W2K Server Service Pack 2

Please advise how to ( if possible) re-install SP2 forcing replacement of all files of a previous SP2 installed.

Thanks in advance.

 

Remove current SP2 from Add/Remove programs

Reboot

Install Service Pack 2 again

 

maybe I should have specified, SP2 is not in the add/remove programs list so must have been installed without the uninstall option........that would have been too easy!

 

Ouch - if the uninstall option isn't there then things are more difficult.

Maybe if you could say what problems you are having. And if there is a reason for avoiding SP3.

 

Hi Newt (fellow AN member ) - I work for a very small IT services company, user support for small to medium businesses, that kind of thing.

One of our clients has a network of 9 pc's with a W2K Server as domain controller. Recently the server has been crashing every time Sophos AV is run, with blue screen stop errors.

My boss feels that perhaps some files have become currupt and that re-installing SP2 may help.

Yesterday we realised that this behaviour may have started when we moved the swap file from the C (system) drive to the larger E drive, so I changed it back to see if the issue would be resolved.

Before yesterday the AV scan would get to approx. 25% done when the system would crash and perform a physical memory dump(1GIG) to disk.

After reverting the swap file to the C drive, the scan will get to approx. 55% done and then crash!


Regards

Colin

 

Until Newt gets back to you let me ask a few questions he will want to know.

1. Is this the only problem? Nothing else is going on?

2. Is the system clean?

3. If only the virus scan, have you uninstalled it and reinstalled?

My advice.

Uninstall the Virus scanner then D/L and install but do not run the following until you boot to safe mode. NOTE! I admin many 2k Servers and run all of these reg cleaners and they are safe.

Registry and System cleaners

RegCleaner
http://www.vtoy.fi/jv16/shtml/regcleaner.shtml
Look in first 2 cols for programs you thought you uninstalled or removed, these are the dregs left by the uninstaller.

Also tag and remove any that you are POSITIVE are not supposed to be on your computer. After removing these go to the top Tools-Registry Cleanup-Do them all. Delete all it finds.

EasyClean1.7 http://gswi.com/downloads.htm
Run only unnecessary files and registry clean delete all it finds. If you have ME or XP in the "Unnecessary Files" type the word HELP in the skip box. Do not do Duplicate files!

RegScrubXP
http://www.lexunfreeware.com/LexunFreeware.htm
NOTE: W2K and XP only!

Select RegScrub finds problems and remove all it finds.


Configure CleanMgr to max settings
Go to Start-Run and type

cleanmgr /sageset:1
The above need only be run once (these settings will be remembered as the default until another sageset is ran).

It will present a menu select all except compress, then

Go to Start-Run and type

cleanmgr /sagerun:1
As long as /sageset above has been ran on this computer from now on the /sagerun is the only thing that needs to run.

Then upon boot back to full mode do these 3 online scans before reinstalling you virus scanner. Second opinion to your virus scan program. Especially since it has been bombing out, you could have a virus. Remember there are a few Viri that try to disable the scanner.

Online Virus scanners
http://www.anti-trojan.net/at.asp?l=en&t=onlinecheck
http://www.bitdefender.com/scan/licence.php

http://www.pandasoftware.com/activescan/com/activescan_principal.htm

Mike

 

thanks for the reply mflynn

This is the only problem we are experiencing.

The problem only happens during a scan, I have uninstalled and reinstalled the AV program a couple of times.

Please clarify - "D/L "
Please clarify - run reg cleaner utilities in safe mode?


many thanks

Colin

 

Hmmm

Colin

D/L short for "download "

So what I meant was to download the links I posted for the regcleaners install them but do not run then in full mode but boot to safe mode and run them there.

They can be run in full mode but much better and more thoroughly in safe mode!

Also remember to uninstall the virus scanner "yes again" before you boot to safe mode and do these cleanups.

Did you understand the Cleanmgr process?

Also use the online scans before reinstall of your virus scanner.

BTW! If you had a SP2 problem you would have other symptoms. If you did anything about the sp you should do SP3!

I just noticed you are in England 7 hrs ahead of me. It is 7:30 am now and I am headed to work.

I will try to check back in a couple of times from there this morning.

Mike

 

On the 30 minute drive to the my office I was thinking more about your problem.

You say this is a clients office. So you do not know what they do or how they use the server on a
day to day basis.

Basically they should leave it alone except for maintenance. But if they are running apps recieving
email etc on the server, or have stations on the network doing games and playing then something
besides a Virus may have gotten to the server.

So!

In addition to my last post do the below also.

Startup control

http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml
This gives simple and full control of what starts at boot up. After install there will be a Startup icon in control panel. Why this over Msconfig? Msconfig only allows unchecking/disabling of items. Startup Control panel allows deleting items or moving from startup to run as a service etc.

http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/files/startuplist.zip
StartupList does nothing but grab all Autoload (startups) and puts them in a Wordpad file so that you can then copy it and paste it back to us in a message so that we can advise on a problem here.

So post the startups back to us by doing a copy then paste to a message to us.

And also check for Spy/Adware so get and use:

SpyBot

http://security.kolla.de/index.php?lang=en&page=download
Run this twice delete all it finds, "ALWAYS" run this before AdAware.
Leave all it wants to leave after the second run.

Mike

 

Status, questions?

Mike

 

Hi mflynn - many thanks for your instructions/suggestions.

I spoke to Sophos tech support yesterday and thought I would carry out their suggestion first, which was to try to narrow down which directory is the crash occurring on. It turns out that maybe one of the directories has become "too big for sophos to handle" so am going on site this morning to address this possibility.

If this does not turn out to be the cause , then I will be carrying out all your suggestions immediately. In fact I will do the registry clean ups etc anyway!

Again, many thanks and I will report back soon.


Regards

Colin

 

Colin

I would do my steps in both messages and I would do them exactly and in the order presented irregardless of Sophos suggestion.

EasyClean and the Cleanmgr /sagerun:1 will get rid of much temps in addition to their EasyCleans registry cleanups.

Do my suggestions first and you have a better chance of not having to backup to these steps again anyway. Keep in mind these will only help over all anyway.

If Sohpos has this kind of shortcomming or you do have some ridiculus amount of files somewhere. What are you going to do if you need to keep the files.

Additionally you could have an extremely large file that it is failing on.

This brings me to one more thing you should do first if you have not done it.

We both may have overlooked the obvious because we went looking for the esoteric. A disk error could cause this!

DO THIS BEFORE ANYTHING.

Command prompt

chkdsk /r ( it will want to do this on next boot) reboot let it finish!

Do this for each partition!

Headed for morning shower and get dressed for work, check back in 30 minutes.

Mike

 

???

What is the word, man!

Mike

 

Colin

Hey man I wouldn't have spent my time trying to help if I wasn't interested.

Tell me to butt out or give a status. But tell me something!

Mike

 

Sorry about the delay Mike (and thank you for your interest)

Present status is after trying all the above, executing a scan now causes server to crash whilst scanning the C: drive or at some other random time.

I was able to scan the server across the network from a client pc so no viruses anyway!

Sophos developers still on the case for me, they called this morning and asked me to send the minidump files for when it crashed while scanning the last few times.



Regards

Colin