Windows XP Is there any problem with windows xp

[pedro ivo santoni]

Good afternoon friends, I live in Brazil and I am translating this text, sorry if something goes wrong.
I have about 400 computers with windows xp, since last week, some computers are giving problem (we own a corporate license).
I am unable to figure out what the problem is, every time appears on a different computer, all they have kaspersky endpoint 10 and have no virus alerts.
The internet stops responding, the programs are extremely slow and some fail to Respond.
When I restart the computer, everything is standard for some time and happen again.
These are computers with the updates made.

I have the vnc program on these computers and when this problem happens I can not connect to them by VNC, the error is that the CONNECTION ended.
This above error, the computer has network but what appears is that the VNC service stops responding.

I sincerely fear that this is something of microsoft to own forces to be replaced windows xp for something newer.

I know I'm at risk with this system, but the reality is that computers are weaker and windows xp is well so far.

I'm waiting for any information that may help me.

 

[kemical]

Hi Pedro,
welcome to the forum. I'm sorry to say that this really isn't my area of expertise but just wanted to at least respond in some way if only to say 'Hi'
Perhaps our other forum users will have a much better idea than I.

 

[pedro ivo santoni]

good Morning kamical.
I am glad for your reply, I wish you a great week.

 

[kemical]

I will ask my friend to have a look at your issue.

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Hi Pedro,
kemical asked me to take a look at your thread and see if I could help.

We would need some more information on your 400 computers and how they are networked together. Are you running the computers in a Microsoft server domain environment? Server 2003? Apache?

Are all 400 computers using identical Motherboards and hardware configs? For example, are all the computers Dell Optiplex 270?? Or do you have a mix of computers such as Dell, HP, Toshiba, Gateway, etc. Last big corporate network I ran we had about 680 computers; and when I got to the company; they had like 10 different brands. I standardized, at least in the US headquarters office to about 475 computers, all running mostly Toshiba and got rid of all else except for Dell for our servers.

So, we'll need machine specs for each Make/Model to start with. In the meantime, you can pick the Make of computers you have the largest number of and start there. You'll need to run hardware diagnostics on each of those machines using this document thread as a guideline: Cursor cannot reach top of Quick Launch area
I would start with maybe 10 machines with identical Make/Model if possible, such as 10 HPs or 10 Dells, and see if you find a common failure vector; such as 4 out of the 10 machines tested all have failed hard drives; or 6 out of 10 machines have failed RAM sticks. Look for a pattern.

Do you have a network diagram for your LAN? Please attach to your reply if you can. If you have a Visio drawing(s), I have a Visio viewer to see them. If not, a sketch will suffice.

You should attempt to separate your troubleshooting into 2 areas; the first should be testing the hardware of these aging XP era machines as above; and the second should be to isolate a small number of these machines; 3 to 5 is a good number, and pull them off of your corporate LAN, and build a stand-alone LAN in a lab or small office somewhere. Use a solid stand-alone router such as a Cisco 2500 or 3600, and connect them all with hardware ethernet cables. If all your corporate PCs use a MS domain, you may have to borrow or build another server, such as MS Server 2003 or 2008RT, plug your server into the Cisco router and verify local domain logins to that server. Once that's done, talk to your IT department or if that's you, get a line that bypasses your internal subnet LAN, that goes to the TDC of your network, preferably on the outside of your firewall and connect that line into your Server-test LAN with the 3-5 PCs; verify Internet connectivity and domain logins work to the server. Then you can test VNC remote connections in from an outside network connection--physically outside your building, and test. Does the problem with dropped connections timeouts, etc. persist? If it goes away, there's a good chance it's due to the aging hardware, and that machines that are tested, repaired and updated work on a stand-alone or isolated LAN, you'll have to repeat that with the rest of your 400 PCs. If the problem persists in your stand-alone test LAN setup, it could be that your production servers are having problems, subnetting issues; protocol issues between networks inside your firewall, etc. You'll need to employ a sniffer to figure that out. I hope that if you are tasked with fixing this, your boss or bosses don't expect you to fix this in a couple of days. Last time I did this; it took me about 2-1/2 years to completely fix this type of problem; we had to completely re-architect our LAN and our WAN; replace most of our internal core routers, gateways, and subnetting scheme. In fact, I had 3 companies come in to help do this including Cisco, who we bought much of our equipment from. Over $500,000 worth.

