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Client loses network connection to server

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by liangthienwong

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I'm running windows 2003 server and windows XP.
Everyday after 6:00pm the whole system slows down and then finally grinds to a halt! The Client computer loses connection to the server.
Does anyone know why this happens?

38 replies

by hillbilly tech

Is the settings set to to disconnect when connection is idile or a power managment setting. It seems to me and my limited knowledge that if it works fine while in use, there is a setting to disconnect when idile. Or is it during a backup or update to the server that could be causing it. We are talking about a PC with XP right?

by liangthienwong

What settings?
We have about 60 computers (running XP) and 6 Servers (Running Windows 2003 Server) in this office. People are working the wholeday from 9 - 6pm and sometimes till 8pm, so there is no question of computers being disconnected because of it being idle. The whole system just becomes slow after 6pm and then everything hangs! After a reboot of the PCs everything is fine again.

I thought it was the ip address running out everyday, but no, all PCs have lease till 2008 from DHCP server.

Any ideas?

by hillbilly tech

the power managment setting for the servers. Win 2k3 & Win XP have the ability to turn off certian feature like network cards, display, ect. to save power & or Hibrinate when the system is in idile. Like a screen saver does. Not sure this is the answer but it is a good place to start.

by yinbig

Sounds like a memory leak on a server / servers.
Check all you applications are patched to the hilt
Check your Memory Modules, or at leas the ones effected.

by brudab

I've seen the same symptoms on my own 2003Server Std + XP Pro network already, where all clients would suddenly smultaneously go offline, and rebooting the server would solve the problem until 24 hours or so later.
I hadn't much knowledge about using the performance monitor, so I struggled through some articles and was able to identify that "something" was causing memory to be hogged or somthing to that effect. I think the error was specifically "The server was unable to allocate from the system nonpaged pool". Still don't know how to solve

by trigg

Do you have any databases running MSDE. I have several clients running SBS 2003 and I have set them to reboot everyother night to fix this. I spoke with Microsoft and said this was a known issue. They of course are not working on it. They are using resources toward SQL 2005.

by patrick

I am running Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 with 2 XP machines and 2 old 2000 machines. The Old 2000 machines run for weeks without problems the XP machines need re-booting every morning and often need re-booting again in the afternoon. Over the course of the day they slow down, slow up word and excel and then lose sight of the mapped shared drives. Outlook seems to run OK as do the 2000 machines. Anybody know the answer to this?

by ben

This seems to be a problem that occurs to our system to..

We have a MS SBS 2003 server with 4 win2000 clients and 3 XP clients.. As above, our W2k clients works perfectly.. As I read above, I mapped the drives with the logon script and it got a little better, but still after a day we have to login again to reach our SBS..

however.. I haven't tried to delete the users and start all over again and there was a win2000server before the 2003SBS so I had to recreate the users on the client again. Maby this could be the source of the problem? I'm quite sure its not firewall of anti virus related..

Does anyone have some more info on this?

Kind regards
Ben G.

by kurt

I have an installation of SBS 2003 and XP pro clients that is also exhibiting the same behavior. Power mgt is disabled and nothing unusual in the event logs.

by bellis

Do you have antivirus scans scheduled for that time on the servers/clients?

by patrick

No. We use AVG which scans and updates every morning.
No unusual activity in task manager - Outlook (60,000k), Winword, Iexplorer, Svchost, explorer, mmc, excel, msimn, Winword, excel (13,000k) etc

CPU useage 4%, PF Usage 358MB, network utilization 0%

Any other ideas please?

by heybahler

when my systems get slow, it's generally because they are doing more, not less. Open Task Manager, check the Process tab on several systems and see if cpu usage is high and what programs are using most of the resources. Check the Network tab and see the level of network traffic. It may be that all the antivirus scans are starting and running at the same time.

by mschalk

Are all your systems, expecially your switch (in this case) on UPSs? Lots of buildings have power fluctuations in the evening when the heat/AC turns on/off - if the power is getting "dirty" your switches may be getting messed up. Just a note.
Also, you what about backup activity? If your backups are kicking in then and you have a flat network (no vlans, etc) it could kill your throughput...?

by liangthienwong

I think its the speed settings between Windows XP clients and the ports on the Procurve switches. Cos when I changed the settings on my Windows XP computer to 100mbps/Full-duplex ...... it was losing connection, slowing down more than ever!
I'll try to have both the settings to be the same and see whether it will be ok.

by mschalk

1. when does the connection get OK again?
2. when your network slows down, are your clients still able to connect to eachother at OK speeds?
3. assuming you are running DNS services on the server - what happens if you run a local nslookup vs. nslookup on one of the clients - are they both bad?
4. is the connection slow in the other direction? server -> client?
...?

