Thunderstorm took out network?

[DanielUK]

OK, as if I haven't got enough on my plate at the moment!

We had a thunderstorm which took out the power in our office. I was able to power down our handful of win2k Prof clients and then the win2k server (which provides DNS/DHCP/Wins). Power comes back on, I reboot server and then reboot clients. Clients won't logon, no domain controllers available etc. Clients can't ping server ip address and server can't ping anything on network. Clients CAN ping each other though. Not sure what to do now as I guess the hub is still working as it's allowing me to ping between clients? Some sort of server corruption perhaps (?) although strange as the thunderstorm didn't physically damnage anything and the UPS allowed us a controlled shutdown. Any ideas as I go off to get our backup offsite server?

Thanks

Dan

 

[rtichnor]

I'd switch the network card in your server. Thunderstorms are so unpredictable, you never know what really happened. I've had some crazy situations, almost exactly like yours, and I realized my network cards are the first to start acting funny after a storm.

Good luck !!!

 

[DanielUK]

Thanks, but I've just done that and no go I'm afraid. I might try a repair followed by plugging our spare in. If I can ping the spare then I know the problem is with the server.

Dan

 

[DanielUK]

Thanks but that didn't work. I'm going to try a repair and then if that doesn't work, try plugging the spare srever in and seeing if I at least can logon/ping that. At least that might tell me if it's a problem with the server!

Thanks

Dan

 

[davbar]

Could you describe the network infrastucture? All workstations and server go into one hub?

David.

 

[DanielUK]

Hi David, yes that's how it's setup:

Win2k Server (sp4)

connected to

3Com 16 Port hub

connected to

6 x Win2k Prof client PCs (sp4)

Server has a fixed ip of 192.168.0.13. Scope is 192.168.0.2 - 192.168.0.20. Server provides DNS and Wins.

I just put our backup domain controller on the lan (which is usually offsite and brought in to be updated periodically) and can ping that (has a fixed IP of 192.168.0.1) but can't seem to logon to it. DHCP is working on it as it succesfully leased IP's to the clients when I changed their tcp/ip properties to point to 192.168.0.1.

Am I to deduce that something is corrupt with the existing server? Am at this moment running a repair on it but am not sure if that sorts this kind of problem out.....

Thanks

Dan

 

[DanielUK]

Repair not worked...can't ping it at all or it can't see the rest of the network. Am I looking at seizing roles yet?

Thanks

Dan

 

[dkediger]

Have you tried different ports on the hub? Did the link indicator show a connection? Did your BDC go into the same hub port - you could ping that so that would absolutely clear the hub.

 

[DanielUK]

Thanks, I've tried different ports on the hub and pinging the BDC which works. I'm actually in the process of seizing roles and making the BDC a PDC -I've had to do this before so I'm ok with the procedure. I'll probably end up reinstalling the OS and starting from scratch on the existing PDC.

Thanks

Dan

 

[Martin911]

check the event viewer if you can see anything in particular if there was a service that didnt start.

 

[DanielUK]

OK, I'll have a look tomorrow. I'm sure I spotted a netlogon error this morning but everyone logged on fine...until I rebooted from the power outage -will check that out anyway, I'd rather depromote and fix it rather than reinstall everything again. Thanks for everyone's help by the way, much appreciated, it's been a bit of a crappy day.

Dan

 

[DanielUK]

OK, finally got the server back up and running. Reinstalled the OS and everything pings/works fine. Up to that point I had tried a different NIC (still didn't work) and I also reloaded the networking components on the server before throwing in the towel.

Am I to gather from all this that something got very corrupt from this thunderstorm? If so I'd like to protect us from it happening again. I thought the UPS was protection enough, as it let me power down the lan (server & workstations) gracefully when the power went. I'm just wondering how it managed to affect or "get to" the server in the first place and, what else can I put in place to stop this happneing again?

Thanks

Dan