Please help with server lockups

[David]

Hello All,

I am having a strange issue with a Windows 2000 Pro box. We are using this
workstation as a proxy server running the Ositis Winproxy software. The
only other software installed on this box is Symantec Antivirus Corp and
VNC. The problem is once every week or two the box completely locks up.
The only thing that will bring it back is a reboot. Every time it has
happened has been overnight or over the weekend. There is nothing in the
event viewer to explain what happened. The OS is on SP4 and has every
critical hotfix. I am not sure if the problem is hardware or software. The
workstation is a Dell Dimension @ 1Ghz with 256M of RAM. Would anyone know
of a tool that can monitor for crashes and shed a little light to the
situation? Anyone have any ideas on how to troubleshoot this issue? Thanks
for your time.

David

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Hello All,

I am having a strange issue with a Windows 2000 Pro box. We are using this
workstation as a proxy server running the Ositis Winproxy software. The
only other software installed on this box is Symantec Antivirus Corp and
VNC. The problem is once every week or two the box completely locks up.
The only thing that will bring it back is a reboot. Every time it has
happened has been overnight or over the weekend. There is nothing in the
event viewer to explain what happened. The OS is on SP4 and has every
critical hotfix. I am not sure if the problem is hardware or software. The
workstation is a Dell Dimension @ 1Ghz with 256M of RAM. Would anyone know
of a tool that can monitor for crashes and shed a little light to the
situation? Anyone have any ideas on how to troubleshoot this issue? Thanks
for your time.

David

If this was my machine then I would start by keeping track
of the time when the machine locks up. This might give you
a clue about the tasks that are active at that time. If the
machine suffers from a memory leak then the total uptime
would reveal this straight away.

Use the Task Scheduler to run this batch file once every
5 minutes, 24 hours a day:

@echo off
echo %date% %time% >> c:\uptime.txt
uptime.exe >> c:\uptime.txt
echo. >> c:\uptime.txt

 

[David]

Ok all set. What type of results will I see if it is a memory leak? Always
crashing after the same amount of uptime?

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Exactly!

On the other hand, if it always crashes at around the
same time then it's probably a task that runs at that
time.

 

[David]

Great thanks! I made a few modifications to the batch file for anyone who
is interested.

:top
echo %date% %time% >> c:\uptime.txt
uptime.exe >> c:\uptime.txt
tasks.exe >> c:\uptime.txt
echo. >> c:\uptime.txt
wait 300
goto top

I didn't know how to get the task scheduler to run every 5 minutes so I used
a wait exe which waits for the seconds that you specify. I also found a
command line task manager and I'm outputting the current processes and CPU
usage to the log file. I found the freeware task manager at
http://www.beyondlogic.org/solutions/processutil/processutil.htm. I found
wait.exe off google somewhere a long time ago. I think this is a pretty
handy utility for diagnosing random crashes. Anyone know of a command line
utility that displays memory usage?