THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS DIVA

I got a call on July 27th with a server that hangs on "Applying computer settings". I was at a lost until now. I haven't taken a look yet, but they do have an APC Smart-UPS. I bet that is the problem.

Thanks for posting this!

Just spent 2 hours trying to diagnose the same problem on our server. Turns out APC Smart-UPS software had killed it it exactly the way you described. I disabled the services in safe-mode and then restarted bingo. No more problems. Uninstalled and installed v7 and all is well again.

Thanks,
Fraser

I spent all day on Friday (and some time over the weekend) trying to resolve a DC at a remote site that hung at this stage after I had rebooted it. It was taking 2 hours to come up.
I have now disabled the services in Safe mode, uninstalled the software and installed the latest version and all is now well.

Thanks.

Additional side effect of the expired JRE certificate: Remote connections to server not permitted. "Connect to Server Desktops" was no longer an option on the Remote Web Workplace menu.

It would have taken untold additional hours (or days) to figure this one out without the aid of this post. SBS Diva to the rescue! Give the woman a medal or something.

Wish I'd seen this last Thursday. <sigh> This problem hit a client
the same time as SP1 installed via Windows Update and their
Symantec license expired. ...And they ran out of drive space.
Finding _this_ to be the problem took a few hours.

I had the same problem, I noticed over the weekend that trying to connect to a server using Remote Desktop just gave a gray screen without a login box. I tried rebooting this moring and the computer would just hang at Applying Computer Settings. After hours of trying to trouble shoot the problem, APC Powerchute did not even occur to me to be the problem I tried restoring from last weeks backup of the system drive and system state. Since this was a time sensitive issue the backup gave the same results. Starting is Safe mode and disabling the 2 APC services fixed the problem.

I love how the APC website boasts "Legendary Reliability" and "Leader in Network-Critical Physical Infastructure". If it was not for thier product, my users would not have lost a whole day of productivity. I don't think that a certificate expiring for such a trivial pice of software should bring down an entire small-office network. My confidence in APC has been severly shaken.

Thank you for this post.

For what it's worth, this same thing happened on my Windows 2003 Enterprise server. After scouring usenet for a solution and only getting the usual advice (check DNS, secure channel, etc) this solution was right on the money.

I have had 4 of my customers with problems since last Thursday. I thought it was a Microsoft hot fix until yesterday. I reloaded the OS on two machines! Once I found out it was APC from another tech, I emailed their support and they still have not given me an answer. Now that's what I call support. Way to go APC! Anyway, thanks for the info. I feel better now.

I had the same problem with the SBS server and I am really lucky to have found this because it fixed the problem instantaneously Time to sign up to the APC newsletter. A very BIG THANK YOU to you.

Cheers

Khalid

Spent 3 hours on a Windows 2003 server that had been restarted after removing some software, and wouldn't boot up. The server was stuck on the "Applying Computer Setting" screen and wouldn't get to the login screen. File and Print services were working fine but there was no console access. Never thought it could be an APC problem until I managed to connect Computer Management from another system and saw that both the APC services status was stuck at Starting. Google led me to your web site which confirmed the problem with the APC services - rebooted in safe mode and disabled the services, and the server was up again.

I must say that I am very dissapointed with the APC software - there was nothing in the event log that would indicate the problem. Thanks to your post I was able to get the server back online.

Thanks a ton!

Hardeep

My first thought when I hit this problem is a windows update. I got into safe mode and attempted to run all of the programs to update to SBS 2003 SP1. Where I really hit a brick wall was trying to update Exchange 2003 SP1 and the server would just hang there. After Removing APC and rebooting the Applying computer settings problem went away and Exchange would install correctly.

Wish this article would blink like a pop up when I googled it, it would have saved me a weekend.

Hope my comments help someone else when they try the same things to fix the problem

Mark

Had the same problem with a Citrix box the other day (http://addicted-to-it.blogspot.com/2005/08/apc-windows-logon-screen-disappears.html). I was remote from the box - and couldn't kill the APC services that were "starting"... couldn't connect via RDP... but finally tried the ICA client. Bingo! I put some relevent info in my posting linked above that might help, if you're remote from the problem and can't get a RDP/ICA connection.

Had the problem last week, and the comments here saved my butt.

Just liked to say thank you for documenting this. Had a co-worker call me today and sure enough this popped up in a Google search. Fixes worked like a charm and the server was back up and running in no time.

Thanks again!

I spent most of the weekend trying to fix this problem... until I found this post! Our 2003 SBS took over an hour to boot... nothing in the event log... when looked at the APC PBE service it was in the "starting" state. Described fix did the trick. Thanks a million for this post!

The main issue here is why you so Called "admins" let this ahppen in the first palce. IF you were any sort of a good admin you would ahve known about this over 1 month ago and could have planed ahead. However you failed, and probally told your clients a BS story about how apc is evil or something. When really it was you who has failed at your job. Why you dont go to the websites of your software and hardware vendors every now and then I fail to see. COngrats "admins" pat your self on the back and learn from this.

I lost 3 days on this one. Here is the note I just sent to APC.

I would like to express my extreme DISSATISFACTION with APC and your Powerchute product. See this:

http://nam-en.apc.com/cgi-bin/nam_en.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=7202

Your software change from 6.x to 7.x “expiration” shut down our systems for 3 days.

