We have a fairly new server running Windows 2003 SP2, and the past few days we've noticed random slowdowns. When I'm logged into the server over remote desktop while this is happening, or if I'm physically sitting at the server logged in, suddenly everything becomes extremely laggy. Any UI element I try to interact with takes upwards of ten seconds to react, and then responds very slowly. Then a minute later everything is quite snappy again. During this, I have Task Manager minimized to the tray, and there's no CPU usage. I open it up right after this happens, and there's very little CPU usage on the graph, and no memory or pagefile usage above normal. (Normal being 1.5 GB free in the case of memory.) This is what I see logged into the server, and then users start calling saying things are slow, timing out, and failing–anything to do with our server.
No events in the Event Viewer around the times this happens. The context I'm working in (last thing I clicked, etc.) seems different every time–different programs active, different combinations of programs open. Never anything particularly stressful (like adding an event entry to a Cobian Backup configuration, or editing text in TextPad, which has been exceptionally stable in my extensive usage of it.)
I would've thought it was just the server, but a family member's home PC (entirely separate) running WinXPSP3 had the same thing happen to it last night a few times. Is this some new behaviour introduced by the latest Windows Updates? Either way, where do I even start to look when nothing seems to be chewing up resources?
Best Answer
I'm also having this issue with 2 of my servers. The first server was just a file\Print server running 2003 R2. it was on a Dell 2900. orginaly I thought it was the hardware. so I rebuilt the server on another 2900 and moved the dataover. the problem was still happening. The way that I see the problem is to do a dir /s on a large volume. for me it's D: when the scrolling of files and folders lags is when everything else is lagged.
For that server I ended up putting 2008 Sp2 on it and the problem went away. Now I'm hainvg the problem on a Hyper-V 2003 instance. The users report the lag when they do file operations on this server. There home drives are mapped here. They will click on P:\ and wait about 10 to 15 seconds