Windows Server 2008 help

[ricki]

Hi Everyone

 

I am sorry this is a long post but could someone point me in the correct direction.

 

A few months ago we got a company to put in a new domain controller 12 core huge amount of ram with windows 2008 r2 and move all the services and decommission our old primary dc. Then they upgraded the os on one of our other servers to windows 2008. Before the upgrade all the servers ran windows 2003 and we had a slow network with no errors during logon or boot up.

 

They piped a lot of the paths through dfs that they set up.

 

Once we had this done we started to get random windows xp machines and random users getting errors messages saying that Bginfo had not run, winlogon.exe errors, cmd and find errors. We also had some machines reboot part way through loging on.

 

My first though was connection problems to the servers and I have seen things like this when I am starting the network up and all the servers are not up and people insist on logging on?

 

I have had a network wiring company come in and change the backbone round a bit and they claim that's working ok.

 

I have had a look at dns and used nslookup against the dns servers and that appears ok. I have had a look at the dhcp and the settings appear ok and checked the dns settings on the servers nic cards.

 

I have checked replication between the servers and they appear to be replicating.

 

How to I test dfs?

 

Secondly has anyone else had problems like this and have you any advice what to try next.

 

Thanks for all your help.

 

Richard:sick:

[ricki]

HI

 

I have had a look at the server that they upgraded to windows 2008 and have found I am getting a lot of eventid 2012

 

While transmitting or receiving data, the server encountered a network error. Occassional errors are expected, but large amounts of these indicate a possible error in your network configuration. The error status code is contained within the returned data (formatted as Words) and may point you towards the problem.

 

I have also checked replication again today and it appears to be working but takes a few days between replications.

 

Richard

[ricki]

HI

 

I have tried updating the driver on both windows 2008 servers and they both have the latest drivers and its still happening. The strange thing is both servers are coming up with the errors at the same time and that when the client xp machines are getting all sorts of network problems like find, bginfo, winlogon, and on some computers rebooting.

 

I have put a network monitor on both servers and am running them at peak traffic time.

 

What sort of things do I need to look for in the logs.

 

Richard

[themightymrp]

As opposed to updating the drivers, it could be a faulty NIC on one of the servers? To test DFS replication try running the following commands on each of the DFS servers:

 

dcdiag /test:frsevent

dcdiag /test:dfsrevent

dcdiag /test:replications

 

Make sure they come back as successful

[Domino]

Did they demote the old DC properly?

 

can you find refernces to the old one in AD sites and services? or in ADSIedit?

[timzim]

Ignore 2012 errors - many other threads on these but conclusion is they're irrelevant.

 

I got winlogon errors and random rebooting when I upgraded Internet Explorer on clients from IE7 to IE8. Spent many, many hours on it & found plenty of other people with the same problem but was unable find a solution other than to remove IE8, which worked perfectly. Blocked it in WSUS and will wait until IE9 comes out to see if that fixes it. Don't know if this is your problem though?

[pete]

Netdiag is worth running too. So is dfsdiag: What does DFSDiag do? - The Storage Team at Microsoft - File Cabinet Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

 

Is the DFS built using netbios names or fqdn? (They should have picked one and stuck to it, not mixed them).

 

Also, for the slow replication, look here: Top 10 Common Causes of Slow Replication with DFSR - Ask the Directory Services Team - Site Home - TechNet Blogs (it's 2003, but much of it applies).

 

This might be worth a look too: O DFS Shares where art thou

[ricki]

HI

 

Sorry for the slow response I have been busy. The old server was demoted and have run netdiag and dcdiag and have only found that the domain has not been prepared for read only domain controllers.

 

I have been adviced by the manufacture of the server to update the nic cards in the servers but that did not help.

 

We have been looking at the switches and have set spanning tree on all switches and have used network supervisor to look for loops but have not found any but for some reason keep getting network not responding when scanning which is strange. We have done some packet sniffing with wireshark that has lead us to find a few paths in group policy that the contractor has missed and that the dns on a server was set wrong and that a reverse look up was not set correctly and that good. But the situation has not gone. I have been doing a lot of reading and a loop or a broadcast storm can cause all the problems we are having like rebooting machines, gpo not applying, nic cards refusing connection, switches not talking, and the error on the servers, etc.

 

How is the easiest way to identify if it is a broadcast storm and whats causing it.

 

We have had some power problems recently so a dodgy switch or nic card is possible.

 

Thanks for all your help.

 

Richard

[ricki]

HI

 

Has anyone any idea how I fix this. It comes from the dfsdiag tests

 

Starting TestSites...

 

 

 

Validating site associations...

 

 

 

Validating the site associations on every domain controller of the following: hp-dc

 

Warning: The server has IP addresses with conflicting site associations

 

Host name: hp-dc

 

Site: Default-First-Site-Name

 

Domain controller: SOPHOS-SERVER

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Host IP address Subnet-SiteMapping in AD

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

::1 No mapping exists

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Success: The site associated with the following host name is consistent on all accessible domain controllers: hp-dc

 

Finished TestSites.

 

Ip 6 is disabled on the windows 2008 servers.

 

Richard

[contink]

No idea either but I'm suffering from the exact same issue myself and it's only appeared in the last few weeks after various updates...

 

Tried disabling IPv6 and various other things but to no avail... and I suspect this is what's causing regular issues with my PC dropping offline without warning and then showing available again... Driving me spare!