[dba-SQLServer] HELP, server completely unresponsive

jwcolby jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Thu Sep 24 09:56:56 CDT 2009


I have a situation way outside my expertise.  Yea, yea, I know a lot of you would ask what is IN my 
expertise, we can discuss that another day.

Anyway, I run two Windows 2003 X64 servers.  Quad core, 16 gigs ram, RAID6 arrays.  Reasonably 
powerful.  Mostly I run SQL Server on one and VMs on the other.  In BOTH CASES I have told the 
software, SQL Server for instance, to only use X gigs of RAM, to leave 2.5 gigs for the OS and other 
applications.

And yet, SQL Server starts a long running process and the server becomes unresponsive.  In some 
instances for example, I can load a spreadsheet or whatever... but it takes forever to load.  Just 
clicking the start button I have to wait 30 seconds for the start menu to show.

Like that.

I have a query running which is updating a field in a medium size table - 8 million records or so. 
I tried to load another instance of SQL Server.  It loaded, but when I clicked on the databases icon 
to drop down and show me the databases it just put up expanding and locked up the entire system.

I am at a loss to discover what is going on.  It APPEARS to be SQL Server, though there is nothing 
else I run that uses all the memory in this thing so how do I know it isn't just Windows 2003 
flaking out somehow?  I have run memtest-86 for an entire weekend without a single failure, so I 
don't think it is the physical memory.

I have no clue how to troubleshoot this problem.

As I write this, the server is completely locked up.  I cannot switch between tasks, the little task 
manager icon shows about 50% CPU usage but AFAICT that is just what was displayed when it locked up.

In the end I have to do a hard reboot to regain control, and when I do that I corrupt whatever 
database was being worked on.  This is insane!

HELP.

-- 
John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com



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