T20 random freezes

Zdanhauser,

Likely this is being caused by one of the drivers, but you can also verify that the BIOS and the BMC/EMS/Drac is also up to date. Also, in the System Properties, under the Advanced tab, and then in Startup and Recovery, do you see that "Write an Event to the system log" is checked? Is  kernel dump or present in the drop down? If so you may check for a memory.dmp file on the system. 

Lastly, if we can't locate anything in the logs or dumps, have you tried running Perfmon on the system to see what is causing the freeze? 

Let me know what you see.

Chris, 

thanks for prompt reply. BIOS is the latest one but also tried with downgrade versions. Still freezes.Write eventlog is checked and no relevant entry in particular time. MEMEORY.DMP doesnt exist. Perfmon can be a good idea. I will set then revert soon regarding that. What do you thinnk about behavior of linux when it  drops network? Theres no any clue in messages. Just like under windows but machine survives. Doesn't sound like a strage irq problem? A colleague of mine suggested to disable onboard lan and put another network adapter for test purpose. 

Thanks again, I will revert soon.

I installed a fedora 20 from scratch. Unfortunatelly it still freezes under linux. What should i do now? It was working a month then froze. There's no clue in logs at all. No high CPU or network load before it is frozen.  Other servers on the same network and the same UPS still work. How can Dell test an issue like this which is not reproducible? Any suggession? Thanks.

I have exactly the same problem as mentioned. 

Windows 7 x64, mouse freezes on usb 2.0, 3.0 ports, sometimes couple of times during 1 hour, sometimes no problems for a day. 

Also happening on Linux. 

Nothing in logs etc. 

Any ideas how to fix that? 

Mike

Forgot to mention that uninstalling USB driver from Device manager and "scan for hardware changes" is bringing mouse to life. 

MIke

Hi Mike,

DELL replaced the motherboard but the error still remained. I use it as server so the mouse, keyboard  , usb ports are rarlely used. I freezes 1-2 times in a months. I reopened the ticket but DELL didn't  answered till now.

Let me know please once you got a solution.

Thanks, Zoltan Danhauser

We are having the same issue on two T20 Xeon servers. However, the problem only occurs when running Forefront TMG. Our configuration also had 8 GB RAM, whereas 4 GB was sold seperately. We noted, that the additional 4 GB RAM was of a different brand. So maybe there is an incompatbilty. We are now checking all different permutations of RAM to see, which RAM stick is defective. The symptoms are the same, the PC does not wake up when moving the mouse or pressing keys on the keyboard and is no longer available in the network. 

As of now, the problem only occurs when running Forefront TMG 2010. But, TMG is installed in a Hyper V Guest VM. This should not allow the host OS to hang. We also tried to install TMG 2010 on a bare metal Windows Server 2008 R2, which lead to the same symptoms. 

Okay, I will let you know when we are done testing all possible combinations of RAM. Actually, I am filing a support request for Microsoft Forefront TMG to eliminate the possibility that the TMG and not the server is the cause.

Did you have any luck contacting Dell for another replacement? My problem is that the server usually takes at least one day until it stops again. So troubleshooting is not that easy.

In case of RAM we are on the same page. However i tested them with 3 diffrerent memory tester and no problem was detected.

Thanks for you reply. No i didn't. I will contact them again but i was too busy to do that until now. 

Any progress on that? 

Mouse freeze is making me sick. 

Mike

Dell support did not resolved the issue. In the meantime I contacted Microsoft Support, because I assumed the problem to be related to the Forefront TMG Firewall software, but neither Microsoft did find an issue.

However, I managed to work around it by installing Windows virtualized using VMWare's free hypervisor ESXi. The issue is no longer occuring. Also, I tried to use HyperV first, but then the issue also occurs on the virtualization host. So I believe the issue is related to some kind of drivers.

Hello there! It was a memory problem. However the tests didn't report any problem. Both module were replaced. The server runs until that without any problem.