Solution+Problem: Very slow start-up

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bloke at the pennine puddle
  • Start date Start date
B

Bloke at the pennine puddle

I was did think of sending the following problem, if which I am
anyway, but I selved it so here is a change. A post with a problem
and a solution.

I cured the problem by, for the primary LAN adapter, moving TCP/IP to
the top of the protocol binding lists and ensured that File and
Printer sharing was enabled for all protocols.

Now everything starts fine with Windows 2000 advanced server, service
pack 4, and a few recommended tweaks to get other things working that
service pack 4 broke.

-!----------------------------------!-
The problem was......

Here is an issue someone might be able to help me with.

For testing purposed I have installed Windows 2000 Advanced server on
a low powered box. Remember, this is for testing purposes. It's not
a production server, but a server for development work where I need a
reasonable/acceptable response on a slow server.

Stats:
512Mb PC100 SDRAM.
Pentium 3 - 450MHz
Two hard disks operating at UDMA2.
One 10Mbit 16 bit ISA network adapter.
One 10/100Mbit PCI adapter.

Deliberatly, it's got Exchange 2000 server and SQL 2000 server on the
same box. It all fits in 512Mb of RAM with quite some space to spare
so the virtual memory file is not being hit.

REMEMBER, IT'S FOR DEVELOPMENT PURPOSES! I'M AWARE HOW LONG IT TOOK
TO START-UP. IT TOOK A WHILE. I'm aware of this. Just needed to
stress this point before you all think: "Wot! 450MHz? Is he mad?"

It used to start-up fine. Took about 5 minutes.

It's been patched to service pack 4 and all critical patches.

Now to the issue.....

Now when it starts it goes through the usual stuff. Stays at the
`Preparing network connections` for about a three minutes, which is
expected as this duration has not changed. `MUP is initialising`
appears appears for about 5 seconds, as expected, and here is where
it's interesting.

Active Directory usually took about a minute or two to start. Now it
takes 8 minutes to start with the start-up status message on the
screen reading `Active Directory is starting`, not seconds after this
message all the network services are functional. I can actually
connect to a network share on this server, view the event logs (from
another computer) way before I get the Ctrl-Alt-Delete Prompt.

The DNS server is operating exactly as expected.

All services that start-up automatically have started.

During the time that Active Directory is shown as starting, and after,
nothing unusual is indicated within any of the event logs.
 
Back
Top