This problem is indicative of more than just aging computers, it would seem, but your network is probably in sore need of an analysis and upgrade; both from the hardware as well as the software perspective. I was successful starting with the hardware and working to standardize every PC and laptop to the same brand (Toshiba) and throwout everything else, especially clone-built systems and no-name hardware. My old company had a ton of these; but the real problem turned out to be HP-Compaq; they were shipping us PCs and laptops with a DOA rate of 40%!!! Once I threw those guys of out my shop, things started to improve. But, it took a ton of cash, and as the Project Manager and Network Manager it was my job to fix it. Hope that gives you some insight and a starting point.

Post back what information you can and we'll try to advise you further.

Best,
<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>

 

[pedro ivo santoni]

Unfortunately the information is not so nice.

"I know we'll have to replace the machines and that time is getting smaller, the current programs will be less and less compatible."

Computers are not bought from companies like dell, hp, etc.
I do not have a network topology to tell you.

We've got a lot of processor "intel dual core" and "intel Core2Duo." All with intel motherboard DG31PR / DG41RQ / D945GCNL and some others.
-We Windows 7 pro more they have not had problems, in total we have around 750 ~ 800 computers.

-We Have a network with cisco routers also have a core cisco 4507.
-We Have two domain servers:
--primary (windows server 2008 sp2 standart) - dell poweredge 2950
--secondary (windows server 2008 sp2 standart) - dell poweredge 2850
-We Have the bluecoat proxy.
-The Version of VNC we use is 1.0.4
-Our Antivirus is kaspersky and has no critical alerts virus.

It's very strange because it was all normal, began to show symptoms that in at least 12 computers early in the day, after that, was spreading in other machines and the only thing we can observe is that the system is windows xp.
Computers running windows 7 pro has no symptoms.

The google chrome for work, accept the VNC password authentication but cut the connection when will display the screen, with the machine to access the internet and skype not answer.

Closely resembles the symptoms of virus, but when you restart 1 or 2 times the computer returns to normal.

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Well, that's a start. The servers are good; Dell poweredge's are superb. I actually have a poweredge 2950 here at home running Server 2008RT SP2 Pro.

So, I take it that most if not all of your 400 XP PCs are custom-built using Intel Motherboards. That's good, at least you've got solid Motherboards. You will need to run those hardware diagnostics on a test sample as I indicated (3-10 PCs) in a standalone LAN configuration to really nail that down. Another thing I thought of, are all 400 of those XP machines at SP3 level? If not, that can wreak havoc having a mix of XPs running different Service Packs. Make sure your test setup all XP machines have SP3 on them!

I would definitely get rid of Kaspersky on the test machines; REMOVE; the Kaspersky is russian, nothing wrong with that, but the product is never in the top 10 of anyone's antivirus or Internet Security suite on the e-zines annual review site. I would recommend you use Norton, Avast, McAfee, Trend Micro, or Panda. I have tested out all of these for both home use and enterprise corporate use. Norton is still arguably the best, but the most expensive. Last enterprise license for IS I got in 2000, ran about $20k or so. If you like, for your testing purposes, remove the Kaspersky (it's terrible), and download Avast AV Free 2015. That will work for your test, and has a very thin client footprint--uses much fewer resources than Norton or the other guys, and it won't cost you anything. It also has a very intelligent firewall which may show that your VNC will work fine on XP with Avast. If it works with Avast, it will work with any of the other top guys I mention including their Enterprise corporate network licenses. I have business clients who use logmein, which is a more modern and cheaper version of VNC with the Avast Internet Security and the Free version, and they work great--especially with my PCs which are on wifi connections.

You're network is about the size of my last network I managed-680 computers--as I mentioned. However, I've worked on networks as large as 70,000 computers (FedEx-Kinkos), so I've got lots of experience doing this.

It's also very good that your Motherboards are running Intel dual processors rather than the AMD or VIA dual processors, as Motheboards using those processors had many documented problems on applications such as remote-in apps (VNC, Logmine, GoToMyPC, etc.), and especially ERP platforms in the enterprise such as SAP, CS/3, Oracle, and others using XP-era machines. Vista & Win7 did a much better job at using these "gaming" type processor-based Motherboards than XP or Win2k for instance.

