charlieo

I am having an intermittent “lock up� that is driving me nuts. I am pretty
much ready to throw the towel in.

We have an IBM eServer 325 (8835) 1U server with dual AMD Opterons, 4 Gig
RAM, dual onboard 10/100/1000 NICS, onboard Rage XL video and onboard IDE
with 2 drives (sliced into 3 partitions). We are running Windows Server 2003
R2 x64 (using Windows to mirror drives) and Exchange 2007 (basic roles with
FSE 2007). Small office network with a Windows 2003 DC in the same rack.

About every 6 or 7 days the box “freezes�. The first indication of the
problem is that clients lose their Outlook connection to Exchange. When I log
onto the console I can view the logs, but there are never any relevant
errors. I can never reboot the box. The more “stuff� I try to open, the
quicker the box completely locks up. I have noticed two constants when the
problem happens. First of all, the system clock (in the tray) is always
frozen at the instant the problem started (Windows event logging also stops
at the same instant). Secondly, the two NIC tray icons are missing from the
tray. I can view the device manager and everything appears fine there even
though the icons are gone. If I try to “remote� in during the problem, I get
half way and then the screen goes black. I always end up having to pull the
AC plug and let the box recycle that way.

Once rebooted, all is well and darn near perfect for another 6 or 7 days
(other than the mirrors need to re-synch). On the DC there are no errors
indicating a problem on the other box (other than a warning that the Exchange
box has the wrong time, etc). This problem has occurred since we built it
with W2K3 several months ago. I have no idea what was on the box previous to
that.

I have swapped memory, drives, CPU’s and finally the entire box with another
325e thinking this was a hardware problem. I keep getting the exact same
results. I have upgraded every driver from the IBM site and even installed
the latest drivers for the AMD processor and chip set from the AMD site. I
have upgraded the BIOS and the firmware on the NICs and BMC. MSI made the IBM
325’s, so I looked on their web site too and took their appropriate drivers.
I have taken all the Windows suggested updates and patches. I have spent days
googling the problem. No changes.

I am reluctant to reformat and start over because I don’t think it will
solve the problem. Is there some AMD/Opteron/Windows 2003 R2 x64
issue/incompatibility I am missing? Does some hardware (like the BMC) just
not play well with Windows 2003? Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

--
Charlie