All Connections To DC Lost... But DC is still up

[Avlan]

Hi,

I have a very odd problem that occured 2 or 3 times now over the past 6
weeks but (apparently) totally at random: All of a sudden all (as far
as I know) computers lose connection with the DC. The networkshares
appear empty, trying to connect manually to a share also fails ("can't
connect" etc) and a warning balloon appears on clients stating the
connection to the DC is lost, but you can work off-line. My remote
desktop connection to the DC, however, remains online.

No entry whatsoever in the eventvwr (only an IIS-htm-help-file-error at
about that same time). A reboot of the server helps, but the progress
bar when starting windows remains on 3/4 awfully long.

DC is windows 2000 server, clients are windows 2000 pro.

The environment was set up by other people who were pretty sloppy on a
number of counts (they have left NO documentation of anything
whatsoever), and I'm not the most experienced sysadmin ever, so I'm a
bit worried about all this. It just seems illogical, but SOMETHING has
to cause this.

What could cause a sudden drop of all client connections of a DC?
Freely thinking, could it be something with licenses, or DNS-cache?
Anything else?

 

[Richard G. Harper]

Could it be a physical problem with the network connection to the DC? Bad
switch or switch port, bad cable, bad network card?

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Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User] (e-mail address removed)
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[Avlan]

I did think of that yeah, but I discarded those options since a reboot
from the server solves the problem... Maybe the NIC in the server, but
in that case a ping would have to show some anomalies too, which it
doesn't...