cluberti

Does this server point to itself (and itself only) for DNS and/or WINS?

I can't send it to you, because I don't have it, but this hotfix _is_ language dependant. Also, since this isn't a security hotfix, you need an extended support contract to receive this hotfix.

On that machine, run "drwtsn32 -i" and see if Dr Watson catches the next crash - upload the zipped version here for analysis, if you aren't comfortable with that. If Dr. Watson doesn't work, there are other ways of making explorer.exe talk .

Also, since that's a 32bit app on an x64 platform, there's some emulation in system calls between the WOW64 subsystem and the processors that setting affinity isn't going to resolve. It's likely that the application does not work well with the 64bit scheduler, and you'll need an x64 version of the app for it to work properly in x64.

If that is the case, then make sure you take VERY frequent backups of the system state on that DC, and keep them somewhere safe in the event you need to do a restore of your AD. Also, if you only have one single DNS server, a failure there means a complete failure for lookups everywhere (but since it's also the only DC, you probably have bigger problems if that server fails anyway - and you'd need your system state backup to restore in this scenario).

Since I _know_ you aren't configuring your domain with only one single DC, you can install AD integrated DNS on that second DC you just dcpromoed . Single points of failure are bad, especially in AD - never, ever have just one DC if you can avoid it. Your DNS server is using the root hints to look up any unresolvable DNS names - this will work by default, but if your ISP provides you with a caching DNS server you can use as a forwarder, this will likely be a better option long-term. And you can do this with your current setup, but I strongly suggest another DC/DNS server.

Last Session ini removed for obvious reasons.

Because it tells us what happened, that's how. If you can zip it and place it somewhere we can get to it, that might help (no guarantees, but it might).

If you have PAE enabled (either specifically in boot.ini, or have a hardware DEP-capable processor installed), then the limit is not 4GB (it's actually 32 or 64GB, depending on hardware). If you do not have PAE enabled, the limit is 4092 for pagefile size.

Your DC and your machines all need to use the internal DNS server ONLY. Do _NOT_ use public DNS servers in your AD setup, unless you want DNS lookup problems.

Would it be possible for you to post the .dmp here, or put it somewhere we can all get to it?

Moving to more appropriate forum.

As to the "Audit directory service access" policy, this can only be run against an AD domain controller. Therefore, when the box is booted, since this is likely a standalone server, the policy is reset to no auditing. As to the other settings being reset, is this server a member of a domain with GPO policies that could be setting these on reboot? Also, can you reproduce this issue perhaps on another box or VM built from a retail or OEM CD that is not a part of a domain?

Are the current profiles on domain A roaming, or local to the machines? Are the machines being migrated over as well?

Password policies (all of them) are per-domain only. If you need separate policies for multiple groups, you need multiple domains.

Download wireshark or netmon, install, and use their "capture" function to capture network traffic until the failure. Note the time (as closely as possible to the time of the failure), and to where you were attempting to connect, and save the capture. You can review it, or have one of us do it for you.

Wow. All I can say, is wow....

As to a server, it could be Windows and SQL server, but you could just as easily run Linux and MySQL, for example. Ultimately, what you choose will depend on how heavily the server is used, what you plan to use it for specifically, and your budget and the hardware you've got to run the solution on. As to the IP, you don't technically need a static IP, but you would need a dynamic DNS registration for the server (like one you can get from dyndns.org), and a client running on the server that updates that DNS record whenever the IP address changes (so you can always access the box via the dynamic DNS record name, rather than IP address).

By any chance do you have a network trace of these dropped or failed connections?

The dependencies tab can be misleading, because it only shows what is necessary to be running in order to send a start command to start a service - it doesn't speak specifically to service functionality or whether or not the service will start succesfully. Technically, this is above and beyond the scope of what the Service Control Manager can determine anyway, as the SCM only cares about what is needed to physically send a start command to the service, not what is needed to allow the binary the service starts to work - that is supposed to be handled by the binary itself. The Software Licensing service is part of the WGA components, and as such it is needed for the Windows Update binary to verify the validity of your OS and thus go to the update servers and check/download/install updates. Don't entirely depend on what the SCM tells you, because it's only half of the story. Hopefully this all makes sense to you.

All machines on the network built from a master image without sysprep will have the same SID and machine name, amongst other things. On a Windows network, this is basically a no-no and can cause issues with IP addressing, windows updates, and network browsing. If you're having issues with your image after sysprep'ing it, consider looking into BDD 2007 for assistance in creating an image that will work post-sysprep.

You need to build a new server, and once configured with correct IP/DNS/maybe WINS information for your domain, dcpromo it to be a domain controller. Make the new server a global catalog server, and wait a few hours. Monitor the FRS logs to make sure replication is occurring properly, and then use ntdsutil to transfer the 5 FSMO roles to the new DC. Again, wait a few hours and monitor the FRS logs to make sure replication is still occurring properly. Once you're sure everything is ok on the domain, you can dcpromo the Win2K server down to a member server, and perhaps raise the domain functional level once that is complete (and again, wait a few hours to make sure everything is ok) to Windows 2003 functional level for the domain and forest.

You do realize that logs are still being generated when you disable services and logging, but just not written to disk? This is akin to disabling perfmon counter objects - the data is still collected, but you just can't query it anymore. Oh, and if anything on your box requires writing to the event log in the future, you've just generated a system hang or bugcheck by disabling the event log service. Just an FYI.

mmX.Memoch is correct, but from what I understand your query to be, this is what you're trying to do.

Just to add - try disabling Windows Defender to see if you get any better performance, as well as removing (not disabling) your antivirus to see if that helps, if disabling defender does not.