Hello everyone, I'm having strange issues with one of our servers running Server 2003 Standard. To sum it up, the server often crashes when doing large file transfers (1GB+) locally or remotely. The server is connected at 1Gbps and the clients are connected at 100Mbps. There are network drives mounted on each system which are used to store project files. There is one client that has a resultant connection of around 1.5MBps using a wireless connection. If I try to copy a 1GB file from a client that is connected at 100Mbps or more, they (at least appear to) go through fine with no problems and the server continues to run normally. However, when I try to copy a file approximately 1GB in size over the wireless computer, the problems start. After the 45 minutes or so it takes to copy the large file, it appears to have completed just fine on the client. However, the server will almost completely crash - very slow or no response from the GUI at the console and Active Directory will not respond on that particular server. Seems that often times DNS still runs but most other services on the server won't respond. Also, if I try to copy/move files at the console which are fairly large, the server won't crash the entire server but the entire GUI will be completely unresponsive while the hard disks are copying files. I am 100% sure this isn't just a coincidence - it has happened a few times and always happens when the wireless computer tries to copy files or when I try to copy large files at the console. I've tried a few things to fix this (don't remember exactly what as it's been a while) but nothing has produced any results. It seems that it is a fairly common problem that seems to have stemmed from Windows XP (which also seems to have some trouble with large files). Hopefully someone knows why this might be happening. Thanks for your help!

Hi, Can you check minidump folder (%systemroot%\minidump) and analyze dump for RCA. If you have any? *Note: Use Windebugging tool for dump file analysis and follow. Steps to analyse dump file are here :http://blogs.technet.com/b/askcore/archive/2008/11/01/how-to-debug-kernel-mode-blue-screen-crashes-for-beginners.aspx#3476888Regards, Ravikumar P

Hello, There is nothing in the "minidump" folder, nor is there any crash dump file on in the %systemroot% directory - I turned hidden files on just to be sure. I checked system properties and it is set to produce a dump on a system crash. I'm thinking it's because the system, to its knowledge did not crash because there was no BSOD and some services were still running. However, here's what I just found: "The device, Harddisk1, has a bad block" all over the Event Viewer. There are a total of 43k events, almost every log states the same thing. I'd better get that drive replaced, I'm guessing it's the system drive correct? Could that be the reason why the system is crashing?

Actually, that appears the secondary drive where all of the project files are being copied to, forgot that there is a Harddisk0. Oddly the Disk Management application shows that the drive is "healthy".

Try running chkdsk /r on each drive in your server and then try copying it as mentioned there might be a problem from the disk which is triggering a crash when the data on the bad block is accessed. http://www.arabitpro.com

Yes As Syed said run chkdsk utility for disk errors. Meanwhile try to un-check automatic restart option.Hope you know the path. Anyways I am sharing it again.Right click My computer-->Adv. system settings-->Adv. options-->Starup and Recovery settings-->below the system failureRegards, Ravikumar P

It doesn't make a difference whether it's set up for automatic restart because it never restarts or reaches a blue screen, as stated it just hangs. I don't really want to run chkdsk as the drive is probably close to being unreliable and trying to recover the bad sectors may possibly trash the entire drive. I was able to successfully move the Exchange databases to the boot drive but for some reason it won't run properly without this drive in the system so I'm going to have to leave it running for now. I have no idea how long the drive has been running with these issues (possibly over a year?!) but I would have to say that there the chance of everything being successfully copied over to the new drive when it arrives is very high. Thanks for your advice!

I have replaced the bad hard drive and there are no longer any errors showing about hardware issues in Event Viewer. However, I'm still having the crashing issues. It happens when I am logged into an RDP session as Administrator doing mundane tasks like browsing My Computer, running programs, sitting at the desktop, etc. There is about 600MB of free RAM available. The RDP connection randomly drops in and out - while it is out, DNS and all other services on the server do not respond, but disk copy operations (on secondary disks) continue to run uninterrupted. When I try to log into RDP as another (unprivileged) user, the entire server crashes when it tries to create a new user profile, requiring a hard reboot. Each time I log on to RDP a bunch of errors like these come up for different printers on the network: (Error) "Driver Adobe PDF Converter required for printer Adobe PDF is unknown. Contact the administrator to install the driver before you log in again." (Warning) "Printer Fax (from [computer name]) in session 1 was purged." (Information) The WinHTTP Web Proxy Auto-Discovery Service service entered the stopped state. When I go to the server's local console, after pressing Ctrl-Alt-Delete, the screen remains blue. Another thing I noticed is that just about the entire hard drive is fragmented - don't think this would be causing it but I'll just throw that in there. I was thinking of running a disk scan on the boot drive - everything looks a-ok on the SMART tests but I'll have to find a time to decommission the server for a while.