Serious Server 2012 R2 issues

ShivP

ShivP

ShivP

Soldato
Soldato
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26 Oct 2013
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Leicester
Hi all
I am having some serious issues with a 2012 R2 server at my dad's business
It is effectively a desktop PC running server 2012. It has a RAID 1TB x 2 hard drive setup, boot SSD etc

Recently (since a windows update it seems like), it has taken to randomly "crashing" but it seems still running the OS in the background without displaying anything on screen. It will work normally 24 hours after a reboot, then randomly stop functioning. HOWEVER, the logmein hamachi basic VPN we use still works, and the local PCs can still access the files.
Also, the windows server dashboard shows no users anymore or no computers, it just seems to have wiped itself. but the local PCs can log in etc as normal

The only thjing I can think of is the old RAID setup where 1 drive has given up. This happens on desktops I guess if a drive is failing and interrupts the rest of the OS, but could this be the issue?
The drives are quite old now.

Thanks
 
ShivP said:
Hi all
I am having some serious issues with a 2012 R2 server at my dad's business
It is effectively a desktop PC running server 2012. It has a RAID 1TB x 2 hard drive setup, boot SSD etc

Recently (since a windows update it seems like), it has taken to randomly "crashing" but it seems still running the OS in the background without displaying anything on screen. It will work normally 24 hours after a reboot, then randomly stop functioning. HOWEVER, the logmein hamachi basic VPN we use still works, and the local PCs can still access the files.
Also, the windows server dashboard shows no users anymore or no computers, it just seems to have wiped itself. but the local PCs can log in etc as normal

The only thjing I can think of is the old RAID setup where 1 drive has given up. This happens on desktops I guess if a drive is failing and interrupts the rest of the OS, but could this be the issue?
The drives are quite old now.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Look in event viewer and find out. In event viewer filter system logs for warnings, errors and critical and see whats happening. Disk errors for failing disks normally flag error 51 in this log.

Control panel > admin tools > event viewer.

Expand windows logs on the left, click system logs and let it populate (will take a while). Then over the right filter current logs, hit the 3 checkboxes on Warning, Error and Critical and hit ok. have a little browse through and you should get a good idea on the issue.
 
Vince said:
Look in event viewer and find out. In event viewer filter system logs for warnings, errors and critical and see whats happening. Disk errors for failing disks normally flag error 51 in this log.

Control panel > admin tools > event viewer.

Expand windows logs on the left, click system logs and let it populate (will take a while). Then over the right filter current logs, hit the 3 checkboxes on Warning, Error and Critical and hit ok. have a little browse through and you should get a good idea on the issue.
Click to expand...
So strange the only thing showing is a critical kernel-power for clena shut down. Has not helped me with this error at all
 
Yeah I am going to pull the raid out right now and see what happens. Only a backup drive anyhow
 
If it's RAID1 (mirroring) via hardware, then it should pause on bootup to say one of the drives has failed, but it will continue to boot from the healthy drive. Not sure what it'd do with software RAID (I always use a RAID Host Bus Adaptor usually with hot-plug drives). You could try identifying the faulty drive and remove it, but I'd surprised if that was causing the display issues. I would probably try reinstalling the graphics driver to fix the screen issue.

Try this for the dashboard (from googling):

"Please open Dashboard, click Help (in the upper-right corner) and select Safe mode settings. When Safe Mode Settings panel appear, please check if Computers and Users Built-in Add-ins were disabled. If disabled, please enable and monitor the result."

If you can still see the user accounts in "Active Directory Users and Computers" then I would put the effort into replacing it. Also, note they've removed all of the dashboard and wizards from Windows Server 2019 Essentials. They've even removed the useful Office365 password synch add-on that mapped your user accounts to Office365 mailboxes and sent the password changes.
 
Okay, so the RAID was a hardware RAID through Gigabyte BIOS. It was not the boot drive, that is an SSD
The RAID was defective, there was an error at bootup, so I pulled the RAID drives and everything is back to normal. So strange how a single defective drive can cause so many issues.
Anyway, all seems good just need to remap and replace the data that was on those drives
 
Well it has gone back to playing funny again... WTF
No active user accounts, no storage no devices
 
I wonder if Windows is on the SSD, it isn't set up as RAID and has a fault. You could try cloning it to another SSD using Reflect. The boot, Windows and any data should all be on RAID if it's to be fault tolerant though (as well as having backups to something you can take off-site).
 
Software raid can be a pain when it goes wrong (though I use the same on my Nas). For a home built server (and as 2012 pretty old now), I'd recommend a raid card with decent cache. The last one I made with LSI 9260 from memory.
If getting a branded dell - make sure you get 700 (710, 720, 730, etc) series raid card (not h200/h300 etc which are worse than software raid in performance as no onboard cache...)
 
if no desktop is displayed then the explorer process has crashed. to fix this

press CTRL+ALT+DEL then select Task Manager

In Task Manager click File - Run New Task and type in explorer.exe

This will fire up the desktop

what Updates have you applied ?
 
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