Weird unexplained error

[Kineas]

Came into school today to discover that none of the computers could access anything on the network. Had a quick look to discover that none of them had been assigned an IP address from DHCP. Had a look at the DC, which was turned on, but had some weird graphical glitches on the logon screen. When tying in the username and password box, the cursor moved across but I couldn't see any text. Tried logging in anyway but it kept bringing me back to the logon screen with the same issue. I decided to force the server to restart. It booted up, did a CHKDSK which was fine and then booted up fine and everything is now working.

 

I've had a look in the Event Viewer but I can't see anything that stands out and I'm not too sure what to Google for this.

[Sunny87]

Came into school today to discover that none of the computers could access anything on the network. Had a quick look to discover that none of them had been assigned an IP address from DHCP. Had a look at the DC, which was turned on, but had some weird graphical glitches on the logon screen. When tying in the username and password box, the cursor moved across but I couldn't see any text. Tried logging in anyway but it kept bringing me back to the logon screen with the same issue. I decided to force the server to restart. It booted up, did a CHKDSK which was fine and then booted up fine and everything is now working.

 

I've had a look in the Event Viewer but I can't see anything that stands out and I'm not too sure what to Google for this.

 

I once had this issue on a 2003 server a long time back, I believe it was a driver crash on the graphics or some hardware fault, it was so long back I can't remember but look into the GPU driver on the server more often than not their never installed when they should be but 2008 should do this, is this a RM2008R2 CC4 server?

[Kineas]

Thanks for that, I have downloaded the driver and waiting until the end of the day to restart the server.

 

I did a little more digging and something did turn up in the Event Viewer. There is an error with event ID 2020 occurring every minute over a period of 24 hours over the weekend leading up to yesterday morning. I've had a quick Google and found a hot fix for this but it's for Server 2003, but I'm running Server 2008. I also had a look and what this error means, and it may be affecting the graphics driver when it occurs.

[Kineas]

Just another update for anyone with a similar problem. I found somewhere online that spoke about running processes and handles. If a process is using more than 5000 handles to investigate it. I found there was some Yahoo Search software installed, for some reason, and was using 15000 handles. I've uninstalled this and I'll continue to monitor the server.