Okay, strange post of sorts coming up.
Every so often I have came across a computer (or in this case a server) which through no reason decides that it has to blue-screen at random, the wonderful BSOD.
We have a nice 12 server Citrix Farm, but 2 of these servers are based in our off-site disaster recovery building. These two servers are “live” and provide services to people based in our off-site DR building (which conveniently enough is one of our larger offices outside of Headquarters)
So our second server in the DR site developed a fault with its memory and kept BSOD’ing out under load, we got it sorted out but the BSOD’s didn’t stop when it was under load which worried us.
Since both servers are identical (HP Proliant ML370 G2) I had to diagnose the problems, only to discover after some digging that the Network Card driver on server 2 was an older revision. Updating the network driver solved the BSOD issue, and it hasnt kicked the bucket in over 2 months.
The whole reason I decided to check the network card drivers? one of my old computer motherboards used a Via network card, which if you updated the driver from Windows Update it would throw a wobbler and give a lovely BSOD for no reason. the pre-packaged drivers never gave a problem either.
So dodgy network card drivers = instability for Windows.
The most interesting part of this problem? both servers were built with the exact same Proliant Quickstart CD, so should of had the identical driver installed on each. Because its a Citrix Server you DO NOT install anything from Windows Update except for critical updates.
Lesson Learnt? If a computer kicks the bucket for no apparent reason and its on a network, change the network driver to a different version (sometimes the latest may not be the best!)
Side note: IESpell is very handy indeed for in-line spell checking within Internet Explorer 7 🙂
