Occasional blank screen after logging on to Windows Server 2003

We have a server running Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition which is operating perfectly except for on occassion when we try to logon to the console or through terminal services (remote admin). What happens is we press Ctrl-Alt-Del, type our logon credentials and hit enter. It looks normal but the screen is blank (default blue background) with the mouse cursor sitting there waiting for the desktop to appear. The server is not locked up as we can move the mouse and bring up task manager and everything looks normal. We've waited a long time if it is just taking a while to load our profiles but nothing after hours of waiting it out. We've tried logging in using various domain and local accounts but the only thing that "fixes" the problem is rebooting the server.

Any ideas?

 

Any event log clues?

 

Unfortunately not. The only thing that has been logged when attempting to logon is the following when I tried logging on with a local machine account:

Windows cannot do loopback processing for downlevel or local users. Loopback processing will be disabled.

We have our member servers in their own OU with their own GPO and I've enabled loopback processing to override certain user settings coming down from the domain.

 

Looks similar to the issue described in MSKB 832971: Terminal Services stops responding on your Windows Server 2003 server (or MSKB 821467 Windows Server 2003 Terminal Server stops responding)

 

Angel, you're... well an Angel! The first article fits our issue almost to a "T" so I'll give PSS a call to see what they think and install the hotfix. This is a production server so I'll have to schedule some down time to reboot (so I can login) and apply the hotfix but I'll let you know the outcome.

 

I think that hotfix certainly could yield some fruit. If it doesnt pan out, i'd take some perfmons of the machine and see how you are doing on paged/nonpaged pool memory and availible PTEs.

 

Well I installed the KB832971 hotfix with no affect so I installed the KB821467 hotfix and so far so good. I just installed the later hotfix on Friday so I'll give it a full week before calling the issue resolved.

Joe, I've monitored the resources on the server and it's well within the norms, in fact, this machine is hardly being taxed at all and there doesn't seem to be a memory leak.