Win Server 2003 tries to reboot itself

[azzie23]

Hi,

I have a win 2003 application server which tries to restart itself about once every couple of weeks. I've switched off automatic updates, and have today switched off the automatic restart on failure. There is nothing obvious in the event log and there is no memory dump file.

The server seems to try and restart itself but it sticks at 'Saving your settings' and it sits there until rebooted. While in this state all of my users have access to the application and IT admin can remote control the machine no problem - but the local machine is hung.

I've come across similar issues on the net but not this exact senario - and no solutions!

Any help would be appreciated.
A.

 

[1toomany]

Hi azzie23,

Are your security, system logs et al set to shut down the machine when they are full ? Check the settings (and log file sizes)through event viewer.

Also have a look at the services settings (what the service should do if it fails, could be one of them is failing and attempting to reboot the machine.

 

[azzie23]

Thanks for that.

I've had a look at the event logs and they are all set to overwrite as neccessary. As for the services there are a number of them such as event log - which are set to reboot the machine on error - but I can't change them. There are 2 others which are also set to reboot and which I can change - Dcom Server process launcher and RPC. Do you know if it would cause problems if I were to change it from reboot to restart the service instead? If either of these were causing the issue would they not write to the event log?

In the mean time, I've set the 2 services to notify pcs on the network of the reboot - that way when it happens again, and if one of these services has caused the problem, I'll at least know what is going on!

Thanks again.
A

 

[1toomany]

Most errors of that type will write to one of the event logs prior to drastic action (reboot).

I would set the services to "restart the service" with a second option of "notify"

This may not solve the problem but will eliminate one of the potential causes.

Keep an eye on your system log. Might be an idea to set up a couple of basic (RAM, Hdd, Processor, Processes) counter logs to keep track of system symptoms.

DDIRR