We run sbs 2008, and it's fully patched up.
Every now and again:
1) People have trouble viewing shared drives on it via a unc path but not a mapped path.
2) Opening and saving files causes the programs using them to hang for a few mins. After a while it kicks back into life.
3) When loging on to a comptuer on the network it can wait for ages before progressing to the desktop.
4) Emails don't get sent and then they suddenly do.
5)I get this error in the event log:
The processing of Group Policy failed. Windows attempted to read the file
\\[domain].local\SysVol\[domain].local\Policies\{9BB28F78-50AC-4BA3-8500-A833DD05D8DC}\gpt.ini
from a domain controller and was not successful. Group Policy settings may not be
applied until this event is resolved. This issue may be transient and could be
caused by one or more of the following:
a) Name Resolution/Network Connectivity to the current domain controller.
b) File Replication Service Latency (a file created on another domain controller has
not replicated to the current domain controller).
c) The Distributed File System (DFS) client has been disabled.
These problems come and go every few minutes until the server is rebooted. In the past a reboot would sort it for weeks but now it is happening in the same day.
There are no backups being run, and we have symantec endpoint protection 11 installed on the server but the last auto protect scan was several hours ago according to the stats.
anyone got any ideas what i can do to troubleshoot this?
Best Answer
Is this a Dell Server using Broadcom NICS. I assume so, since you mention TOE. Symantec endpoint does not work properly with these adapters, even if you turn TOE off.
I had the same problem on a Dell 2950 Win2008 - writing to the server via a mapped drive was OK (but only just OK), you couldn't browse any shares on the server from an XP client. Retrieving files from the server was virtually impossible - a 1k file copy took around 2 minutes. Remove Symantec - everything working perfectly again 100mb file copy from server to PC took only a few seconds, you vould browse the server shares, connect to a printer, etc.
My solution was to install Bitdefender and ditch the very average Symantec product. System runs perfectly with Bitdefender installed, with TOE enabled.
I think the problem is that Symantec does not install a driver/protocol into the network stack, whereas other vendors such as Bitdefender, Kaspersky, and possibly others do. Therefore when the packets are offloaded to TOE, BD, Kas, etc continue to work perfectly whereas the Lame Dog bounces the stack in and out of TOE rendering the system virtually comatose.
Since Symantec seems to have this architectural defect, I suspect it will never be able to work with any variation of TOE.