Windows Server 2003

Microsoft Server 2003 and Reading Bluescreen Memory Dumps

This week I was on-site at a customers and I had a server as I was watching it blue screen. You know those feelings when this happens but the server came back up OK. So I got to digging and found that this was happening when the server was under a load or doing a shadow copy. So ok what is going on here and I was not really finding anything giving me a clue why. So I dug some more and found the memory.dmp file that the server dumped so ok now what to do. I emailed one of the techs that if anybody had a tool for reading this file he would. Ok his statement was send it to MS it is faster. Now that is fine but they want money so why do that. I went to my friend Google and search for some tools and found the MS Windbg tool and also got the symbols for a 2003 Server. I followed the help for reading the file a dn defined the Symbol File folder and right away when I ran this I seen what was going on. It was a problem with the Storport.sys causing the Blue Screen so I did some searching and found that on some HP Servers running with SAS drives this was a issue and there was a hotfix and I applied this.

But that did not help it did this again so I dug some more and found that some of the HP Management drivers will cause this to happen. The server was one I moved from old hardware to new after the old hardware had died so there could have been some left overs from that so I completely removed the HP Management agents and this straighted this out. Now to find a resolution to get this updated with the HP Stuff and not have this happen. More on that later.

Til Later just Roger

Restoring a 2003 Server that had Mirrored Dynamic Disks

I had a customer call that had a server that they rebooted and it never came back. Ever been there before? I know we all have many times and here lately it has been because of older hardware and the motherboard just giving up the Ghost. Well i got on-site and yip it was dead and now what to do. As the servers we are using here now are SAS Drive Type HP Servers and this was a older SCSI drive. OK I looked around and found a ML 350 that we have replaced but we had not did anything with the server and I got the server to boot with one of the drives out of the failed server running as a spare.

I then used my favorite program Shadow Protect IT version and backed up the disk that had the C Drive and the E Drive on it. It had been a mirrored set so the disk was running in Dynamic Disk mode. Oh Goody I am so excited. So I looked around for something to restore onto and the pickings was slim for that but we are running HyperV at this site so I restored the server into a Virtual Server session. Once this completed I thought ok here we go rebooted the server and nothing. Just a blank screen with a cursor in the left hand side of the screen. OK now what the heck scratched my head went and got a Pepsi and checked the Shadow Protect website. Sure enough there was the fix I needed. What I had to do was boot with a 2003 Server CD hit R and go into the recovery Console and once logged in I type Fixboot C: and then fixmbr rebooted and away we went. Pepsi works every-time OK most every-time but sounds good with this one.

Tel later just Roger

2003 Server and Enterprise CA Restore

Well as stated in the previous post we had a 2003 DC that was the FSMO Master and also the Enterprise CA for the domain die on us. When we had the Virtual DC running I did a back of the CA to another folder on another server. You also need to backup the registry key but more on that later. We got the bad DC demoted and once I had the DC’s back to talking we brought the Physical Server that had the FSMO Roles on it that we had demoted down to a member server back up and rejoined the domain with the server and once we was back to the desktop we installed the Enterprise CA and then restored the server using the CA backup I had run earlier.

When we tried starting the CA it had the error “Certificate Services did not start: Could not load or verify the current CA Certificate.  MyDomain Root CA Bad Key” error. Ok now what well I dug some more and found we should have also exported the “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\CertSvc\Configuration\”mydomain Root CA” registry key. We went back to the Virtual DC and made sure it was not connected to the domain and exported this key and then got it moved over to the server we had this on. Did a import of the reg key and the service then started and away we went life was good and happy dance time.

Til later just Roger

Migrating a old 2003 Terminal Server to new Equipment

I had a customer who has had a 2003 Terminal Server for about 5 years and he was wanting to go to new equipment but not the pain to reload all the applications. I usually prefer reloading but in this case the server has been really stable and no problems. So I said OK lets give it a shot and I used Shadow Protect for IT and backed up the old server and then booted the new HP Server and configured the RAID and then started the restore and I noticed when it finished the C Drive it did not load the RAID drivers and thought to myself ok it had something that matches so we are good. NOT it did not load the drivers. Dang now what I explored a few options and ended up reloading the restore again of the C and this time it loaded the RAID drivers. Whew!!!! HP does have a utility that you can change a USB Drive into a Floppy so I could have loaded the drivers this way through the booting to a server OS CD and hitting F6 but the curious guy I am I wanted to see if the other would work like it was suppose too and had before. But it was all good server came up and the users the next morning was very happy with the new found speed they had. We went from a Dual XEON 3.06 CPU’s and 2.5 Gig of RAM to a server with dual QC CPU’s and 10 Gig of RAM running 2003 Enterprise TS Server. It handles the 31 users with room to grow.

Til later just Roger

Standard Server 2003 Migration to SBS 2008 Part 4

I have had some questions about once you do the migration how do i get the users to show up in the SBS 2008 Console. Here is my reply to one of those questions and hopefully it will help those that is looking for this answer.

