[Spyderturbo007]

Alright, this boggles my mind and I need some help. A friend of mine runs a simple file server on his business network and called me for some advice because he was having problems. I went over to take a look and I'm stumped.

It's a simple network, 3 workstations and a file server all running XP Pro. The file server has two partitions, one for the OS and one for data storage. It also runs a RAID 1 Array. There are basically 3 programs installed on the file server, a Timeclock Program, ACT! (Contact Manager) and the Quickbooks Enterprise server program.

He had just upgraded QB to the newest version and started having the strangest problem. Anytime a client machine queries a specific section of the program, i.e. the loan manager inside of QB, the server turns off! I don't mean shuts down, it just turns off like someone held the power button. It immediately reboots and no error messages are thrown on the server.

Other than that, it runs perfectly. You can browse files, open Word and Excel documents, surf the web, defrag the HDD, perform backups and HDD images, etc. No problems at all.

The clients show 5 errors, but I can't tell if they occur before or after the server shuts down.

I am just completely stumped on this one and have never seen anything like it in my life. He called QB before calling me and they tried and tried to get it working, with no success. When I got there, the RAID 1 array was degraded and the OS wouldn't boot showing a hal.dll corrupted or missing error. I'm assuming this was caused by them crashing the server all day long during testing. We talked about it and decided we would do a full re-installation just in case.

I installed just the OS and the QB database server. All drivers were updated as was the OS and QB, but we had the same problem. I'm out of ideas and really want to help him out.

I turned off "Automatic Reboot" on system failure and got nothing. Apparently it isn't throwing a blue screen because there is no mini dump files. I'm putting this in the hardware section because I can't think of another cause. I can't see file corruption, or a programming problem causing the shut off, unless it was doing something weird like tripping a thermal protection circuit. The only thing I haven't done that I can thing of, is updating the BIOS, provided there is even one available.

All the machines were custom built in May of 2009 and were running an older version of QB since then. I can provide the specs if necessary. At this point I would love any suggestions, no matter how far fetched they are.

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Hi Dear,

Just check the memory sticks or reinstall your operating system.

I hope it will help you.

[chanchalseo]

Hi Dear,

Just check the memory sticks or reinstall your operating system.

I hope it will help you.

[Spyderturbo007]

I stated in my first post that I re-installed just the OS and the QB Database server. I neglected to state that I have already tested the RAM.

[Spyderturbo007]

Well, I stopped over yesterday and updated the BIOS to the newest version (v7) and that didn't work.

Can anyone help because I'm stumped?

[dsenette]

if you set up the server with everything BUT quickbooks (ACT!, time clock thing, etc..) does the problem keep happening when they access ACT! or the time clock software?

how many NICs are in the "server"?

[Spyderturbo007]

Nope, it runs like a champ. You can do everything, except start the loan manager part of QuickBooks.

The MOBO has two onboard NIC's. Both are RealTech RTL8168/8111 PCI-E Gigabit adapters.

Edited by Spyderturbo007, 03 February 2010 - 10:23 AM.

[dsenette]

are both NICs connected? or just one?

so all of QB works fine except the loan manager part?

[Spyderturbo007]

No, only one NIC is connected, the other is enabled however.

It's the loan manager part and whenever he tried to run a report from inside of QB.

[Spyderturbo007]

Apparently this case has been "escalated" and my buddy sent me a copy of the email they want him to respond to, so they can find something else to blame it on. I haven't responded yet, but it looks like they are going to try and blame it on the RAID 1 array.

Here are some key quotes from the email.

I want you to know that my initial impression is that it is system related in some way. Whatever is causing this unique behavior, I am not sure we will be able to find out, but whatever is happening, the Raid is not happy about it. In some environments we can see this kind of behavior, where a behavior affects one file but not others, though it is a very very rare occurrence.

The last thing is that the system requirements do not include the use of a Raid (http://support.quick...earticle/898469) and we cannot guarantee how QuickBooks will behave. I have seen many instances where the QuickBooks data file cannot be on a raid at all.

Can anyone give me any ammunition to fire back with? I understand how RAID works and how to set it up, but I'm not sure how I should address this for him because it sounds like a bunch of crap to me. I guess I just don't know enough about the theory to properly respond. It's a hardware RAID on the Gigabyte board, so according to my understanding, the OS doesn't know that it exists. But then again, if the OS doesn't know about the array, why would I need to install a driver when loading the OS? It's just little things like that where I could use some help.

Thanks!

Edited by Spyderturbo007, 08 February 2010 - 08:06 AM.

[dsenette]

if you were using raid0 i could see a possibility of issues...but raid 1 just duplicates the data across multiple disks and that's all handled at the controller level, the OS and applications don't even see it as multiple disks, they just see the one volume.

maybe a controller failure could be causing the shutdown if the QB module is doing some REALLY heavy disk access....but you should be able to recreate the shutdown outside of that QB module if that's the case.

[Spyderturbo007]

maybe a controller failure could be causing the shutdown if the QB module is doing some REALLY heavy disk access....but you should be able to recreate the shutdown outside of that QB module if that's the case.

There is an automated backup program that runs every night transferring a 7 or 8 GB backup file to another machine, so I know the disk and NIC are being worked hard when that happens.

Any other thoughts from anyone? I'm pulling my hair out on this one and QB just told me that they aren't helping me anymore. I just don't understand why the machine would turn off and not just throw an error.

EDIT -> Here is one thing I just noticed. Why do the voltages have the +12v listed at 0.83v? I'm assuming that's for the +12v rail on the power supply? I'm doubting that's the problem, but I'm grasping at straws here.

Edited by Spyderturbo007, 18 February 2010 - 10:22 AM.

[Spyderturbo007]

UPDATE -> Well, I hooked up a power supply tester and everything checks out, so I'm assuming it's just an problem with the SIW program reading the voltages incorrectly. I took an old machine over, hooked it up and moved the QB database to the test machine and installed the QB database server. Fired up a client, and everything works.

The clients throw a bunch of error messages in the Event Log, but the test server doesn't crash. Keep in mind, the hardware is totally different and there is no RAID array in the test machine.

I also tried running Memtest which doesn't work. It just hangs at the \boot\ line and won't go any further. I pulled one stick and tried again, still no go. Tried the other stick in a different slot and that didn't work either. I tried running the WD diagnostic tools from the UBCD and it doesn't find the HDD's. I'm assuming that's because of the RAID array. I tried installing a new PCI-E NIC and it still crashed.

I thought I would throw in Winternals 2005, but that boots to a 0x07 BSOD. So I tried running a chkdsk /r from the recovery console. The OS drive (C:\) made it to 64%, then dropped back down to 50% and stayed there for 25 minutes. Now it just moved to 51% and seems to have stalled again. The HDD activity light is going crazy.

Is there anyway to break the RAID array, pull a drive and run it normally for testing and then recreate the array without having to reinstall the OS?

AHHHHHH!!! This is driving me crazy and I really want to push it off the desk!

Edited by Spyderturbo007, 18 February 2010 - 03:00 PM.

[Spyderturbo007]

Sorry, double post. I tried editing my last reply and it double posted on me. Can someone delete this post. Thanks!

Edited by Spyderturbo007, 18 February 2010 - 02:44 PM.