[AccessD] HELP, server completely unresponsive

What's showing up in your event logs?

Drew

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby
Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2009 9:57 AM
To: Dba-Sqlserver; Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: [AccessD] HELP, server completely unresponsive

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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