I have a Novell server running v. 5.1. For the past few months, it has been locking up intermittently where all I can do is reboot by pushing the power button. I cannot toggle through the screens or move the mouse. This has been happening at all times of the day and night. Sometimes it will stay up for a month or so then all of a sudden lock up again. Sometimes, it no more gets back up and running and immediatly locks up (uptime – 3 minutes). Even cold booting does not work. It will take me 3 or 4 hours sometimes to get it to stay up which does a good job of frustrating users and corrupting files.
I went to evey workstation in the building and switched the NIC’s from one to the other (each workstation has two) thinking maybe a card on the network was sending out bogus packets and confusing the server causing it to lock up. It still did it. I turned off the Norton Antivirus program and it did it.
I have replaced the heat sync/processor fans, NIC, and memory on the server to no avail. Utilization is always low in the single digits.
No changes have been made to the server for a year – no new programs or software installs.
This is really driving me crazy. It doesn’t happen at any certain time of the day or when a certain application is running. It seems to be just whenever it feels like it.
It has dual hard drives – could one of them be causing it? No switches involved – the server is connected to a hub box/patch panel that I am not seeing any “hits” on out of the ordinary.
Any ideas would be appreciated. Thank you.
Signed,
Pulling my hair out.