Windows Server 2003 SP2 TS Freezing

Question

I have a Server 2003 SP2 acting as a Terminal Server for about 10 users. The system ran fine for about 2 weeks before we put in a SCSI card and tape backup.

The connected users will just have their desktop freeze, but will stay connected. When I go back to the physical server, the normal desktop is showing, but the mouse/keyboard will not work. Ctrl Alt Del doesn't bring anything up. The power button must be held to power the server off. There is never a blue screen with a stop code.

The server is rebooted every morning before the users all log in. The software running is an insurance management system, Office 2003, IE and Chrome. All of the software was running on the previous box with no lockups, it was just slow. The new hardware is a Core2Quad Q8200 with 4GB of memory. I'll run memtest+ to rule out the memory being an issue.

There is nothing in the event viewer logs. The application log doesn't show anything until the system is rebooted. The system log doesn't show anything out of the ordinary either.

Is there any other logging I can turn on?

Answer 1

The symptoms you describe (in particular the lack of movement of the mouse pointer) sound like a hardware problem in the server computer based on my experience.

Is this a name-brand machine? You probably have some hardware fault logging if it is. If it's a "white box" then you're probably on your own.

If you can schedule some downtime I'd recommend running a memory test for at least 24 hours. I'd also consider removing the SCSI card as well and seeing how it acts. You may be lucky and just have a conflict with the SCSI controller. If you have bad luck you may have actually damaged the machine when installing the SCSI card (electrostatic discharge, etc).