Occasional Intermittent Connection Issues

[doogiedc]

Hello!

I thank anyone taking the time to read my post and respond. I also thank the administrator for making this forum public and hosting it.

My name is Jeremy and I am a doctor in a medical office. Although networking and computers are not my primary focus or occupation, I know enough to do most things that we need to do around the office with the network and computers. I certainly am good at following directions.

We have a "computer guy" who helped set up our server in 2009, but he is not a networking specialist and I don't believe he has any thoughts on how to fix this.

We have Windows Server 2008 Foundation and 10 computers accessing the server through a domain. In addition, we have about 8-10 other computers accessing the server through a workgroup connection.

We use a business / medical program for notes and billing records on the server that is accessible by all of these computers. The problem that we have been having is that some of the computers connected to the domain are losing their connection to the server and the business program intermittently. Surprisingly, this happens usually from 5-6pm daily on about 3 or 4 of the computers with regularity.

About 4 months ago, we did move our entire office to a new location. This involved moving the server and all of the computers and purchasing a new switch that piggybacks on the smart switch connecting to the server. We went from about 11 computers to around 16-17 initially. We're now up to 20. I had been using a couple computers to connect to the server using a workgroup even prior to this move, but I began using the workgroup connection for each additional computer because there was a cap on the number of computers that could connect through the domain. I would think if using workgroup access was causing the problem, there would have been issues before since this was nothing new. Once again, it is only a few computers with domain access that are having problems; not the workgroup connection computers.

I wondered if there was perhaps a scheduled event on the server that was causing these issues at 5-6pm. On the other hand, there is an event that happens at the end of the workday where we "close cash" on our business program, and this seems to trigger the disconnects on some of the computers.

I do think that changing the computers having problems to workgroup connections would probably solve the problem for those computers, but it would be a lot of work.

For the computers that lose connection, reboots are unnecessary. All that is needed to reconnect is to logout and log back on. Is there perhaps a shortcut or command that could accomplish a reconnection without logging back on?

Any thoughts on how to prevent these drops from occurring short of converting the domain connections to workgroup connections?

NOTE: Connection to the internet is unaffected by these drops. It only affects the ability to access the server - server files and such.

And I would like to say I apologize for my feeble knowledge in comparison to many of the individuals on the forum. I'm sure to be dwarfed in knowledge by many here. I will try to clarify anything if my terminology is found lacking.

--Jeremy

 

[ICTCity]

Hi and welcome, you aren't an it guy but your explanation is perfect, detailed! Well done.

Ok first of all we need to understand if all computers connected to domain are really equally configured, these PC have a static ip or is assigned by DHCP? If so, assign a static ip.

when you lose connection, can you ping the server? And the others PC? Actually your connection is not lost because you can easily reconnect with a logout and login. If you haven't a connection you can't connect to your domain. Are there any errors on the clients side in event viewer?

 

[doogiedc]

Hey Bob. Thanks for replying.

I'll address your thoughts and questions one at a time:

1. The ip is variable. The configuration tracing back from the computer is as follows:

Computer --> Switch --> Server

There is a router as well. Internet Modem (T1) --> Router --> Switch --> Computers and Server

If I am not mistaken, I believe that the router (an older linksys model), is assigning the IP addresses as the DHCP.

I am simply going to paste some screenshots I have taken of the router configuration. I may blur out something that would be a security issue.

2. On assigning a static IP: Not sure exactly how to do this properly.
At first, I simply tried to go to the individual computer's TCP/IP settings in the network connection properties on this screen:

I simply used ipconfig at the dos prompt to get the IP and subnet mask, etc. and typed them into "Use the following IP address".

This did not seem to work. Lost my internet connection on that computer and the server.

Would I need to configure the static IP differently?

3. When I "lose my connection", yes, I can ping the server and everything appears normal. Packets are sent and received in less than 1 ms.

4. I cannot, however, successfully ping another computer on the network. I should probably clarify that the issue probably doesn't have anything to do with a faulty wire or anything of that nature. The wiring seems to be fine, and since I'm getting these errors on multiple computers, I would not expect a wiring issue. Saying I "lost my connection" is probably misleading. I cannot access files from the server when the issue occurs, but I usually have internet access without issue.

5. I have really scoured the events viewer for both the server and the client, and I can't find anything to coincide with the drops and issues I've been having. I had mentioned that these problems happen usually at 5:30 pm. I don't see anything happening specifically in that time range. By the way, a month ago, I had turned off some scheduled events on the server occurring every 4 hours - and turning that off had no effect. Is there any way I can share an event log with you or copy it? Or is that a waste of time?

NEW INFO:
I was going to mention that in our medical office, we did an upgrade to a digital x-ray system that came with 2 computers. One reads the images and one is for viewing them. This setup is as follows:

COMPUTER 1 --> NEW ROUTER (completely separate from the other router I mentioned) -->COMPUTER 2

The new router gets a connection to the network through a wire that connects it to the switch for the server. The new router coordinates a number of components in the digital x-ray equipment.

I can't remember if the problems started before or after the digital x-ray installation. I thought maybe the two routers may be doing battle in assigning IPs - but I would have expected more problems than these intermittent drops only on computers connected to the domain.

Thanks, Jeremy

 

[ICTCity]

I'm not bob

Alright, the problem is your server and not clients switches router pc other.

Now the point is... What works and what does not work? If your server answer to a ping request, then is not something related with your network. It looks like a service (don't know which) goes down and up but this should affect all the computers, not only 2 or 3.

Most probably the problem could be the DNS which is confusing something.

To export event viewer:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc749339.aspx

Then send me per email. I write you a pm.

 

[doogiedc]

You want event viewer logs from the computer with the issues or the server?

Sorry about the bob thing. The moderator sends messages to inform on responses and my email says "from bob".

--Jeremy

 

[ICTCity]

Both

I know there's a unique address

 

[doogiedc]

The individual computer will be easy. That is small. The server's log files are huge (20MB+), so give me some time on that. Not as easy as I'd hoped. I wonder if there is a way to set it to clear old logs - rather than a log since the day the machine turned on.

--Jeremy

 

[ICTCity]

Filter per date and then export