Windows Server 2008 R2 64bit Screen Frozen and Remote Desktop Freezes but Server Continues Working

windows-server-2008-r2 remote-desktop rdp windows-sbs-2008

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Solution 1

It might be the cause of memory exhaustion . I have the same problem , not able to login through remote or locally. Black screen comes out after login. As per the monitoring tool my server is consuming 99 percent of the memory.

Solution 2

I have a redundant set of AD servers that periodically do the same. Those are (luckily) the only Windows servers we run. What happens is that the user.ini file gets corrupted, particularly on a lengthy Windows update session. The only thing that helps is (since of course it does not find its recovery partition, and a command line does not help) to take the OS disk out, put it on a USB-to-SATA adapter, connect it to any willing PC, and manually go through the directories in the \user folder and delete everything with the extension .ini. Pop the disk back into the server, boot it up, and restore all of the users' desktop and such, for all users (in our case there is only one user, and that is admin) since these servers really only need to run AD. Terrible software design.

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Jacques

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Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

Jacques over 1 year

I've asked this question a couple of times but I don't seem to be getting any real answers.

We have a SBS (Windows Server 2008 Rc) server and suddenly the screen has started freezing. Even when we go into the system via remote desktop it worked once or twice (since the problem started), but now the RDP screen freezes once it gets just past the Welcome screen.

The server itself is running, SQL is working, Exchange is working, file share is fine. It's just the UI that isn't working.

We've tried hard resetting and that works for a short while before the problem comes back.

EDIT: When the screen freezes we cannot get access to the operating system at all. That is, we can't access the GUI portion of the OS either via the machine itself or RDP. But, we can still access shared drives, run commands on the machine from a different machine (CMD).
- Bernie White over 11 years
  
  You should phrase your question so someone can answer it. IT is not clear if you are asking why it is happening or how to fix it or both.
- Jacques over 11 years
  
  Hi Bernie, apologies I assumed that any server admin would automatically want to know why it's happening and how to fix it. Thanks for the tip
- bonga86 about 11 years
  
  Is this a VM or physical host? Either way try to access host screen, and see what see what happens when you send Ctr+Alt+Del. I had a similar issue on our R2 systems and this patch from Microsoft resolved the issue support.microsoft.com/kb/2661001. Dont apply this patch if doesnt relate to your problem, also before deploying a patch make sure you test before hand.
- Jacques almost 11 years
  
  Hi Bonga, it's not a VM no. This problem eventually went away after we removed Exchange from the server. I'm thinking this was a memory issue since it only had 8Gb RAM, but I would have liked a definitive answer to know what to do if it happens in future.
Jacques about 12 years

HI Mathieu, I've added some more information to my original question. Basically the operating system is operational, but the screen freezes both on the machine itself and RDP. We can still run commands from other machines against the server and access shared files and so on and services like exchange still work, its literally just the GUI that is frozen.
Mathieu Chateau about 12 years

so use pskill remotely from sysinternal to kill explorer when it freezes. What eventlog says ?
Mathieu Chateau about 12 years

You may also activate crash on control to force a BSOD (blue screen) and so to get a memory dump. Then analyze memory dump to see what is happening when hanged. Most of time it's a driver problem if it's global. Could try to update all drivers first
Bernie White over 11 years

The link provided is for client operating systems not server operating systems. Your answer should explain in words how to solve the issue, one sentence and a link is not a good answer.
Jacques almost 11 years

We use Eset NOD32 Antivirus. Since we removed a couple of roles from the server this issue has never come up again so I'm guessing it was memory related, but we can't be sure which is frustrating.
Jacques almost 11 years

Thanks John. There were unfortunately no logs associated with this issue.
Jacques over 10 years

+1 Actually in the end it was memory. We dropped Exchange off the server which freed up quite a bit of memory and then stopped all SBS monitoring services which was chewing up the hard drive. Since then we've never had this issue again.
Rob Moir over 9 years

What sounds "terrible" here is that you're apparently letting users log in to "AD servers" (by which I assume you mean domain controllers). This is an awful, dreadful idea. And incidentally, I've never had the problem you're describing on any windows servers, including terminal servers used by hundreds of users. If files are routinely being corrupted in your Windows server setup then something is wrong with your configuration.