Monitor Shutdown progress?

[Guest Mario Schmidt]

Hello group!

 

Our servers (Windows 2003 SP1 and current patchlevel) take very long to

shut down, most of the time there is almost no disk access so it looks

like the machine just sits there and waits for something to happen (what

doesn't).

 

Is there any chance to monitor somehow, what exactly happens during a

shutdown oder startup? I think about a little monitor window showing all

running processes and services which updates instantly so you can see

whats going on and what causes the machine to wait.

 

The event log tells me nothing. I've also tried the checked build of

winlogon.exe and enabled the logfile, but this also doesn't tell me

which processes still run etc.

 

I've already heard about the issue with Exchange 2003 in comination with

a DC on same machine (which we also have), but the SP2 of Exchange is

already installed. I've also stopped the Exchange services before

shutdown, problem remains.

 

Hope you can help me somehow!

 

Mario

[Guest Mario Schmidt]

Re: Monitor Shutdown progress?

 

BTW with long I mean longer than 5 minutes.

[Guest Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

Re: Monitor Shutdown progress?

 

Mario Schmidt <mario.schmidt@mediavillage.de> wrote:

> Hello group!

>

> Our servers (Windows 2003 SP1 and current patchlevel) take very long

> to shut down, most of the time there is almost no disk access so it

> looks like the machine just sits there and waits for something to

> happen (what doesn't).

>

> Is there any chance to monitor somehow, what exactly happens during a

> shutdown oder startup? I think about a little monitor window showing

> all running processes and services which updates instantly so you can

> see whats going on and what causes the machine to wait.

>

> The event log tells me nothing. I've also tried the checked build of

> winlogon.exe and enabled the logfile, but this also doesn't tell me

> which processes still run etc.

>

> I've already heard about the issue with Exchange 2003 in comination

> with a DC on same machine (which we also have), but the SP2 of

> Exchange is already installed. I've also stopped the Exchange

> services before shutdown, problem remains.

>

> Hope you can help me somehow!

>

> Mario

 

What about ProcessExplorer (Sysinternals tool from Microsoft)? You might be

able to keep that running "on top" during your shutdown....

[Guest Mario Schmidt]

Re: Monitor Shutdown progress?

 

Lanwench [MVP - Exchange] schrieb:

> Mario Schmidt <mario.schmidt@mediavillage.de> wrote:

>> Hello group!

>>

>> Our servers (Windows 2003 SP1 and current patchlevel) take very long

>> to shut down, most of the time there is almost no disk access so it

>> looks like the machine just sits there and waits for something to

>> happen (what doesn't).

>>

>> Is there any chance to monitor somehow, what exactly happens during a

>> shutdown oder startup? I think about a little monitor window showing

>> all running processes and services which updates instantly so you can

>> see whats going on and what causes the machine to wait.

>>

>> The event log tells me nothing. I've also tried the checked build of

>> winlogon.exe and enabled the logfile, but this also doesn't tell me

>> which processes still run etc.

>>

>> I've already heard about the issue with Exchange 2003 in comination

>> with a DC on same machine (which we also have), but the SP2 of

>> Exchange is already installed. I've also stopped the Exchange

>> services before shutdown, problem remains.

>>

>> Hope you can help me somehow!

>>

>> Mario

>

> What about ProcessExplorer (Sysinternals tool from Microsoft)? You might be

> able to keep that running "on top" during your shutdown....

 

Erm. No. Because its started by a user and needs ability to interact

with the desktop (showing the window), its immediately closed when the

system shuts down because generally, user processes are killed first

during shutdown progress.

 

What I found out so far: There is a registry value

"WaitToKillServiceTimeout" in HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control

which has a default value on a fresh Server 2003 of "20000". Now when

Exchange is being installed, this setting gets changed to "600000".

Funny enough, setting it to the value Exchange sets, even when Exchange

is NOT installed, it slows down the shutdown significantly! So there

already must be something wrong with a critical Windows service because

I've also tried to stop all stoppable services, which made no difference

in shutdown speed when the limit was kept at "600000". There must be

something really wrong.

 

Since "20000" is the default on a "non-Exchange" machine, do I have to

care if I reset it to that value when I stop all Exchange services via

shutdown script first? Because everywhere I read about that timeout, I

also read "Changing the value is not supported by Microsoft".