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A customer has a Windows Server 2008 r2 virtual machine running on a VMWare host (5.1). They are having intermittent (1 or 2 times a month) issues where my network application becomes unresponsive. When the site admin tries to remote desktop into the VM, it fails. When she tried accessing through VSphere's console, it gave her a login window, took her username/password, and returned her to the login screen without any error messages. This seems like a clue as to what is locking up the VM, but I'm not sure what it means.

It seems like at least one subsystem is still working, but maybe not some other one.

From the VSphere usage logs, there are no spikes in memory or CPU usage.

Any suggestions as to what the "clue" might mean? Which Windows systems are working and which aren't? How should we figure out what's going on? (Tools/strategies/etc) Thanks for your help.

EDIT: One bit that I forgot is that once she resets the VM in VSphere, the VM operates normally. I'll see if she remembers what the RDP error was or if it even gave one.

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  • Does the RDP session time out or error? What's the error?
    – Nathan C
    Jul 18, 2014 at 18:32
  • Is this by chance immediately after rebooting the server or trying to reconnect to a hung session? Jul 28, 2014 at 19:35
  • The RDP connection fails when the session (and my application) are unresponsive, presumably hung. The admin could see nothing in the VSphere logs when she looked, but didn't look until later, so might she have missed a spike somewhere? (the VSphere resource tracking resolution reduces over time)
    – MrPhilTX
    Jul 29, 2014 at 20:21
  • From the admin: "When trying a Remote Desktop session it times out. This never happens after a reboot. The frequency varies. I’ve not seen any RDP errors, but will keep an eye out. When the server is experiencing this condition and won’t let me log in, there are times when I am able to gracefully restart the host through Vsphere and other times where that does not work and I have to force the restart."
    – MrPhilTX
    Jul 29, 2014 at 22:54

1 Answer 1

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Start with Event Viewer. If you can't get logged in, as it seems, run eventvwr and connect to the remote machine that way.

Even if you aren't seeing an error when she attempts to login, there is probably one being logged to eventvwr.

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