Full service lock up, impossible to stop, server hangs on shutdown

Post your questions about SoftEther VPN software here. Please answer questions if you can afford.
Post Reply
Mastiff
Posts: 24
Joined: Tue Sep 04, 2018 4:20 pm

Full service lock up, impossible to stop, server hangs on shutdown

Post by Mastiff » Fri Jul 16, 2021 8:04 am

This is weird. Very weird. I have been running for years (since 2015, I believe) and nothing remarkable has happened. But this morning I suddenly got a very slow connection to the running server on my Windows Server 2019, with a Supermicro motherboard and an Xeon Silver 4210 (no overclocking or funny stuff like that, it's more then fast enough for ten VM's and I want 100 % stability). So I started getting it up and running.

First I tried to take the server offline, but that locked up the server manager completely and I had to close the manager window.

When I tried to restart Softether as a service, it wasn't able to. The small window stood on "shutting down service" a long while, but I got an error message saying that it took too long. Regular shutdown of the Softether service takes seconds.

Next step was to try to use Task manager (as administrator), but that didn't help either. It didn't close the process, and on details it just says "Not allowed", which I guess is because it's ran by system.

Third step was to restart Windows Server. No way. It locked up on "Shutting down" screen. I finally had to do it physically (which I don't think I've ever had to do with that server before). Then I turned it on again and tried to install the latest version of Softether (I had one maybe half a year back, or something). But the installation program was unable to close Softether to get access to the executable and upgrade it.

Next step was to set the service to manual startup and do another one of those physical shutdowns of the server. This worked, and I could upgrade. But that didn't change a thing. It's still this way, locking up when I try to exit, and not giving access to any of the 4-5 clients. One of them is a bridge from my home server (same OS, with an Asus server motherboard and an one year older Xeon.

So what's changed the last days? No hardware, no new software. Only one thing: A Windows update yesterday, "Cumulative Update for Windows Server 2019 (1809) for x64-based Systems (KB5004244)". The previous Windows updates were five days ago, and I had no problems until this morning. Can there be a compatibility problem yet not found with that?

Mastiff
Posts: 24
Joined: Tue Sep 04, 2018 4:20 pm

Re: Full service lock up, impossible to stop, server hangs on shutdown

Post by Mastiff » Sat Jul 17, 2021 6:11 pm

Chalk this up to the "WTF" account. On the internal network of the physical Windows Server 2019 there was a wireless Asus router, set up as an access point, that had locked up after a power outage (line maintainance). It did not affect ANYTHING on the server except for SoftEther, and I didn't see it until I went out to the cabin and couldn't get on the wifi. When I got that unlocked (the good, old Karate Kid "power off, power on") and rebooted the server, everything worked again. I thought the SoftEther server talked to the DHCP and DNS and routing on the Windows Server, not directly to the internal network, but some component has to do that, since it could lock up like that.

Post Reply