Windows Servers after Automatic Updates, Restart Problem

[Johnny]

Hello.

I have been having reboot problems with Windows Servers after Automatic
Updates.
When the servers finish the updates installations which require an automatic
restart of the servers, the servers get stuck at shutdown. The only recourse
is to do a hard shutdown of the servers and power them back up.

The affected server versions are Windows Server 2000, 2003, and 2003 R2. All
the servers are domain members of 2003 R2 Active Directory. The update
installation policy is applied by group policy and updates are deployed using
WSUS.

The strange thing about this problem is that not every server is affected. I
manage over 50 servers and more than half on them are affected. You can
imagine the chaos this problem has caused when the servers do not come back
up after the restart.

I think this problem have started more than half a year ago. To my dismal, I
cannot find the cause of the problem or the commonality of the servers that
are affected.

If anyone has an idea of what can be causing this problem, let me know.

Thank you.

[Frankster]

There are probably thousands of things that could cause a system not to
restart.

The first thing I would do to start troubleshooting this problem is to
implement a scheduled restart routine (without any changes at all). This
will help you find out if the problem is really related to the updates.
Also, reboot immediately prior to doing the update to ensure the restart is
successful before the update.

Many times in a enterprise environment, changes are made to servers which do
not require a reboot (or at least you are not "prompted" for a reboot -
whether valid or not!). Anyway, after weeks, months, there may have been any
number of changes "applied". When you finally do a required restart after an
upgrade, you may have problems. But it is not for sure that the problem is
the update unless you specifically tested this server for restarting
immediately prior to doing the update.

-Frank

"Johnny" <Joh...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:69D3C517-0FFE-44A3...@microsoft.com...

[Johnny]

Hello Frankster.
I have already tried what you have suggested. It has not helped in finding
the solution.
The servers reboot fine manually and via scheduled restart command.
Thanks for the reply.