Over the last 2 weeks my SBS 2000 server has been experiencing very erratic
behavior. I believe I have narrowed the culprit down to windows update
KB905915. I am unsure what triggers the problems to start, but the only way
to get things working again is to reboot the server. Once the problems begin,
following are the symptoms I notice:
1) Unable to establish new VPN connections. Pre-established VPN connections
remain connected and operational. I am able to create a new RDP connection
from a workstation to the server. However, when I try to logoff from this
remote connection I experience issue #5 detailed below.
2) Unable to use Internet Explorer on server. Screen just hangs with a
blank white page. Client workstations can still browse internet OK.
3) Server will not answer any new incoming faxes. On two occasions I
noticed the inbox had a fax "in progress". I tried to cancel the fax but
then the status just hung at â??deletingâ??. I tried stopping and restarting the
Microsoft shared fax service. The service stopped, but then gave the
following message when trying to restart:
â??Could not start the Microsoft shared fax service on local computer. The
service did not return an error. This could be an internal windows error, or
an internal system error.â??
Possibly this is the trigger that causes the server problems to begin. The
fax service has a dependency on the RPC service.
4) I use the POP3 mail connector in Exchange to retrieve my e-mail. When
the problems occur, no new POP3 mail is retrieved. However no error messages
are written to the event logs.
5) When I attempt to logoff or reboot the server to correct the issue, it
just hangs at the "saving your settings" window. I have let it sit here for
over ½ hour. The only way to reboot is to push the power button.
6) There are no relevant entries written to any event log indicating what
the cause could be.
I have now uninstalled this windows update about 4 days ago. Since then the
problem has yet to occur again. The fax activity has been very low over the
holiday weekend though, so time will tell if the problem is fixed for good.
I would like to find out if anybody else has experienced similar issues with
this update. Is there any fix available yet to get the update installed
without causing a problem?
Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Don