We are working with a site that has just installed a new server. They
tried to install Win2003, but had "BIOS problems", so ended up rolling
back to Win2K where everything appears to be stable ...

Except, we are seeing problems that look to be related to the DOS:
driver in the FSI ... maybe. That is my (not so) educated guess based
by what I'm seeing in a WHERE command.

Anyway, it looks like somehow a process (randomly) will get thrown to
the system monitor, and within a minute or 2 we have "slush" as the
whole system "dies". My suspicion of the SATA drives was raised when I
was eventually told why they hadn't installed Win2K3 (with an Adaptec
1210SA controller), but our problem could obviously be "anywhere" (I
know there have been problems with network cards in the past)

In normal operation system seems to be fine. Only seems that things
start going off the rails when they start using programs that push the
DOS:/OSFI driver "hard" - which of course may be coincidence ....

Anyone want to share thoughts &/or experiemces offline, send to rossf,
c@re of stamina.com.au

Our server was having a problem similar to what you describe.
It turned out to be the firmware on the drives.
During heavy use, we would get " The device, \Device\Scsi\aac1, did not
respond within the timeout period. " errors.

The system is SCSI, not SATA, however.

It is an adaptec RAID controller and Seagate Cheetah 10k.7 (SCA/LVD)
harddrives.

I had to ask seagate (contact through their website) for the firmware
and they sent it to my email within 24 hours.

On 8 Jan 2006 21:37:15 -0800, "Ross Ferris" <rossf (AT) stamina (DOT) com.au>
wrote:


That controller is not designed for high-load servers. Get a 4-port
3ware controller and you won't have drive problems.

Glen