Diagnosing Cause Of Unplanned Shutdown

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PhillipCA

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May 17, 2010
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3
Location
Modesto, CA
Hi,

I've got a 4GB Winserver 2008, SP 2, 64 bit system that mysteriously shuts down and restarts at random intervals from a few days to a few months appart. It has APC powerchute installed and a check of it's log does not reveal any power outages or battery back up tests. We've confirmed that the UPS has sufficient power for this system.

How do I figure out if I'm looking at a hardware problem, (One tech recommended adding a second redundant powersupply)or a software problem? The only other software installed on this machine is Filemaker Server 10 and the techsupport boards over in Filemaker land aren't reporting any mysterious shut down issues there.

The restarts have always occurred at night though a restart during the day when it supports a point of sale environment would be disastrous. Last Friday's shutdown damaged a database file which we fortunately were able to replace with a back up.
 
Just out of my head, I assume you did not find anything strange in the Event Viewer? Any software scheduled for update that crashes? If you set the dates on to a calender, do they follow some kind of regularity?

Hardware specs? Installed software?
 
Thanks for the reply. The shutdowns do not follow any predictable pattern and there were no pending updates at the time this occurred.

I find using the event viewer on these systems are very confusing, I'm not sure if I'm just not selecting the right options and/or filters or if there's truly nothing there to see. I can find this message:

The previous system shutdown at 8:01:59 PM on 5/15/2010 was unexpected.
This was logged at about 8:05 PM. The only other error message is posted 4 seconds later and says:Audit events have been dropped by the transport. The real time backup file was corrupt due to improper shutdown.

Just prior to the shutdown, I see a warning: Cannot init features - monitoring disabled (Source is Hpqilo2) and occurred at 7:53:07--This message is logged frequently on days where no shutdown occurred.

System had the latest windows updates run about three hours earlier, though previous shutdowns happened at times when no update had been run.
 
Try looking at your HP Integrated Management log. You may have an ASR or driver issue and need to upgrade (or downgrade) the ILO firmware and drivers. I've seen several reports of similar issues around the web.

There is a thread on the HP boards and an HP advisory notice on unexpected reboots. Though, of course, your issue could be unrelated.
 
Thanks!

I think that gives me the info I need to get the right tech involved in fixing this. BTW, your link to HP does not work. The same link appears in the other forum and I was able to click it. It seems to describe a problem that may occur when shutting down--not the issue I have and recommends upgrading when the forum posts recommend downgrading to fix the problem.

Either way, it looks like disabling ASR may do the trick. If not, a firmware change may be just the ticket.
 
Hmm, I'm not sure why that link doesn't work. Cutting and pasting the link into the browser seems to work:
Code: 
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&objectID=c01802766

(Edit: Okay, I found the problem with the link. For some reason it shows above with a lowercase d in "document.jsp". When you paste the link into a browser, change the lowercase d to a capital D and it should work.)

HP SUPPORT COMMUNICATION - CUSTOMER ADVISORY

Document ID: c01802766
Version: 6
Advisory: (Revision) Integrated Lights-Out 2 (iLO 2) Firmware Version 1.81 (Or Earlier) And iLO 2 Management Controller Driver Version 1.11.1.0 (Or Earlier) - ProLiant Server May Unexpectedly Reboot And Display Event ID 57 Error Messages
Release Date: 2010-05-05
Last Updated: 2010-05-05
 
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