I recently put a brand new HP ML350 G5 into a branch office. It has been the most unreliable server I have ever deployed. It hangs up intermittently and I have to do a hard reboot on the server. It has done this 8 times within the past 2 months. 5 of those have been in February. I've logged hours on the line with HP Tech support and nothing has helped. We've done the usual, make sure all firmware and drivers are up to date. We've unplugged it from the UPS and verified various component recalls and such. All this along with various other things like running offline diagnostics. No luck with any of those things. I recently uninstalled AVG Antivirus and LogMeIn and I'm waiting to see what happens. This is just horrible though. Non of the users can relay on the server. I need help.

Hello Caleb_S,You seem to have bad luck lately. Two things that I would check on:1)Take a look at your event logs and see if there is any indication of a problem.2)Have you swapped out the RAM on the server? These random freezes in my experience are usually related to problems with the RAM modules. Additionally, If you have Microsoft support, they have tools avaiable that can pull what was in memory prior to the freezes or BSODs. If you dont have support, I am sure they will be happy to help you for a fee...If this server is brand new, have you considered, just wiping the server and starting from scratch? If the problems persist, its a clear indication of a hardware problem, most likely RAM, but it could be attributed to other HW issues. My experience has been that it is possible that HP may not find anything with the diagnostic tools. I hope you purchased a good warranty with the server so they dont take 4-6 weeks to resolve your issue. This is where a 24x7 4 hour response comes in handy.If you reload the server and the problem goes away, then you may never know what the issue was.As you continue to troubleshoot, dont make too many changes at once, or you will never know which change fixed the issue.Sorry to hear your experience with HP. Our org has purchased over 1000 of the servers (DL line and now blades) during the past few years and they have been very reliable and have provided excellent support.If you find that its not an OS issue, press on them to swap out the hardware components. Visit my blog: anITKB.com, an IT Knowledge Base.

Yeah, Bad luck on this server is right. I've been troubleshooting both the NIC problem and the server reboot problem simultaneously. I was actually made aware of the NIC problem because the server kept rebooting. I started with the NIC thinking that may have contributed to the server rebooting problem. In addition to these things and a warning to anybody else, the E200i Raid controller sucks. Performance is horrible. Anyhow, no reboots yet after the uninstall of AVG and LogMeIn. But it's only been a day and a half. I've got HP on the line and they are willing to replace the system board but not 4 memory modules.... ??? I guess they have some policy that they can't send out more then 3 parts at a time. Lets see... 1 Technician, 3-4 hours and a system board vs. 4 memory modules shipped in a FedEx envelope and I'll have a tech savey employee install them. At least they are willing to proceed forward with replacing parts. I'm actually pretty happy with their support. I suppose I could reload the server over the weekend. I'm hesitant to do this. However, I'm not sure why. I guess my time it's because I had such a hard time setting this one up. I ran into all sorts of DNS and AD replicating problems so I think I'm a little gunshy. This may seem weird, but could I rename the server the same name after I reinstalled everything? What would that process look like? Would the installation of the roles not work properly because other servers would already see this server name. What kind of cleanup would I have to perform? That is where my hesitancy comes in. Server Roles: Active Directory Domain Services DHCP Server DNS Server File Services Print and Document Services Continuing on. I finished up my call with HP. I decided to wait for one more reboot to see whether AVG or LogMeIn is the problem. After that I'll have the system board replaced. Then after that, maybe an OS reinstall. Thanks for your support Jorge.

Hopefully you wont need to rebuild the box. I still feel based on your description and experience that there may in fact be an issue with hardware. Give HP a chance.Since you put alot of time and effort, dont jump to rebuild this server too quickly. You need to figure out how much time you are willing to invest in troubleshooting before you throw in the towel.Yes, if you do have to rebuild the server, there is no problem in using the same name. Since this is a DC, you need to DCPROMO it down first, let AD remove all instances to this name and object before you wipe it out and start from scratch. If this is your only DC and its on a production network, this is NOT a good solution for you. All of the workstations would have to rejoin, permissions will become a mess due to changes in SIDs.If this is one of two or more DCs. There is no problem rebuilding the DC, using the same name and IP, as long as you wait for replication to occur and the old server is purged from AD. This would be the procedure when moving say from a 32 bit DC to 64 bit. There is no upgrade path for that migration. Visit my blog: anITKB.com, an IT Knowledge Base.

Hey Jorge, Thanks for your last reply, that helps me a lot. The server was fine for week wafter I uninstalled AVG and LogMeIn. I then reinstalled AVG and it was fine for another week. Then in hung again. Good thing is that it hung up and didn't fully crash, but it still required a hard resent. Anyhow, I believe the issue is with AVG. I have removed AVG again and I will leave the server for about a 3 week timeframe. I will update you after that. http://forums.avg.com/us-en/avg-free-forum?sec=thread&act=show&id=58513

Sounds good. Keep us posted.Visit my blog: anITKB.com, an IT Knowledge Base.

The server has not rebooted since I uninstalled AVG Antivirus. AVG has released several major updates to their latest version of 9.0 I will be testing these in the future weeks.

go figure... the server froze this morning. I had not loaded AVG back on. WTF!

HiI've been expierencing the same problem. The console screen just hangs on Windows logo and my only option is to reboot.I've also noticed that even though it is hanging, I can ping it. I contacted HP South Africa and they mentioned it could be a problem with the power supplies. Power output is less that what is required and therefore the server hangs. The support guy specifically mentioned that he was aware of this problem happening on a ML 350 G5 and that it was intermittant problem.They will apparently send a technicain out to fix the issue. I will have to run the server for at least a month before I can know for sure the problem was resolved.

Hey Stepcicc,I really appreciate the post. HP thought it was a power issue as well. They double checked the revision and part number on the power supplies and said that I was ok. Maybe we need to revisit this. My next step with HP is to have the motherboard replaced. Do you know what parts HP replaced? I'd also love to hear back as to whether that fixed the issue or not. Thanks