Random crashing and boot times

[pjoot]

Hi,

I’ve been using my 64bit Win2k8 Server for a couple of months. My system suffers from two things:

1) Random crashing

My system has done this just twice by now. It has happened without any notice or reason that I could come up with so that suddenly my system freezes: first my monitor says that can’t find a display adapter and the green LED goes to orange. During that the keyboard doesn’t respond at all and the whole system basically jams and dies with the display going down first (I think). I can’t find anything from the event viewer. Maybe I just don’t know which tab option to look from? There haven’t been any critical errors that I know of or could find. Two days ago I updated to the newest nVidia driver pool and I hope it fixes the problem but I seriously doubt that. I also disabled the superfetch incase it caused the crashes but the second crash happened right after that.

2) The boot time for my system is awful.

It takes at least a couple of minutes to have a working system. I don’t know why or how. Maybe there is a process that slows the reboot? It just seems to cache stuff for ages. My own opinion is that the Server OS is just supposed to load for a while but after the initial loading it won’t do it and is super fast.

My specs are the following:

Intel Q6600
Nvidia 8800gts
6gb RAM
Asus P5K mobo with a quite new BIOS (gotta check if they have updated something W2k8 related to newer versions)
W2k8 Server Enterprise x64
Some crappy Realtek HD Audio Chip that is integrated
Everything is set up with the newest drivers possible.

Any suggestions and help would be greatly appreciated. Especially regarding the event viewer, I just can’t be so dumb that I can’t find a fatal system crash from the logs of a server OS.

[pjoot]

I think that I solved some boot time issues by resetting 95% of my service “tweaks”. Some of the services on the guide seem to be necessary in order to boot fast.

[Wakers]

The first issue sounds like something with your gfx card – either its getting too hot or not getting enough power from the PSU.

With regards to boot times, I have a less powerful system than yours and it boots to the login screen about about 20 seconds, and then takes about 10-15 seconds to get to a usable desktop.

I also followed the services tweak guide and didn’t experience any slow down in boot times. One thing to check – do you have the Hyper-V feature installed?

[aviv00]

hey i have long boot times too

do u have “black out” screens while the booting ?

black screen that the system doesn’t do nothing ?

[pjoot]

@Wakers wrote:

The first issue sounds like something with your gfx card – either its getting too hot or not getting enough power from the PSU.

Yep, I think it has something to do with the gfx card but you never know with these computers what it might be. It totally jams the system as well so it could be something else. The PSU is a quality 400W Antec Sonata III that has enough amps for the 12V outputs so I am sure that it’s enough. I have to check the logs more carefully next time.

With regards to boot times, I have a less powerful system than yours and it boots to the login screen about about 20 seconds, and then takes about 10-15 seconds to get to a usable desktop.

I also followed the services tweak guide and didn’t experience any slow down in boot times. One thing to check – do you have the Hyper-V feature installed?

Nope, I am running a pretty Vanilla setup, server wise. I think I’ve only enabled the desktop experience and Net Framework but nothing else that could or should affect the boot times like that. Maybe my hardware needed some of the disabled services to work properly and it stalled the boot but I haven’t benchmarked it yet so I don’t know the current time. At least it seemed to be a lot faster… I don’t even have any big memory eating programs set to launch during the startup.

Thanks for the answer.

[pjoot]

@aviv00 wrote:

hey i have long boot times too

do u have “black out” screens while the booting ?

black screen that the system doesn’t do nothing ?

I don’t experience that, it’s just slow like with very old computers… sluggish. I’ve heard that those black screens have something to do with the OS detecting external monitors/TVs while booting. There was some bios trick to fix it I think or you could try to remove your tv-out cable and boot then, if you even have one hehe.

[Wakers]

With the processor, amount of RAM, the graphics card you have there, I would have thought that you need at least a 500W PSU.

Do you have more than one hard drive? two optical drives?

[pjoot]

@Wakers wrote:

With the processor, amount of RAM, the graphics card you have there, I would have thought that you need at least a 500W PSU.

Do you have more than one hard drive? two optical drives?

Three hard drives and one optical drive, but it’s not the PSU. The watts usually fool people because it’s not the watts that matter the most, it’s how many amps the power can handle with 12V since most of the hardware use 12V. So basically if you have some cheap Chinese ping pong 500W PSU that gives only 20A to 12V it’s actually around 240W that it can put out (P=U*I) because the hardware doesn’t use that much of the other voltage outputs.

My most power hungry part of my system is my graphics adapter and everything has been working well with this setup for the last 1½ years so it just can’t be about the power. The tdp values of my system don’t exceed the amount my PSU can lash out.

[Wakers]

@pjoot wrote:

@Wakers wrote:

With the processor, amount of RAM, the graphics card you have there, I would have thought that you need at least a 500W PSU.

Do you have more than one hard drive? two optical drives?

Three hard drives and one optical drive, but it’s not the PSU. The watts usually fool people because it’s not the watts that matter the most, it’s how many amps the power can handle with 12V since most of the hardware use 12V. So basically if you have some cheap Chinese ping pong 500W PSU that gives only 20A to 12V it’s actually around 240W that it can put out (P=U*I) because the hardware doesn’t use that much of the other voltage outputs.

My most power hungry part of my system is my graphics adapter and everything has been working well with this setup for the last 1½ years so it just can’t be about the power. The tdp values of my system don’t exceed the amount my PSU can lash out.

Yes I see.

So the next thing to ask really is did it suddenly just start happening, or did it happen as soon as you installed server08?

[pjoot]

@Wakers wrote:

@pjoot wrote:

@Wakers wrote:

With the processor, amount of RAM, the graphics card you have there, I would have thought that you need at least a 500W PSU.

Do you have more than one hard drive? two optical drives?

Three hard drives and one optical drive, but it’s not the PSU. The watts usually fool people because it’s not the watts that matter the most, it’s how many amps the power can handle with 12V since most of the hardware use 12V. So basically if you have some cheap Chinese ping pong 500W PSU that gives only 20A to 12V it’s actually around 240W that it can put out (P=U*I) because the hardware doesn’t use that much of the other voltage outputs.

My most power hungry part of my system is my graphics adapter and everything has been working well with this setup for the last 1½ years so it just can’t be about the power. The tdp values of my system don’t exceed the amount my PSU can lash out.

Yes I see.

So the next thing to ask really is did it suddenly just start happening, or did it happen as soon as you installed server08?

After installing server 08 I’ve been suffering from those random lock ups, I installed the OS like a month ago and it has happened twice so it’s not a big deal but it still annoys of course since everyone wants the system to be stable. I just wish the reason was those drivers.

[Wakers]

Have you checked the error log in administrative tools?

[aviv00]

all the problem i have with server i didnt had with win7 beta

try it

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