Member Avatar for isaac_ho

Dear All Gurus,

I have setup a Windows Web Server 2008 (32bit) with a DELL Poweredge R210 hardware since Oct 29, 2010. In these 2 weeks it hanged 4 times, 3 of these 4 occurred in recent 2 days. I cannot find anything strange in the event logs and system logs. I think the system could not log the crash events when it was crashed. I installed all service packs, hotfixes and system updates for the Win2K8. All installed hardware drivers are provided by Dell. I even don't know whether it is hardware problem or OS problem.

My question is: How can I know the reason cause it hanged frequently? It seems that log reading can't help.

Thanks for your attention.

Best regards
Isaac

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by Richth

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Short, practical plan for based on the symptoms you gave (PowerEdge R210, Win Web Server 2008 x86, hangs with no obvious Event Log entries). Intermittent hangs with no clear log entries are often hardware/firmware or low‑level driver problems — but you still need a methodical capture-and-isolate approach.

Start with hardware telemetry and isolation: run the vendor’s full offline diagnostics and an extended memory test (several full passes overnight), check the server’s out‑of‑band logs (iDRAC/ILO or BIOS System Event Log) for temperature, voltage, or controller errors, inspect SMART attributes and run a full disk surface check, reseat or swap RAM modules and remove nonessential cards. Verify BIOS/RAID/NIC firmware versions and update only if a later, stable firmware addresses known issues. If the server is on shared power or a UPS, verify there were no power blips.

Do controlled OS-level tracing next: schedule a maintenance window and collect continuous performance counters (CPU, memory, disk queue length) and a circular ETW trace so you capture the moment of the hang. Use driver verifier selectively to expose bad drivers (with caution — it can force crashes while active). Look for correlations with scheduled tasks, backups, antivirus scans, or network spikes. If you can reproduce the hang under stress testing (CPU/memory/disk I/O), it’s much easier to pinpoint whether hardware or software is responsible.

A short prioritized checklist

  • Run extended Dell hardware diagnostics and overnight memtest.
  • Check iDRAC/BMC and BIOS event logs and review temperatures/power.
  • Stress-test to try to reproduce (CPU, memory, disk I/O).
  • Capture long-running perfmon/ETW data and run driver verifier in a controlled window.
  • If unresolved, gather logs (system events, BMC/iDRAC, firmware versions, any dumps/traces) and open a case with Dell — include exactly when the hangs occurred and what tests you already ran.

If you want, post back the diagnostics output (BMC/System Event entries, SMART status, memtest results) and the community can help interpret them.

Member Avatar for Richth

Dear All Gurus,

My question is: How can I know the reason cause it hanged frequently? It seems that log reading can't help.
Isaac

Will attempt to offer some direction, as your question has many potential answers.

First, If you have not already performed clean boot troubleshooting procedures, I would search the Microsoft Knowledge Base for best practices, which may also resolve/reveal the issue.
If this has been done already and was no help, I would set your Startup and Recovery options to create a memory dump file, if not already configured to do so. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315263 for details.

Second, within the same article, you should click the link to download the DumpCheck.exe utility, which makes reading memory dump files much easier for non-programmers. This is simply to be prepared in the event a memory dump file is getting created.

Third, if no memory dump files are being created, the chances are better you're dealing with a hardware issue, though not necessarily. So, before saying it's a hardware fault, download ADPlus Ver. 6 (see link in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/286350). ADPlus is a VBScript that automates the CDB debugger, which is a text mode based, Microsoft debugger for troubleshooting User Mode issues like hangs and crashes. The help file is contained in "Debugger.chm", and contains much useful information about troubleshooting hangs and application faults.

I believe this will get you headed in the right direction toward solving your issue. Hope it helps.

Edited by Richth because: n/a
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