Workstations can't access files on The Server for few minutes

[PEB]

Hi everybbody,

After reinstalling our Windows 2003 Server and correcting the dammages provoqued by the alimentation box, now the other problem that appears is the follow:

The Server works normally, however time to time when a user from the workstation tries to open a file on the server or a folder he have to wait nearly 1 or 2 minutes to achieve this operation!

On the server everything seems normal! There isn't reportings for errors and warning messages! The files are accessed in this time normally from the server but there is something that doesn't work!

Any help will greatly appreciated!

Vladimir

[sashi]

Hi Vladi,

This is sometimes caused by orphan / lost packets circulating within your network, the best method to handle this problem will be shutting down the entire network for atleast 5 to 10 minutes.

Reset all the attached hubs / switches, network access should be back to normal shortly, good luck & take care my fren.. )

Btw, is the server taking to much of resources? In another words, is the server using to much of memory & what's the CPU usage state?

[Cyberdyne]

1 to 2 minutes is way too long and your users are probably going crazy, I agree with sashi about powering down the server and all the hubs/firewalls. I also agree about the resources, although you would notice that right away by logging on to the server. I had a similar problem at my office, what I did to fix it was install a dual port network card by intel, so now I have a theoretical 400 mbits per second connection and verything is fast. Another thing is the server setup, are you running dhcp and proxy on the server or is your firewall/router taking care of dhcp or is it all static? let me know and we can figure this problem out.

Best luck, Cyberdyne.

[PEB]

Thank you my friends,

Thank you for you help! In fact there is a router but the Dhcp is desactivated on it! It's managed by the Server.

I've tried to shut down all the network for few minutes... Unfortunatelly the problem persists!

I've tried to change the LAN Card but there no result!

It's strange coz when I acceed to the server using \\Server\D it's more often that the Server doesn't respond!

But When \\Server\D is mapped as Network drive it works better and don't respond less frequently!

But today I'm really in serch of new Server!

CyberDyne I'll consider Your advice about motherboard!

Tank you a lot my friends for your support!

It's very kind to know that you have a friends!

Thank you!

:)

[anaphaxeon]

If all other stations are working fine, try changing the port on the switch, this is almost a textbook example of a faulty port on a switch.

Try changing the port that workstations cable is plugged into. If this works, then try plugging another workstation into that suspected faulty port. If that workstation suffers the same problem, pray that your switch is under warranty. It will have to be replaced. If this doesn't fix the problem, there could be a couple of other problems.

But before we go too far, an easy way to test the workstation is to simply plug that workstation's cable into another machine. If that machine works fine, then obviously the old machine is faulty.

Now let's say we've switched another machine to use the suspected faulty port, and it works fine. Let's also say we've tested the faulty workstation from another location and it worked fine as well. This could mean that the cable itself is either faulty or suffering from massive EMR. Before replacing the cable check to make sure that no EMR emitting machines are near the cable. (I've never seen any EMR do this to a cable but...)The EMR could be messing with the signals in the cable. But because EMR is an unlikely cause, and we've already been through every other hoop, everything works fine except in that particular spot. Then we have to replace the cable.

I hope this helps, it seems a hardware issue to me, and restarting all of your gear is only going to be nightmare. I'll bet it's a faulty port on a switch though!

[anaphaxeon]

I guess one other thing to look at is make sure certain file system features, like indexing are turned off. This would also cause this problem. If it's only every once and a while, indexing could be causing your disk idle time to drop to 0. Thus causing IO requests to take forever.

[bgagnon]

You could try patching yourself directly to the server with a crossover cable directly from your laptop for example, server. See if the response is still very slow. With that, you can eliminate any switch/router issues created by the rebuild.

Also, did you rebuild the server from scratch or, did you just reinstall over, repairing in the process?

Would speed/duplex settings be involved? I've seen comm issues with a switch set to 100MB/Full duplex and a servers nic set to auto negotiate.

There was something else but it's late on Friday and I'm running out of steam...

[bgagnon]

Oh yeah...

After rebuild, did you reinstall any service packs as well? Perhaps a reinstall of a service pack over a repaired install would help?

[bgagnon]

I swear, I'm not padding my stats here...

I've seen issues with Dell servers with their Raid controllers after a reinstall. An issue with memory caching on the raid card can cause performance issues like this... Possibly in the process of doing the rebuild, you ended up with an earlier rev driver for your raid controller???

[Cyberdyne]

This topic is Hot because there are so many things involved in the equation. If you replace the hardware it will be one less thing to worry about and it could possibly solve the problem right away. So the question is what kind of motherboard are you going to get? And second I really like the idea of testing the server with the crossover cable or maybe a different switch/router whatever is readily available.

Lets see what happens -=Cyberdyne=-

[PEB]

Hi boys,

It's strange but this week i'ven't done anything! And the blocking is stoped! Without intervention! Really I can't explain it!

The next week I'm curious to see what will heapan!

Thanks for your suggestions... If problems I'll apply all of them....

Best regards!

[welchja]

i've ran into this problem and found out that the DNS on the server wasn't working properly. once I reconfigured my DNS it fixed my issue.

Hi boys,

It's strange but this week i'ven't done anything! And the blocking is stoped! Without intervention! Really I can't explain it!

The next week I'm curious to see what will heapan!

Thanks for your suggestions... If problems I'll apply all of them....

Best regards!