Windows 2003 DC running VERY slowly...

[TobyA]

Dear Gurus,

I've got a strange situation with a Windows 2003 server (SP1) on a small network. The machine is a new Dell PowerEdge running DNS, Active Directory, RRAS, file & print. There are only about 15 users (all on XP) and I can see from watching Task Manager neither the network traffic or the processor are being heavily utilised, however it is running SO SLOOOO

http://WWWW..

I've been connected to the server remotely (using RDC over PPTP VPN) this afternoon trying to install network monitor and everything is taking an absolute age. It currently says "completing configuration of cluster service", but it's been going through this wizard for at least an hour.

I am connected over the Internet, but another local Terminal Services user has told me it's incredibly slow also. I've had complaints about delays when printing and saving to network folders on that server also.

I am currently installing a few critical updates. Other than those I think the OS is pretty up-to-date.

Has anyone got any suggestions as to why it could be running so slow when CPU usage is averaging about 2% and the network usage on the LAN and the RRAS Server is averaging less than 10%?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.... It's starting to drive me round the bend!

Thanks,
Toby

 

[Roadki11]

Hows your RAM, disk trashing I/O to swap?

 

[TobyA]

Page file usage = 409 MB

Total physical memory = 1 GB

Of which available = 393 MB

Unfortunately the machine doesn't have Dell Server Manager installed so I'm not able to look at logs from hard drives, etc.

Not sure how else to check hard drive usage remotely?

I should point out that shadow copy is running. Does this have a huge impact on performance?

 

[itsp1965]

Have you checked the following;

- DNS infrastructure.. Are you users/servers pointing to the correct DNS servers
- Network connectivity between users/servers and your network switches. If your servers are hard-coded at a certain speed and the switch is set to auto-negotiate (or vice-versa), you will experience slowdowns such as this

Hope this helps.

 

[TobyA]

Oops, just spotted a problem....

I set RRAS to assign IP addresses to PPTP clients, and I've just realised the two network printers are within that range...

And hey presto, my PPTP client has the same IP address as a printer.

Oops.