A Very Sick W2K Server

[Guest]

On Monday my DC crashed at the office (W2K Server, s.p. 4). It blue screened
while attempting to make an ERD for the another server I manage. This had the
effect of going through part of my server's OS like a mix-master. I'd LOVE to
blame Symantec for this but it may very well be that Symantec Corporate
Antivirus v. 10 may be just as much a victim in this little scenario as W2K
Server is so right now I'm just going to chalk it up to a hardware failure
with my floppy drive and leave it at that.

Yesterday I tried to perform a repair installation with a W2K OS disk that
had service pack 3 on it. The first round took about 30 minutes to inspect my
drive then another 30 minutes to scan the drive and then it told me to
reboot. I think it indicated that it had fixed some things also. It didn't
say reboot to the desktop so I rebooted to the CD and went back to the repair
function and did another Fast Repair. This time it took over an hour plus to
get through the inspecting and scanning and then began checking all of my
system files but never asked me to replace any of them .... UNTIL ... it said
that a repair was not possible on this drive and told me to hit F3 and get
out. (This was NOT the CD I used to originally install W2K Server. The
original CD had no service packs on it. Since the OS had s.p. 4 on it I
thought an install CD with the closest thing to my original OS would be
best.) So, with no other place to go I rebooted to see if anything would come
up at all and it DID, eventually, get back to a login prompt and then, after
another 15 to 20 minutes, the desktop. It seemed to work a bit better also.

The last thing I did, however, was to attempt to re-apply service pack 4 in
the belief that it would replace any possibly bad files left over but after
leaving it alone for well over three hours (It's an dual 800Mhz Dell box so
you've got to give it time) I came back to find that it never got beyond the
window that said "Inspecting your system" so I closed the s.p. update.

Looking farther into this problem I find that Windows Installer is not
starting due to RPC, which it depends on, not being up and I can not Start
the RPC service (I'm currently looking at article 838428 in Microsoft's KB).
Has anyone had any experience in restoring the RPC service or do I need to
follow the thread of dependencies farther back down the line? When I looked
at the dependencies tab on RPC it didn't list anything except what depended
on RPC. Without Windows Installer I can't uninstall Symantec CAV which could
quite possibly release the server from a host of problems.

Unfortunately, this morning the server will not boot to the desktop even
though I can bring up Task Manager AND my workstation can log in and view the
files on its two mapped drives on the server. Safe Mode is my next avenue of
attack on this but if anyone could give me some suggestions on how otherwise
to proceed I'm all ears.

Thanks in advance.

 

[George Hester]

You blue-screened making an ERD? Hmph. Did you ever have an indication prior to this that things weren't right? What did the Event Viewer say about the crash? Were you able to jot down the first line of data in the blue-screen? Immediately after the blue screen and a reboot what happened next assuming that is what you tried to do after the blue-screen?

 

[Guest]

I wish I could say. I was already shell-shocked from the other server
failure. It had something to do with inaccessable device or hardware
failure. I rarely use the floppy disk in this server - and no prior
indication that it had a problem - so this was a huge surprise. All the EV
says is that the prior shutdown was unexpected. Bringing the server back up
it was obvious that something was pretty wrong inside.

So far things have come back somewhat. I still can't install or uninstall
anything even though I've got my Windows Insaller service back. Thinking of
doing an upgrade to W2K3 when I get Symantec uninstalled.

Thanks.

 

[Torgeir Bakken \(MVP\)]

I wish I could say. I was already shell-shocked from the other server
failure. It had something to do with inaccessable device or hardware
failure. I rarely use the floppy disk in this server - and no prior
indication that it had a problem - so this was a huge surprise. All the EV
says is that the prior shutdown was unexpected. Bringing the server back up
it was obvious that something was pretty wrong inside.

So far things have come back somewhat. I still can't install or uninstall
anything even though I've got my Windows Insaller service back. Thinking of
doing an upgrade to W2K3 when I get Symantec uninstalled.

Hi,

You haven't by any chance PowerChute 6.x UPS software (APC) installed
on the computer?

If so, upgrade it to v7 or uninstall it.


PowerChute 6.x cases a lot of issues, mich more than what is described
here:

PowerChute Business Edition - Customers Using 6.x Must Upgrade to 7.x
due to Java Runtime Environment expiration
http://nam-en.apc.com/cgi-bin/nam_en.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=7202

 

[Guest]

It's the P.S. Business Ed. Server but it doesn't give a version number. It
is pretty old and I can't get into it right now. Uninstalling is also not an
option until I get that fixed, too.

Thanks.

 

[Torgeir Bakken \(MVP\)]

It's the P.S. Business Ed. Server but it doesn't give a version
number. It is pretty old and I can't get into it right now.
Uninstalling is also not an option until I get that fixed, too.

Hi,

Please try this to disable the PowerChute service:

Start Regedit.exe

Locate the key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\APCPBESERVER
Set the "Start" value to 4 (means disabled)

Locate the key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\APCPBEAGENT
Set the "Start" value to 4 (means disabled)

Reboot the computer.

 

[Guest]

I tried disabling it in Services but the Power Chute service window froze and
had to be closed out with Task Manager. I'll try the registry editing
possibly tonight when everyone's out in case I have to do some recovery work.

What would anyone's opinion be about upgrading to W2K3 at this point? Would
there be any substantial risk of carrying over any of this corruption? How
about DNS and DHCP, do these usually upgrade successfully, in tact?

Thanks.

 

[Enkidu]

What would anyone's opinion be about upgrading to W2K3 at
this point? Would there be any substantial risk of
carrying over any of this corruption? How about DNS and
DHCP, do these usually upgrade successfully, intact?

In my opinion it would be a bad idea to upgrade to try to
solve a problem. It rarely works. In fact, it probably
*never* works.

Cheers,

Cliff

 

[George Hester]

More than never but is usually what is done by inexperienced users so is
understandable.