WINS Corrupted Database Blues

[buddycwll]

Hi,

Where I work we have many WINS servers which are all mainly Windows
2000 Server with a few 2003 Server. One WINS Server which is running on
Windows 2000 Server has proved a right pain with its WINS database
since it was installed in place a year ago. On 4 occasions it's
reported the same corruption error which has led us to do a re-install
of WINS followed by a pull from our 'Mother' WINS server so that its
database is quickly up-to-date.

For the 5th time the same corruption error has occurred and I'm at a
loss as to what I can do. Another re-install of WINS is obviously not
going to fix this problem anymore. Have also done a CHKDSK and full
virus scan but found nothing wrong.

This has to be resolved at some point as the event logs are unusable
with tens of WINS errors flooding the list.

The errors in the Application log always say:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: ESENT
Event Category: Database Page Cache
Event ID: 404
Date: 08/07/2005
Time: 16:38:22
User: N/A
Description:
wins (1276) Synchronous read page checksum error -1018 ((1:178 1:178)
(0-1490588) (0-4382994)) occurred. Please restore the databases from a
previous backup.

Whereas the errors in the system log always say:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Wins
Event Category: None
Event ID: 4224
Date: 08/07/2005
Time: 16:38:21
User: N/A
Description:
WINS encountered a database error. This may or may not be a serious
error. WINS will try to recover from it. You can check the database
error events under 'Application Log' category of the Event Viewer for
the Exchange Component, ESENT, source to find out more details about
database errors. If you continue to see a large number of these errors
consistently over time (a span of few hours), you may want to restore
the WINS database from a backup. The error number is in the second
DWORD of the data section.

Data:
0000: 18 0c 00 00 06 fc ff ff .....üÿÿ

AND THIS:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Wins
Event Category: None
Event ID: 4260
Date: 08/07/2005
Time: 16:38:21
User: N/A
Description:
WINS received an error while registering replicas. It will not register
any additional replicas of this WINS at this time (the address is in
the data section 4th-8th byte). Check a previous log entry to
determine the reason for this. If you get the same error during
subsequent replication with the above partner WINS, you may want to
restore the WINS database from the backup.

Data:
0000: d2 10 00 00 02 4f a3 8d Ò....O£


I have noticed that the 4260 and 4224 errors always occur every half
hour when replication occurs and that they come in groups of 3. Working
out the IP address from the data provided in the 4260 error I can see
that the same 3 IP addresses are causing the problems.

All our other WINS servers are working fine.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what can be done next to remedy
this problem? What can I do with the 3 IP addresses that it appears to
have problems with?

Any ideas appreciated.

Thanks,
Stephen.

 

[Steve Duff [MVP]]

If you are getting this frequently on one machine, it is a sign of a problem with the disk subsystem. (I'm assuming there are no
other evident signs of hardware malfunction on this server, if so you have to address that first.)

You should disable write caching on your disk or RAID controller, and you might want to arrange the shutdown to manually stop the
WINS service at the beginning of a server shutdown. I would suggest running a full disk diagnostic (chkdsk doesn't do this), and a
memory test as well if you can arrange to take the server offline.

If you don't have a diagnostic for your specific subsystem, create a large .zip file and use a batch script to move it around over
and over -- several hours of this is recommended. When it completes, do a 'test' operation on the zip to be sure the checksum is
still valid, if not you know where the problem lies. You can use the freeware "memtest86" to check memory offline.

You shouldn't need to do a complete reinstall of WINS just to restore a corrupt database. It keeps automatic backups which you can
save/restore from the MMC snap-in pretty easily.

Steve Duff, MCSE, MVP
Ergodic Systems, Inc.

Hi,

Where I work we have many WINS servers which are all mainly Windows
2000 Server with a few 2003 Server. One WINS Server which is running on
Windows 2000 Server has proved a right pain with its WINS database
since it was installed in place a year ago. On 4 occasions it's
reported the same corruption error which has led us to do a re-install
of WINS followed by a pull from our 'Mother' WINS server so that its
database is quickly up-to-date.

For the 5th time the same corruption error has occurred and I'm at a
loss as to what I can do. Another re-install of WINS is obviously not
going to fix this problem anymore. Have also done a CHKDSK and full
virus scan but found nothing wrong.

This has to be resolved at some point as the event logs are unusable
with tens of WINS errors flooding the list.

The errors in the Application log always say:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: ESENT
Event Category: Database Page Cache
Event ID: 404
Date: 08/07/2005
Time: 16:38:22
User: N/A
Description:
wins (1276) Synchronous read page checksum error -1018 ((1:178 1:178)
(0-1490588) (0-4382994)) occurred. Please restore the databases from a
previous backup.

Whereas the errors in the system log always say:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Wins
Event Category: None
Event ID: 4224
Date: 08/07/2005
Time: 16:38:21
User: N/A
Description:
WINS encountered a database error. This may or may not be a serious
error. WINS will try to recover from it. You can check the database
error events under 'Application Log' category of the Event Viewer for
the Exchange Component, ESENT, source to find out more details about
database errors. If you continue to see a large number of these errors
consistently over time (a span of few hours), you may want to restore
the WINS database from a backup. The error number is in the second
DWORD of the data section.

Data:
0000: 18 0c 00 00 06 fc ff ff .....üÿÿ

AND THIS:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Wins
Event Category: None
Event ID: 4260
Date: 08/07/2005
Time: 16:38:21
User: N/A
Description:
WINS received an error while registering replicas. It will not register
any additional replicas of this WINS at this time (the address is in
the data section 4th-8th byte). Check a previous log entry to
determine the reason for this. If you get the same error during
subsequent replication with the above partner WINS, you may want to
restore the WINS database from the backup.

Data:
0000: d2 10 00 00 02 4f a3 8d Ò....O£


I have noticed that the 4260 and 4224 errors always occur every half
hour when replication occurs and that they come in groups of 3. Working
out the IP address from the data provided in the 4260 error I can see
that the same 3 IP addresses are causing the problems.

All our other WINS servers are working fine.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what can be done next to remedy
this problem? What can I do with the 3 IP addresses that it appears to
have problems with?

Any ideas appreciated.

Thanks,
Stephen.