No more connections

[crmayer]

I have about 40 users that run Win98, Win2K, and WinXP and just recently some of them started seeing network errors:

1) There was an error writing to \\server\savin4035 for printer (Savin 4035):
No more connection can be made to this remote computer at this time because there are already as many connections as the computer can accept.

This printer will be set to offline.
To save your print job in the local printer queue, click OK.

2) O:\ is not accessible.
No more connections can be made to this remote computer at this time because there are already as many connection as the computer can accept.

I did find a article in the Microsoft Knowledge base about this, but it refered to connection to a NT workstation. All my clients log onto and connect to a NT 4.0 Server. Does that matter? Does anybody know what might cause this error? The weird thing is that it has not happened in the 5 years I have been here until a couple of day ago, not it happens everyday. For now, I have been rebooting the NT server and it goes away, but like I said, that seems to be just a band aid, not a fix.

Does anybody know what might cause this and what the fix is?

Thanks

 

[hiran1974]

My experience with this problem is related to your NT Client Access Licenses (CAL). You may not have enough licenses set up on your server for the client connections. The way Windows licenses you need to either have enough con-current (per server) licenses or enough per seat (# of wkstation) licenses.

Check the licenses in the Control Panel and see how you're set up and whether you have enough licenses.

 

[rdroske]

If you have been using it for years without this error it's not likely a CAL issue. Probably something on your network is either malfunctioning or deliberately doing some kind of denial of service.

How is you AV protection? Also I've been hearing about some problems with the Jet Direct Print Monitor causing some problems similar to this... could be a lot of things though.

You want to start with what it says in the logs of the server (or servers but I'm guessing it is the same server doing printing and file serving) that the users cannot connect to.

 

[neoice]

make sure your share is set for unlimited connections. I had a similar problem with our shared application drive.

neil

 

[YWGMoose]

Although this maybe something else - like the Jet Direct problem that "rdroske" mentioned. You didn't say if you had recently added any other clients? Sounds silly, but I thought I would ask the basics first.

Also, what has the event log shown?

 

[crmayer]

I will look into the jet direct problem. All of our printers run off a jet direct box.

Also, we have not added anymore clients for sometime now. I have added some, but they have been replacments for people that have left. So, NO NEW clients have been added.

This is what the event viewer shows on the NT machine.

Event ID 201: No License Was available for user using product smb server 4.0.
This tells me to change the Licensing Mode to Per Seat.

I guess I just think it is weird that this is happening all of a sudden when we have not added more users.

 

[YWGMoose]

If you are on per server, is it possible that your clients are not dropping there connections completely, so when logging back in it would appear to be yet another connection, if you get what I mean?

Check the count of connections through server manager on your NT4 server.

 

[rdroske]

If you have it set to per server then it is almost definitely not a CAL issue that is stopping the connections.

The event you are seeing is probably just because you don't have License Manager set up correctly but that won't actually stop the connections. I use per server licensing and don't want to deal with the License Manager so I just disable the License service on all my servers.

There are no other errors or warnings in the logs? Not just ones to do with CAL's but printer or connection errors?

 

[crmayer]

When I go to server manager, what do I check. When I pull up the NT Server I get a window that says
Sesions: 19
Open Files: 22
File Locks: 0
Open Named Pipes: 1

When I go into Users button:
Connected Users: 18

When I go into Shares:
I went throught this list and counted 67 users. There are some with 1 share to a resource/file and some with 12. But the total was 67.

NT License Manager
Per Server for: 30 concurrent connections.

Is that causing the problem? 30 Concurrent Connections and showing 67 different resources/drives being accessed?

 

[rdroske]

Yes the "for 30 Concurrent sessions" would do it at times.

Thats not a normal restriction.

Is this a Small Business Server?

 

[crmayer]

Yes, it is just our file and print server.

 

[rdroske]

There is probably nothing you can do without replacing the OS.

Not an expert on Small Business Server myself so maybe someone else knows whether you can do an upgrade or need to rebuild totally etc.

 

[crmayer]

If that is the case, I am not going to worry about it too much. I will be moving a new server into it's place here pretty soon. We have a new machine that has windows server 2K on it and we will be swapping them pretty soon.

Does anybody know of some good links to help pre-pare me for the transfer of computers? I am not upgradeing the old NT 4.0 machine, but instead replacing it with an new machine. So I did not know if I would be better off setting the new one up from scratch so it is just like the NT 4.0 or not.