Do any of your network segments contain these Intel-based XP clone PCs running alongside the Win7 machines? On the same subnet? If so, this would be another job for the sniffer to check your packet traffic on that subnet, it could give you a clue as to why the XP networking is failing and the Win7 is not. However, this does not preclude that you still have to run complete Hardware diagnostics on each of those XP clone machines in your test LAN setup. THIS IS CRUCIAL!!! Also, as part of updating those old XP clone boxes, you'll need to visit the Intel website and check each and every PC in that setup LAN has the latest version of BIOS and Chipset drivers listed on the Intel support site. I would do this before I started sniffing packets for irregularities on the test or production subnets. If you don't have access to a sniffer, you can buy the software separately and run on a dedicated laptop or maybe your work laptop. The sniffer machines are expensive and can be upwards of $15k, and to get an expert (IBM Level 4 or SME or better) who knows how to use it can cost you quite a bit more than the cost of the machine. However, in the US, we have many consulting firms who rent the equipment along with the expert sniffer engineer on a hourly/weekly/monthly/yearly basis. Don't know if you have any people like that in your Country, but you could always contact IBM and they could fly someone in for you. (won't be cheap!!).

Just discussing some ideas and brainstorming with you here, but it's important to know that there were significant changes made to the Windows networking and system files (both API and DLL library levels) in Win7. Win7 really does a much better job at networking in the enterprise in a domain-based server LAN environment than XP, Vista, or even Win2k ever did. The real benefit of course really comes if your clients are using Win7 Pro or Win7 Business or Win7 Enterprise workstation clients, and they are really designed with all the extra management features such as SNMP and Remote Desktop image stores etc. Most medium and larger sized companies have gone to Win7 probably just as you started to do, but ran out of money.

In today's economy, upgrading that many computers represents a real financial challenge. Where I live, in a rural Southern California resort town; businesses are remiss to attempt a complete overhaul of their network and the OS workstation clients at the same time. Our local hospital has been upgrading since I moved up here 4 years ago from XP to Win7. Some of their offices and doctors are still running XP machines, some on Win7. They don't have the budget to do it all at once. I wouldn't be surprised to see them to full migrate to Win8.1 even by 2025. They are typically 10 years behind the large urban cities like LA or San Diego or San Francisco. I'm sure this is part of the challenge you are having.

Antother thing you can do, is to consider changing from VNC software client to something more modern and a more thin-client based solution (more modern) such as Logmein or GoToMyPC. There are others as well, but these have worked well for my Clients in medium to large size companies; 500-5,000 computers and up. The enterprise licensing is cheaper, and the thin-client design takes up less resources on your aging fleet of 400 XP machines; XP can still run either of those thin-clients without breaking a sweat. Especially given your XP Motherboards are running dual-core CPUs not single-core (nightmare!).

Hope that provides some more insight. Gives you several more things to try out. The most important thing you can do really, is setup that test LAN I mention. That is the single best tool you can use to justify further upgrades to older PCs, and older software apps. Bear in mind that according to Microsoft, of the 800 Million computers being used currently worldwide on the Internet, 36% of them are still using XP--so you are not alone with your upgrade issues.

Keep us posted on your progress.

P.S. Since you don't have a network topology diagram or map, it sure might be helpful for you to get one or create one of your own. That solves a lot more problems than you would ever think. Take it from someone who knows!

Best,
<<<BBJ>>>

 

[pedro ivo santoni]

Sorry to be raising this topic again.
I come post I could figure out the problem after dozens of days.
There is an incompatibility of kaspersky with VNC, I needed to make an exception for this to work properly.

I went here because I wanted to leave posted how hard it was to find out, there were many tests and chance to get this specific information.

A hug to everyone, thank you for your support.

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

So, you're saying you fixed it? Yes?

What antivirus did you replace the Kaspersky with? It would be helpful to share your results.

<<<BBJ>>>

 

[pedro ivo santoni]

I can not replace Kaspersky because we have a contract until 2017.

I realized that the computer worked better without the Kaspersky, the fact is that any computer works better without an antivirus ...
What I mean is that I began to suspect any problems being generated by Kaspersky, looked on the official forum for slow reports.
Luckily I found a recommendation that was a list of exceptions to be raised to make Kaspersky does not generate problems in computer performance, one of these exceptions is about VNC.
I realized that I do not have this exception, when included the computer functioned normally.

I consider it important to stay tuned for software that cause conflicts with antivirus and unfortunately this information is not easy, always generate a very great job searches.

I was upset when I saw that the antivirus almost ended my work, I could have gone to the street to be harming the entire corporate environment.

Thank you all