TS Frozen but not Crashed Servers

[jwgoerlich]

I am troubleshooting Win2000 servers that periodically become frozen
and unresponsive. On the console, you can see the blue Windows
background in the shell and the mouse cursor works, but neither
Explorer nor the Gina appear.

You can still ping the server's NIC and there are no errors on the
Ethernet switch. However, any open RDP sessions hang. All network
services to the frozen server cease; incl. file sharing, web, and any
RPC or WMI calls. The server is, for all practical purposes, down.

A server in this frozen state never recovers. Nor does it blue screen.
Cycling power is the only way to get the server to work again. The
Event logs do not show anything other than the unexpected shutdown
(6008). There never any other errors or warnings in the Application or
System log.

Any ideas on how I can troubleshoot this? I would suspect hardware if
it were not happening on several different servers. Is there a way to
debug the system beyond the event log, to get a better picture of what
is running when the server freezes up?

The environment: Win2000 AS SP4
Thanks in advance,

J Wolfgang Goerlich

 

[Sundaram Narayanan[MSFT]]

I am assuming you are logged on to the console when you notice the
background in blue.

1. Does ctr+alt_del get processed?
2. If you hit ctrl+shift+esc does task manager come up?
3. If it comes up is any process consuming an undue amount of CPU?

 

[jwgoerlich]

Thank you for the response.

1. Does ctr+alt_del get processed?

If Ctrl-Alt-Del is pressed while logged on at the console, Explorer
disappears but the Taskman does not come up. If Ctrl-Alt-Del is pressed
at the console while not logged on, nothing occurs.

2. If you hit ctrl+shift+esc does task manager come up?
No.

3. If it comes up is any process consuming an undue amount o­f CPU?

Taskman does not come up. We are, however, monitoring CPU using IP
Monitor and CA Unicenter. Neither product shows any spike in CPU or
memory utilization prior to the computer freezing.
J Wolfgang Goerlich