Strange Intermittent Connectivity to windows 2000 server

[Kenneth Bailey]

Background
New windows 2000 server, Proliant ML 350 1gb Ram
Active Directory, single site, single DC
Terminal services
10/100 switched network
2 windows 98 pc's
4 windows 2000 pc's
3 windows xp laptops

All computers have domain accounts.
No users are logginf into the domain.

DCDIAG and netdiag show no errors.
No errors in the event viewer
No users are currently using this server for anything other than DNS,
WINS and DHCP

My plans are to host 1 application, an oracle app, from this server.
App is installed and running fine. App was installed by the devolper.

The problem I am having is this. If I try to login to Terminal
services on the local network I am refused connection. Error is Server
is busy please try again later.

If I try to ping the server it times out. If I try to ping my
workstation from the server, it times out.

If I release and renew my IP address on the workstation I can get in
and function perfectly. If I remain connected to the server it will
work all day.

If I log out and set for 10-20 minutes without passing traffic to this
server the problem arrises again.

This problem can be replicated on every PC on the network.

The exception to the issue is remote connectivity. If I connect to
this terminal server from my house via broadband, through my PIX
firewall it is available everytime.

I have tried....
Loading all patches and updates including drivers.
Re-crimped all network ends and certified them using a penta-scanner
(third party)
Replaced the switch


Is this an Active Directory issue? The only thing I haven't done is to
remove AD.

 

[Dan Sime]

Hi
Certainly a strange one. A company that I was working
with in the past had very similar problems. I was
working with a school, just after the roll-out of a whole
load of new PCs. some of the PCs were running Win XP and
the rest were running Win 2K.
At the start of each lesson, the students would logon,
then turn their attention to the teacher to set the work
for the lesson. By the time the students turned back to
the PCs, the PCs had dropped the network connections.

This turned out to be the network cards going to sleep
(power-saving), and not actually waking up as the cards
didn't support power-saving.

Within the properties of a network connection,
clicking 'configure' for the network card, shows a series
of tabs. One of the tabs is 'power-management'. You can
disable the power-management for that card.

This may not be the answer to your prob, but well worth a
look!!
Hope it is of some help!.

Dan

 

[Kenneth Bailey]

Dan,

Thanks, but that is not the issue. I probably should hoave noted in my
original post that when this happens to a client, he/she is able to
access anything else on the network. It is only this server that
"drops" off.