Global catalog and domain controller login problems...

[Mike Farren]

I have 2 domain controllers, one with Exchange 2000 and both running
W2K Standard SP4. They have been running about 3 years now and have
had no problems. This week, the global catalog seems to have locked
up twice. Just a few days ago, the GC box began taking 10 minutes to
log into, and the other DC and 4 other servers log in fine under the
same ID. Also when this happens, you cannot log into the GC box at
all, unless by remote desktop, which works all the time. Nothing
shows in the error logs except MrxSMB Event ID 3019 about three times
and then a few minutes later we end up restarting everything. After
reboot it is Ok for a few days. Any help would be greatly
appreciated!!!

 

[Mike Crabtree]

Could be a problem with the network card and/or driver...

Did these get updated recently by any chance?

Mike Crabtree MVP

 

[Mike Farren]

That is my thought also, I'm going to schedule some downtime this weekend
and install a new driver. The driver hasn't been updated, but Windows
Updates have been applied, so something may have changed. I'll keep you
posted. Thanks

 

[Mike Crabtree]

Hopefully that will fix it. KB's only refer to that error with the loopback
adapter - I'd guess registry corruption for the NIC driver could cause similar
- so installing a new driver should fix that - but for that sort of problem
I'd expect it not to work at all....

A few other things that might be worth considering in the meantime:

Presumably PINGs work all the time?

What about Netstat -a when the problem occurs?

Network monitor and packet tracing?

I'm thinking maybe something on the network is managing some sort of DoS
attack - or along similar lines, I was working on some systems with DC's
linked over VPN's which were regularly maxed out (so presumably lots of lost
packets) and a couple of DC's seemed to fail to respond to RPC but were OK on
TS and PING until rebooted.

Mike Crabtree MVP

 

[Mike Farren]

Nothing unusual in netstat or network traffic. The really odd thing about
this is the only slow login is at the DC console itself. All other boxes on
the network log in as expected including the other DC. The primary with the
slow login is also the GC and FSMO and have always been that way.

 

[Mike Farren]

OK, did a lot of DCDIAGing and NETDIAGing last night and am rid of all
errors in either. The slow logon to the global catalog box is still there.
I haven't gotten the new drivers on yet for the network card, but plan to
tomorrow night. The slow logon happens with any ID I use to sign onto the
GC server.

 

[slytsi4]

Try restarting netlogon, does that fix the problem?

Also, check the domain DNS settings and make sure that the GC appear
under _msdcs / gc .


-
slytsi

 

[Mike Farren]

Restarting netlogon had no effect. There is an alias for both DCs under
_msdcs, but the only entry in the GC folder is a host record for the GC
server. Under _msdcs -> gc I have _sites and _tcp as well as (same as
parent folder) Host and it's IP.
Thanks