WINDOWS NT 4.0 SERVER LOCKUP PROBLEM! Please Help

[wisdomwarrior23]

We have a small 8 user LAN which connects to their local in house server which is a BDC on our Domain. The server just stores all of their files and is a print server, it also runs WINS, DNS forwarding and DHCP. We have been having continuous problems with the server locking up at various times and whenever this happens, users cannot login and or browse through to get their files on the server. This is a very strange problem that has been tough to figure out. The last time this problem happened was two months ago and then recently it reared its ugly head again. What are some things that could be causing this. Thanks for any guidance!

 

[dredogg]

Any messages in the event log?

 

[wisdomwarrior23]

Event ID 2022 the server was unable to find a free connection " " times in the last " " seconds. I've researched this error message thoroughly and everything that pertains to this error message doesn't relate to whats going on with our server. We have plenty of disk space, plenty of memory and as I said before its just a small LAN, there should be plenty of free connections. One of our theories is that one of the printers and or desktop systems has a bad network interface. Respond back let me know what other things could cause this. Another theory of mine is maybe a WINS corruption on the network.

 

[dredogg]

Hmm. weird. The bad NIC does sound like a neat theory.

I once had a problem with weird network slow downs in a small environment. Seemed to be one of the workstations net cable was too close to the power cable. I'm still not sure on that one, but seemed to fix the problem.
Maybe a cable is bent or damaged... good luck.

 

[tpcs]

I have an NT4 server which does this at random intervals. It was totally stable for 2 years, then began freezing about 5 months ago - it has kocked up about 5 times now. There is no blue screen, just a freeze.

I have replaced the NIC (upgraded to Gigabit while I was at it) but no change.

Upon reflection, the only thing that changed was the installation of a replacement UPS. This was a new unit, but not fully online double conversion like the previous one due to customer poor finances. The monitoring software reveals nothing, neither does the NT log.

I had an NT Workstation PC which was doing the same, but fortunately it was 3 or 4 times a day - a replacement power supply solved the problem with immediately identifiable results.

So I think it might be worth checking this aspect - do you have a UPS? Do you have a bad UPS, do you have a bad power supply.