So, I have a server that stays up, but becomes totally unresponsive. Clicking the Start menu or anywhere on the desktop just gives me an hourglass for a while, then nothing. Ctl-Alt-Del only works occasionally, and then only returns the following error:
FAILURE TO DISPLAY SECURITY AND SHUTDOWN OPTIONS:
Logon process was unable to display security and logon options when Ctl-Al-Del was pressed. If the operating system does not respond, press ESC or RESTART THE COMPUTER USING THE POWER SWITCH. (emphasis mine).
Yep, that's a Microsoft error message advising me to restart a Windows server with the power switch. Normally when a GUI on windows machine hangs like this, you can use CLI routines like shutdown, tasklist and taskill. but in this case, even those commands time out, or give me an "RPC not available error" when I try.
Currently, I have no real good idea why this is happening. Since I can't see the task manager or the tasklist, I have no idea what's taking up memory or cpu. Event viewer is not showing me a smoking gun, just some VSS errors that seem to be non-critical according the google and event id.
The server is a AD & file server with 4 iSCSI connections to a single Netgear ReadyNAS for our files. Vipre business AV agent and Backup Exec 2010 remote agent. Also SQL Server Express 2008 supportings vCenter Protect.
So, I suspect a conflict between the iSCSI drives/backup exec/Vipre AV, but I have no evidence, and if the only way to recover from this problem is to cold-start the server, then I have no way to find out what's going on.
Any ideas appreciated.