“In your SBS 2008 Console go to Users and then over to the right you will see “Change User Role for user accounts” select this and then this will start a wizard. Select Standard User and “Replace User Permissions or Roles” hit next here you will see the users on your SBS 2008 Server but if you check the box that says “Display all user accounts in AD” this will show you your users you are looking for. You highlight the ones you want and add them and the wizard will do the rest. You will have to do this for the ones you want as Standard users and also again for the ones you want to have Administrative permissions. Also if you are wanting your computers and Servers to show up in their respective lists you add these to the SBS Computers and Servers OU’srespectively and then they will show up in your SBS 2008 console.”

Til later just Roger

SBS 2003 with ISA 2004 Internal Client VPN Problems

I had a customer who has a SBS 2003 SP1 Server with ISA 2004 who uses a VPN off their client machines to a site that they submit claims too using the ATT Global Dialer. Well I got the sheet from them on Ports and IP’s that needed to be allowed to do there certain parts and got them all added but the workstations still would not connect. They keep getting error 223 VPN port in use. I finally tracked it down to on the SBS Server I had to go to the registry and add Port 4500 to HKey_Local_Machine\system\CurrentControlSet\Service\Tcpip\Parameters  in the Reserved Ports and I had to add 4500-4500 and then I could allow a VPN to initiate from the inside out. It seems to be the problem that a certain Windows Update allowed something else to take over this port. Once I defined this as reserved then the Clients was good. When I get the exact article I will post that info also.

Til later just Roger

Server 2003 and HP c3000

Had a customer bring in there HP ML 370 server on Monday I happened to be in the office working on setting up our new HP c3000 that we will be rolling out in-house with a couple of BL 480c’s and a couple of BL 465c’s and moving some of our in house servers over to the HyperV world. Ok back to the customer. One of the other techs had stopped onsite and said not much he could do it was motherboard or RAM so they sent it to the office.

I got it on the bench and tried the memory we had on hand and found nothing that would work. To me it was looking like motherboard issues to me. We had a couple of ML 350 G4’s that we was going to sell of do something with setting around so I just moved the hard drives and RAID controller over to the ML 350 booted the server updated the HP Drivers and life was good server booted customer bought that server and they was back in business. It is not everyday you can do this but that was very handy having that server sitting there.

We also did a password change at another site for the administrator password and you know for the amount of planning and identifying of places that passwords need changed you always miss some place. Which we did but it all worked out in the end. But when your dealing with 18 or 20 servers you better have it all wrote down so a procedures are good in this case.

I did a quick check on my wife’s SBS 2008 Server and the thing is just running and operating away just like it should. That is good to know I know when I put her SBS 2003 server in place the support calls went way down which is a good thing and I am glad to see SBS 2008 is not letting me down also. I did put a lot of work into that from the Tap and the Betas and all the way to the finished product and it is good to see it is doing what it is suppose to. Well it is off the the State All State Jazz Band which my wife’s son is playing in so I better hit the road. I ill have more on the c3000 and that business next week.

Till later just Roger

Ok where did the week go.

Ok where did the week go here, is it really Friday already. It has been another busy week for me and I have been battling a network slowness issue for a customer and it is like finding a needle in a haystack here on the problem. I think what I am fighting more than one problem here, I can copy a 1 gig file between the different servers and the speed seems pretty good on the file copy.

One thing I found was that Office 2007 on a 2003 Terminal Server with Office 2007 SP1 on it will have problems with opening just a basic email which I can most definitely attest to opens very slowly. And it might only have 3 words on it what the heck? I did some searching and found that yes others have been having this and what was found was uninstalling SP1 fixed them up. Ok I tested this by installing Office 2007 on a Virtual TS Server and yes it was most definitely quicker than the production server. So OK what else can I find here well I found the page file was limited to 2 Gig for whatever reason. Fixed that and now what can I do to get this tracked down. Like i said many different little things. I guess this will be a work in progress as I wade through this. I hate little issues as some think it is the network and I think it is a combination of both. Awwww!!!!!!!

Til later just Roger

That was lucky

I got a email Monday night from one of my best customers their main LOB App Server was dead and unresponsive. Drives would go through start up and then no more activity. This was sent at midnight and I happened to check my email at 4:15 this morning so I showered and headed down that way. Got on-site and yip turn the machine on nothing so I still had my wife’s old server in my car so I brought that in and put the drives in and booted the server and it blue screened, ok this is looking promising it is needing RAID controller drivers but they couldn’t keep the server so what I did was attach a USB Drive to the server and then booted with my copy of Shadow Protect Server and once it got through the process I could see partitions. Good so I did a backup of the drives and then copied them over to the customers HyperV Server and then turned the backup files into iso files and then restored the server into the HyperV and away they went. They was lucky I checked there backups and the only good one they had was the year end backup so we went through that about keeping them checked and life was good again.

Till later just Roger