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sorry for double post, had wrong subject line
on our primary NT server, about an hour ago, the CPU shot up to 100% and stayed there. I took a peek at the task manager, and the "System" resource is hovering at about 98-99%
Any explanation? I really don't want to reboot this thing during business hours. Users can still access files and everything fine, but I can't administer users or anything form the desktop, it takes forever!
Make sure no-one is trying to "get in" to your server. Check firewall logs (if you have one) and make sure that no "dodgy" software has secretly installed itself. Try Spybot and Ad-aware. If you don't have a firewall -- which you need -- try ZoneAlarm.
JMonkey
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We've changed the firewall password and ran anti-virus and spayware software, everything is clean.
Over the weekend the server was rebooted and it dropped to 65-70% CPU, but this morning as people logged in and went to work, it's back up to 100%
It would be OK if I could identify the source, but it's all "System" and not "System Idle" like it should be.
Please throw me some ideas!! Thanks!
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Dave,
If you go to task manager, what processes are running? Is there any that look out of the ordinary or that are consuming a lot of resources?
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the only ones that are taking CPU time is SYSTEM and SYSTEM IDLE PROCESS. I just rebooted, and at first CPU was at 2%, IDLE 98% and over the last 20 minutes it's been slowly reversing, with CPU usage rising with SYSTEM.. right now CPU is at 53%, SYSTEM is at 63%, IDLE at 47%, but SYSTEM is still rising.
Nothing else looks out of ordinary.. is there a list somewhere that will tell me the process names, and what they do?
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Dave,
have there been any changes on that server prior to this happening. Have there been any services or programs added?
Also what is running on that server is it a file server, application server?
Also as far as a list of process names, I personally usually go to google and do a search on the process and it usually comes back with some info that will more or less tell me what it does.
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Thanks Manny,
No new programs were isntalled. Everything was normal. I had copied a large amount of files (about 500mb) into a newly created folder. I changed permissions on the folder, and sat down while it changed the permissions on the subdirectories and files. ABout 20 mintues later I noticed this problem. The folder and it's files have been deleted and the server rebooted several times.
There are a bunch of services running, just about all of them are common things, none I can't contribute to a real program we have. However, most of them are using no CPU, or just 1 or 2% as the need arises, but the SYSTEM service won't drop below 99%
The server is our primary domain controller, and also serves as a file server. (Has all the shared drives, ect). Oh, and it has the network printers installed on it.
It would be great if it was a certain program's service that was doing this, but when it's SYSTEM, there's little I can do to troubleshoot it... I can't stop that service, you know?
Any more clues?
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Funny, we must be thinking the same thing. Between the time I posted that, and just now when I read your reply, I did just that, but with no luck. Even after the reboots, it went straight to 100%, unlike when I rebooted at 7pm (or again at 7:30am when most users were home, and it started off fine and over the course of an hour increased.
Unfortunately, none of the patches and hotfixes helped.
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Strange.....
By any chance when you are in the taskmanager do you see ping running. A few weeks ago we noticed our network was a little sluggish, we checked our servers and found ping running on one of them. Just a thought.
Also Is this also your email server by any chance?
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No, this isn't our e-mail server.
Here's something, I think I narrowed it down to being related to logons.
Last night I stayed a little late, and at about 6:30 I checked and was surprised to see it was down to 6%. I checked around, and noticed that I was the only person here.
I thought about something someone said about the share I was creating when it first ran up. Two people were mapped to that share through the login scripts. I went to those two people's PC's and logged on, after the first I shot up to 24%, the second it went up to 40%. I went to a third computer, logged on again as one of those two people, and it went over 50%. I got excited thinking it was that share. I turned off those 3 PC's, and it dropped back to 5%!!
However, not to jump to conclusions, I logged on as a third user on a different machine, someone who had nothing to do with that folder, and when I logged on as her, it went up to 22%
Right now, at 7:30ish, it's at 63% with 5 users logged on locally. (I work for a bank, and it seems the people at the branches who log in over the WAN have no ill effect on the server, only local users)
I feel like I'm starting to get somewhere, but the farther I get, the weirder it is. The PDC's CPU gets jacked by people logging on locally, but not over the WAN. Since the people over the WAN come in throuhg a cisco that is hooked up to the same switch that connects to the server as the switches that the local users connect to, I can't imagine it being related to that.
I think I will reset the local switches and see what happens...
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Dave,
sounds like that might be it, but like you said too early to jump to conclusions.
How many users do you have? Also what is the speed and amount of memory this server has?
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manny, first thank you for your patience and helping me with this.
The server is 1ghz with a GB ram.
This is definately something related to network. Again yesterday it started dropping around 5:00 when people started leaving in this building. We have about 200 users, although only about 75 are in this building, and it seems this problem is only related to people logging in in this building.
last night I watched the System Information and yanked the patch cable out of the NIC for 10 seconds, and sure enough the chart dipped to 1%-3% until I plugged it back in.
Overnight, it ran about 10%, witht e servers logged on and running backups.
Today, however, it's pretty consistant at about 50% and I'm not sure why. I think I'm going to take a walk around the building and see if there is anyone who isn't here, and turn on those people's PC's one at a time and see what happens..
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Maybe I have the same problem with Win NT 4.0 server (SP 6). System or system idle processes comes up to 99% when a process stops responding. In many cases helps to kill crashed process and start it again. I work in a Library and the process, which is causing this problem is the one, that is comunicating with users on LAN (library Db system). So it might be anything with local network.
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Well, I'm not sure, but I think I have this thing tackled, thank you everyone for your help. I came in over the weekend, I and removed the drive mapping to the share that was crapped out when this all happened. I rebooted all of the servers, and since then, except for the occasional spike, I really haven't gone over 50% much.
Unfortunately I have no idea what is considered normal for this server, but 50% free is more than enough resources for the system to run, so I'm gogin to go with it.
Thanks again for all your help guys.
Oh, and for future reference, if you are using your PDC as your primary file server, and you have to troubleshooot a network issue, and in the process have to unplug the NIC and then reboot, make sure you plug the damn cable back in BEFORE panicking after the restart because nobody can get to their files! LOL
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Did you check to see if Spoolsv.exe was using any % of your processes, if it was using 1%, it was probably just a printer that was out of paper for a day or so. Closing Spoolsv.exe would problably resolve your issue in the future.
- Bob
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Actually, just closing spoolsv.exe will not resolve the issue.. you should actually fix the problem at the printer itself. ie. add more paper? etc.. or the system process will jump back up to 100% again.
- Bob
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Thanks guys. It was SYSTEM that was using 99%, with SYSTEM Idle using the rest.
After a week or so, it dropped all the way down to 5-8% and has been fine since. I'm convinced it had to do with that share, and the mapped drives.
Thanks again!
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