Prior to getting a resolution, our attempts to diagnose and repair include:

1) Replacing hardware
2) Reinstalling the Operating System and service packs 3 times
3) Having Dell technicians on site 3 times and spent over 80 hours of administrator time.
4) Lost business revenue for our company, since this is an active web server.

Luckily, Microsoft technicians were aware of the problem WITH YOUR SOFTWARE (due to lots of calls about it) and they were able to resolve the problem by disabling powerchute 6.0.services. I cannot believe you would build a software product based on a SUN Java set of products the could "expire" with such devastating consequences for thousands of system administrators. In addition, your software did not even bother to write anything into the Windows event logs or give systems administrators ANY CLUE about the nature of problem with your services or how to address it. I cannot believe the worlds largest software company (Microsoft) and the worlds leading UPS company can create such a poorly interfaced and implemented products.

“Legendary Reliablity”?…. BS! Please count me as an Ex-APC customer.

Does anyone know when this version of the APC software will "implode"?

Just wanted to say thanks for the post!
I just happened to go on vacation 'finally' for only TWO days. A storm blew in and the power went out for less than 5 min. Problem was that the powers that be, decided it would be a smart thing to restart the server by pressing and holding the power button on the main server untill it shut off to 'fix the internet connection' :) When the server came back up there were still strange connectivity issues. When I came back 2 days later I couldn't login and was about to pull my hair out when I found this post via google. The fix you mentioned worked great!

THANKS AGAIN!

For those saying we should have been aware of this problem as professionals, some perspective is in order. Some of us are not just in charge of one server or one network. I am an independent consultant responsible for hundreds of different networks running hundreds of different applications. It would be a full-time job just to try and keep track of hot fixes for Veritas, APC, Symantec, Microsoft, etc. We try our best to keep up with these changes, but this crash of APC software is very disappointing. Software designed to keep a server up and running should not take down the server! A simple program to monitor a UPS, gone madly out of control. We've gone from PowerChute to now requiring 3 different programs, server, agent, console, to monitor a UPS! What's next, a UPS monitoring "Suite?" Thankfully we have these web pages and search engines to save some of us the hours of frustration that some on the front line had to suffer through.

I concur with all of the above, tried everything by the book and nothing worked then entered 'my windows 2003 server will not start' in google and bingo up came your page! Thanks for the entry as I was sweating blood.

8 hours and then i find this! excellent work guys.

apc need a roasting for this one.

as a resgistered apc user why no emails informaing us of the problem?

i cant believe nothing is logged in the system logs about this. it causes so many issues it's almost impossible to get a handle on whats going on.

i'm so pleased with finding this i could kiss someone!

Just want to say a bit THANKS for that post that I directly faud on Goolge ( thanks google too ! ). Thanks to take your time to help people.

It appened to me today and was very disappointed.

Lucky me I fixed the problem without consequence.

I only just found this post while looking for a resolution to an entirely different problem. I had this one bite me back on the 10th or thereabouts following (ironically enough) a UPS failure. I thought at first it'd corrupted my OS, then noticed the damn APC services hung in Starting mode. Got a call a day later from one of my onsite techs saying one of the servers at that site was "acting weird" - sure enough, APC services hung. I went through all 150 of my servers and disabled the damn services tout suite until I could get time to go through and uninstall APC on all of them.

Now I get to go back and install the newer product. For the self-righteous (and subliterate) fellow who thinks we weren't doing our jobs not to have somehow absorbed this information through osmosis, there was NO notification from APC about this issue - no emails, no phone calls, no notice posted on their website, NOTHING. This post is actually the first concrete proof I've seen of what my own gut-feeling diagnosis of the problem told me. Oh, and I'd like to see anyone try to single-handedly keep 150+ servers completely up-to-date, running, and know beforehand about every single patch for every application running on each one of them at all times. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone? I fixed the damn problem in less than two hours, so anyone who thinks I'm not doing my job can bite me.

I agree... I got no email as well

When you need to be 100% certain on an issue, it's best to be 110% certain instead. Yesterday I spent several hours troubleshooting an issue with MS CSS, because I was 100% certain that the issue we all thought it...

Just wanted to make a comment: Liebert's MultiLink software has not had any issues like this. I am running it and it runs great, never locks my server out and doesn't have to be upgraded every other day. Glad I chose it and played smart staying away from APC.

Had the problem last week and the comments here saved me a lot of time.

Thanks a million....

We are very disappointed with APC.

Hi
Had a simliar problem. with the SBS 2003 server taking 2 hours on applying the computer settings.
Thanks to this link I saved myself a lot of time on fixing the problem
I did as above disabled the two APC services and everything sprung back to life.

We just had the same problem today and couldn't figure out for our live what the issue was. Sure enough, i rebooted our w2k3 server in safe mode, then rebooted normally and it came up, however it sat on Applying Computer settings for about 1 hour. The network was available and all connections worked but it was painful. I then noticed that the ups powerchute software went down the drain, i removed it and all is well. 2 hours of hell. Nice of APC to notify us. Apparently we didn't buy enough equipment from them to be considered a valued customer.