System Process Hangs Windows NT with Novell Client 4.6

A Windows NT 4.0-based server may experience a sudden and steady rise in CPU usage that continues to increase until the server stops responding (hangs). In Task Manager, the System process appears to be responsible for this behavior.

The Performance Monitor log indicates that immediately before this behavior occurs, there is a dramatic increase in the "Packets received/sec" counter on the server.

The Network Monitor log indicates that a Novell server sent a packet to the Windows NT-based server. This packet lets the Windows NT-based server know that the NetWare server has a message for it. The Windows NT-based server responds by requesting the message from the NetWare server. The NetWare server responds with an "Unknown Object" response, but still has a bit set in the response that causes the Windows NT-based server to query again for the message. This creates a continuous loop of requests for the message from Windows NT and denials by NetWare.

This locked loop causes the network packet traffic between the servers to run out of control, increasing the CPU usage until the Windows NT-based server hangs.

There is a patch from Novell for the NetWare client to install on the Windows NT-based server. This patch is for the NetWare Client version 4.6 software.

For additional information about this patch, see the following Novell article on the Novell Web site: