Windows 2000 Server SP4 issue :(

Dark_Angel · 24 Oct 2007 at 13:41

Hey,

At work we are having issues with a windows 2000 server, which up untill recently has been running flawlessly, indeed we used to snicker as it actual was more rock stable than a windows 2003 small business server, with less errors on the 2000 box when we upgraded BOTH to Exchange.

Now however things seem to have gone horribly wrong

First up, when starting up the server has always been slow (it is a server afterall) But now is taking up to 30 minutes to actually be useable! This wouldn't be so bad but once it actually is up and running various services seem to only "half" load, and wont seem to start properlly. This is compounded by the fact we can not stop quite a number of the services that are causing the issues. The service hangs on shut down.

Running the usual virus checks show nothing really wrong, there was a trojan found on the D: which is not a system drive (obviously) and the trojan was contained in a zip file, so Symantec seems to have isolated and hopefully deleted any of those nasties.

The machine is running windows 2000 SP4, on a 512MB of ram P4. Anyonr have any suggestions? Could it be that windows install is dying? or is it a more easy to remedy fix?

waso_dude · 24 Oct 2007 at 13:50

Server startups are always slow, expeshially, on lower spec/older hardware.

It is even slower once you have services starting up like you do,

Look for anything that can be uninstalled?

If not i think its time to look at getting a new server.

omne · 24 Oct 2007 at 18:24

Whats its free ram like? we had a server at work running sql and it only had 10megs of physical ram left spare after a few hours running.

sidethink · 25 Oct 2007 at 08:55

Have a look in your System and Application event logs and start troubleshooting any errors you see in there.

Google for the Event IDs until you get them cleared up.

Dark_Angel · 25 Oct 2007 at 10:54

It is not a normal server start up being slow problem because the services / programs are crashing or unresponsive after like 2 hours after the system is fully loaded.

Certain services like the back up agents aren't starting up correctly. And then in the services.msc if we try to start OR stop a "service that isn't loading but should be we get an error telling us that we basically cant.

Even launching add and remove programs is a fruitless task sometimes, as it will only load and when it is trying to populate the list it will crash

Looking thru the event logs is even more confusing, as there are a few errors that are popping up but all they are really saying is that the services arent starting like the backup agents, but not really any major critical errors.

We are starting to think the only course of action would be to actually do a repair install at this moment in time, as the system seems to be worse. Safe mode isnt really that much better than regular mode either, which is even more of a concern

Thanks for any help that you can offer on this