc was chosen thereby booting out current PDC from the Network. We caught it though and things returned to functional order.

Our new current problem...however is that the same machine causing the problems before was reformatted and built this time as a BDC to be later promoted to PDC. I am not sure if this has any impact on our current situation, but here it is: Users of NT 4.0 server - when they log in, it seems that their userprofile has somehow becoe corrupt ans throws a 'Cannot start Outlook' error as well as throwing a Dr. Watson error when trying to launch IE. We are seeing it in 98 machines as well this morning, manifesting through dropping mapped printer paths.

Have you heard of anything like this? We have taken the new BDC off of the network as of yesterday, so it is no longer an issue...could this be a new virus???

thanks!
Amber