SailingNut

Hi, I'm new here and a very novice server admin. (Calling myself an admin is a loose use of the word!) I have a W2K8 server acting as a file server and AD controller. It began locking up on me and I thought it was heat related on the CPU so I pulled the case open and put a large fan blowing directly into the case. That seemed to stop the lockups but the server seemed really slow. A few days later the server began locking up again. If I reboot the server (I have to power fail it once it is locked up) it will run for a little while (maybe 30 min) before locking up. However, I just figured out that even though it appears locked up, the TCP/IP stack is still working because it will respond to pings. That has the side effect of making PCs that are members of the domain to take a VERY long time to log in because the server is there from an IP perspective but the DC service is not there so the authentication has to time out. Any ideas what might be going wrong? I really need to revive the server long enough to pull the files from it and then I'm going to get rid of having a DC (I really don't need it) and just set up a box to share the drive space. (I might re-use the hardware if that is not the cause of the problem.) TIA for all help/advice/suggestions!

Was just thinking that maybe Windows Easy Transfer might work? What do you think? The next big thing would be exactly what settings, etc. Do I need to have Easy Transfer backup & restore. Sounds like some homework for me!

Luckily for me, I have been running a full backup every night, so I restored to that and the server is back in order. On the workstation side, I'm probably just going to re-load it with Windows 7. (it currently has Vista.) However, there is one more workstations that could possibly be hit with this. So, could you point me to a good resource for how to copy profiles and restore them? I need the "for dummies" version! -) Thanks!

That may be possible, but the biggest thing is that when I try to locally log into the SERVER it gives me the same error! So I have one workstation that is a member of the domain that has the problem AND the server has the problem. That is the oddest thing to my, why would the server be messed up. I should be clear, the server that I speak of is the only domain controler in the network. So it is not like I have a member server that is behaving badly and can't authenticate with the DC. The DC says it can't authenticate with itself!

Unfortunately, I had already tried the suggestion that you gave here and it did not work.I then moved on to the suggestion in the link I posted and that's when trouble struck big time! My big problem is that the server is doing that when I attempt to log in! It's really odd because I did not make any changes to the server account! I only edited the workstation account for the PC having the problem. So, I'm not sure if it is a problem with an update that I applied or what. Luckily I have been running nightly full backups on the server so I should be able to restore to that. I just hope I can get into the restore console to do that. (I disabled the local machine administrator account for "security" reasons. Just like most pleaces advise you to do.) I'm wondering if all of this is related to my botched server upgrade process that ICTCity helped me through a while back.

OK, I've had this problem with a couple of workstations in the domain before. With them I just un-joined the domain and re-joined the domain and presto, fixed! Well I had the same problem on another workstation where I didn't want to loose all of the local user account settings so I began searching on the Internet and found the following solution. One difference is that my problem is with a workstation. (I DID edit the workstation record NOT the server.) After doing that I applied a few updates that were available for the server and rebooted. Well now when I TRY to log into the server I'm getting the error paraphrased in the title. The full error is: "The security database on the server does not have a computer account for this workstation trust relationship." I'm not completely shut out of my server! Any ideas? Oh, I should mention that I'm pretty much a hack when it comes to server administration. This is a domain in my home with 5 client machines. TIA!

It's Win7 SP1 It's the only client having the problem, but we really don't have to login to our other systems much because we keep them running. I can't really test on the laptop because I left and re-joined the domain and the problem went away.

The setting on the server was already set to "Not Configured" and I checked on the client and there are no network policies set on the client. However if I run ipconfig /all I do see that a primary DNS suffix is set. (Not sure if this is related or not.)

OK, now for the first real operational problem! I have a laptop that we hibernate when not in use. We have opened it up & logged in several times since the domain changes. Well now when trying to unlock the machine (it exits hibernation in a locked state) I get the following error (with a known good passeord, have tried several times) "The security database on the server does not have a computer account for this workstation trust relationship" I tried creating a machine account for the computer on the server, but to no avail. :-( I have searched on Google a bit and have not found any satisfactory answers. I think this all points back to the SID problem that I mentioned the other day. What do you think? Looking forward to an answer! My wife is not happy without her laptop! And I'm even more unhappy without it! -) Thanks!

Glad I could give at least a little something back!

FYI, I now have a completely "clean" dcdiag report. It turns out the DHCP problem was that I had to "authorize" the DHCP server back into the domain after demoting and promoting. I found a problem where it was not handing out an address to my laptop connected on WiFi. I opened up the DHCP panel and it told me that I needed to authorize it and told me to right click on my domain name in the panel and select ahtorize. How simple was that?!?!? Hope this tidbit comes in handy for you some time in the future!

First operational hiccup....... My 2003 server is still on the network but demoted to a standalone server. I tried to log into it with a domain administrative account and it failed to authenticate. I had to log into the local computer. It this to be expected since I demoted it and it's no longer a member of the domain or is it failing because of some other reason? I checked the computer properties and it still thinks it's a part of the domain, so there may be some other problem lurking.

OK, I was worried about seeing errors in the event viewer and that it could catch up with me down the road. I'd love to get rid of the errors, but I don't want to jump through a bunch of hoops if they really aren't going to cause any problems. Thanks for all of your help! I'm not seeing any operational problems now!

I'd like to avoid that because I think it will wipe out the personal settings & etc. for each domain user on that computer. (Or am I completely wrong?)

The computer X are the workstation computers in my network. There is nothing in AD Domains & Trusts. When I right click on it & select manage it opens AD Users & Computers and that is where I added the computer account. (Trying to replicate on the server what happens when you join a machine to the domain.)