How to Remotely Reboot a Hung Windows Server 2003

windowswindows-server-2003

I'm trying to remotely reboot a hung 2003 server.

The server is pingable but I cannot remote into it.

psshutdown does not work
shutdown -i does not work

What can I do now that the server is back up to make sure one of these solutions will work in the future?

Best Answer

If Windows doesn't respond to the usual requests to reboot, there's not much else you can do at that point to ensure similar situations in the future to be prevented. A few times I've managed to reboot a hung Windows OS that didn't respond to shutdown or psshutdown by using SCCM client center or pskill to kill lsass.exe. Once that is killed, the kernel forcibly bring the system down for a reboot after 60 seconds. More often than not, however, lsass cannot be killed and that trick won't work.

What kind of hardware is this server running on? Can you install Server 2008R2 instead? While server 2003 is pretty stable, it's still a long way from the stability of 2008, if that's an option. Another option would be to virtualize the 2003 server if it has stability issues due to some odd program it needs to run or some other configuration that cannot be changed to resolve the stability issues. That way you can reset the virtual session if it hangs.

There's many options to resolve your situation, however none of them will involve something as simple as changing a few settings in your Windows Server 2003 install or installing a piece of software. Usually by the time a Windows OS is to the point you describe, it's hung to the point that nothing short of a power/reset button press will suffice.

Related Solutions

Windows Server 2003 – Cannot RDP or Initiate Remote Restart

Try instead:

shutdown -r -f -m \\hostname -c "Comment goes here"

That's a bit drastic, but I've had the need to do that in a very similar environment to what you describe. I also open a cmd window and start a ping -t against the server to watch when the IP stack goes down and comes back up. This is a very useful indicator of activity when you don't have physical access to the server (or are too lazy to get up and walk over to it).

EDIT: (based on your comment) Ok, do this first and then try the above again (or restart it as normal if this works). See it that gets you farther. The -a will abort a system shutdown.

shutdown -a -m \\hostname

Web-server – Best practices for Windows Server 2003 live server reboot

There are several options for accessing the console remotely without relying on RDP into a working Windows install:

Lights Out Management - some servers from Sun, HP, IBM and several others have a Lights Out Management Chip (LOM). I have much of my experience with HP's iLO technology which has saved me several trips. Essentially this chip gives you authenticated remote access to the controls on the front of the server, and most instances much much more. The down side is if you server dosn't have it you can't use it.
IP KVM's or Remote Power Management - several vendors provide products that allow you to access either the keyboard, video and mouse remotely (IP KVM) or less expensivly the ability to manage power remotely by cycling the mains power to the server off and on again via a PDU. The latter option is not recommended unless you are sure simply power cycling the server will help.

The final option would be to not install updates over night, and schedule short outages during the day when you or your "hands and eyes" can be at the data center to sort out any problems. This is at the whim of your customer really, although a quaterly downtime is often a good thing to build in to your agreements.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Windows Server 2003 – Cannot RDP or Initiate Remote Restart

Web-server – Best practices for Windows Server 2003 live server reboot

Related Topic