by rosaliauy

Just curious. Did you find what's causing the slow down of XP client computers connection at 6pm?

by patrick

In short - NO - but I have summarise our case below:

We use two XP clients and 2 Win 2000 clients and are connected to a server with SBS 2003. Our Win 2000 machines although quite old maintain connections to the shared drives on the server for weeks. Our XP machines need rebooting daily and more often than not are so slow in the afternoon that they need rebooting again as local installations of Word & Excel working with server based files run very very slow at the end of the day. Occasionally we avoid re-booting by expanding ?My Network Places? clicking onto the server and logging in again when prompted to do so (although this isn?t always an option).

Generally there is a 30 second lag when looking at the shared folders through Internet Explorer from the XP machines. There is no such lag with the old 2000 machines.

(I also use an Xcopy script as an additional back up of files on the server saving them to the XP hard drives and a LaCie drive over night. I did see an old reference to a similar problem on this site with connections being dropped overnight when large files are copied but unfortunately the solution had been removed. I don?t know if this is related to my problem?

Any thoughts would be gratefully received please? Thank you.

by wfowler

we need more information to isolate your problem.
1) is this network connected to the internet, and how.
2) how much network traffic is on the network at the time of this problem, the answer to this can be as simple as looking at the led's on the network hub, or opening the task list and checking the network tab on EACH machine as well as the server.
3) what applications are running, and how much cpu time is each app using at the time of the problem. once again you can use the task list and use the applications and processes tab (for each machine).
4) what aniti virus do you use.

most of these questions were already asked, but i did not see an answer to any of them.

the way i see it, we need to isolate this problem to one of three items.
1) server problem (ie network setting, internet hack)
2) local machine problem (ie memory hole, internet hack)
3) network problem (ie buffer or packet size, or internet hack)

if i assume that the time from the last restart to the time of the problem is not static. this would have to be a schuldeled task or a conevnient time for some hacker. best starting place is the task list, find out whats running and when (ctrl-alt-del once will bring up the menu).
Good luck

by badferret

I've had the same problem - All XP Clients loosing connections at 6:30 pm +- 10 mins and later at 7:30 pm - Checked all the hardware and powersaving settings - with no luck but we did find a workaround -
Set the clients to login locally - rather than into the domain - then map to the domain as needed- After this all the XP MAchines ran faster - login about 100 times faster, and needed less reboots etc

by patrick

Thanks for this - it is the last resort but I think we'll have to go for it - we forgoe some of the current & potential functionality of the SBS but at the moment we are wasting too much time with a slow system and re-boots just when we don't need them.

...hopefully Microsoft will get their act together and acknowledge the problem and offer a fix !!! It is amazing how fast the login is when it is not into exchange. Thank you

by jhoover

I just wanted to post that I'm having the same problem here at my school.

I have:

Windows 2003 Server (New Dell - less than a year old)
4x Windows XP Clients (New HP's - less than a year old)
4x Windows 2000 Clients (Older Acers - several years old)
Netgear Prosafe 10/100/1000 Switch (new, replaced entire network in July)

This problem only occurs with the XP clients, the 2K clients run fine all day without problems. The XP machines run without problems until around 5:30 or 6:00 and then slow to a crawl on the network. Opening documents in Word or Excel takes a very long time (this applies only to network documents, local documents open normally). Eventually the computer will completely lose its connection to the server and give an error message when the user attempts to open the mapped drive (name already in use error).

I've tried about everything I can think of. Through different attempts I've changed antivirus software (even disabling it at one point), checked that there are no scheduled tasks on either the server or the machine, checked for all the latest Microsoft updates for both the server, the client, and Office. I've checked the network cards and cables, disabled DHCP and set static addresses, checked DNS settings, and a variety of other things (I have a growing notebook about this problem).

The problem happens consistently around the same time each day, and a reboot of the client always solves it. It's just a pain for some of my users that work late to have to reboot or re-login every day around the same time.

What I have NOT tried yet is to have my user reboot their system earlier in the day to see if the problem still happens at that time (to see if it's a clock time issue or an amount of time logged in issue). That's today's experiment.

I'm just glad to see that I'm not the only one who's having trouble with this...

by patrick

1) we are connected to the internet via a draytec router / wireless hub
2) there is little or no network traffic when the system slows down - idle process +/- 98%, 45k of packets sent & 55k received via the local area connection in 7 hours (since last re-boot), [svchost files using 4-7 k each with the exception of the SYSTEM user which is using 27k]
3) word, excel, photoshop and outlook are our main programs
4) AVG

Additional info:
1. This is only an issue on our XP machines (including a laptop which connects occasionally to copy files for remote use).
2. The Win 2k see the network always (for weeks at a time)

Next time we go down I will test the connection from the server and the 2k machines to the slow XP machine/s.

My gut feel is that it is an XP issue - the network was and is still fine withe the old 2k machines...

by wfowler

Your original statement was that this ONLY occured after 6:30pm is this still the case?

if it is possible you might want to shut down the internet access around 6pm (half hour before your normal problem time) for a few days and see if the problem continues.

make sure that AVG is currently checking for PUP's.

make sure you run the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool (download from microsoft) on the server as well as the xp machines.

on the next slow down, open a command (dos) window and type the following command at the prompt:
netstat -an
this will list all tcp/ip connections to/from the machine, make a note of the active ports and use that list to isolate a virus/backdoor AND block any ports that you can not identify at the router. check your router and see if it has any kind of log.

Good luck

by kurt

I have one installation of SBS 2003 with the same issue. Multiple XP Pro workstations that would also slow to a crawl on network shares and sometimes lose connection to the server entirely. Removed each computer from the SBS server then re-create the client computer with a new name, removed each from the domain (assigned them temporarily to a workgroup), assign each it's correct new name then re-connected them to the domain using http://servername/ConnectComputer. Two weeks now and all maintain their connection.

by philip

Sorry I am very new at working with servers. We recently upgraded to a server from an overtaxed pier to pier. Been nice for the most part, but have been having this problem same problem. I cannot figure out how the http://servername/ConnectComputer works. Lets say my server is named Texas, and the computer I am trying to connect is named Mississippi. Would I put in http://Texas/Mississippi or would I put in http://Texas/ConnectComputer and then tell it Mississippi? Also where do I put this in? Web browser on the server, client? Thanks for your help. Hope my questions are not to basic?

by jrflamholz

Have you made any progress on this problem?

We are experiencing an almost identical slowdown and would be interested in what you have found.

by jga

We have had the same problem here as well, only ours happens around 5:00 - 5:30pm, right at closing time. My solution was the same. I created logins local to the machine and map'ed the drives.. problem solved. It's the only work around I know that works.

by swollenburg

I have the same problem as others - however it only happens with one machine. All other machines are fine. The machine it happens with is XP Pro although I do have other XP users as well as Windows 2000 and Vista users. The error message that comes up is "S:\is not accessible" (S=the server) Then it goes on to say - "the system detected a possible attemprt to compromise security. Please ebsure that you can contact the server that authenticated you."

Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Susie

by gnwcomp

Hi guys had this problem as well, read all your replys and then after the DNS issue was raised while checking my DNS settings noticed I had some reverse lookup entries that were incorrect.
I had setup the server to use 192.168.0.200 as its fixed ip address but upon installing the server on site had to change the ip range to 10.0.0.200. The reverse lookups where set to 192.168.0.x, one for each computer that was disconnecting at 6pm. I removed the entire reverse lookup table and created another in the correct range and all was fixed. Hope this helps and works for you.

by jason

Same Problem:
Systems (domain) slow down through out the day then crawl to a halt in the evening. Our plan is to remove the computers from the Active Directory and put them back one by one. We are dealing with < 20 system so this is not a major issue for us.

Possible causes:
1. We built the system in our store then delivered it to them on location. Essentially connecting the server to two separate networks.
2. The company recently switched broadband providers which introduced a whole new set of DNS entries to the network making the problem worse.
3. X - we don't know, but reseting the computers on the A.D. cant hurt and will probably work...

by jprice

I am having the same issue at our company. We have 2 DC's both are GC's. 1 has DHCP and both have DNS. Lately we have had random disconnects - no given reason. We can ping the web, we can ping internal, we can get to internal drives. We cannot open websites, nor internal web based programs. We cannot use Remote Desktop. A release and renew does not fix it, a repair on the conneciton does not fix it. We have no errors in the event viewer on the server or the xp workstations. Except for a few w32time warnings, but no errors. We have 220 users - this disconnection happens at random, not everyone at once. One person may get disconnected and the others are fine. There isn't a certain program that is open, it just happens. Please help, I get 700 calls a day that people have to reboot..
Thanks,

by hotdamtam64

Hi -
Did you ever resolve your issue? We have the same problem, and alot of the troubleshooting you have already performed -- I was getting ready to do. If your issue was resolved, will you please share what the underlying issue was and how it was fixed? Our users would actually restart their computers about an hour before they were going to be kicked off the network (usually around 5:45 - 6:00) and that eliminated them being booted off the network. This is very inconvenient and any information would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you!

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