Thursday, July 21, 2011

TCP/IP ports (Network issue) addresed for Vista & 2008 but not for Windows 2008 R2

All the TCP/IP ports that are in a TIME_WAIT status are not closed after 497 days from system startup in Windows Vista and in Windows Server 2008


Symptoms:-

On a computer that is running Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008, all the TCP/IP ports that are in a TIME_WAIT status are not closed after 497 days from system startup. Therefore, TCP/IP ports may be exhausted, and new TCP/IP sessions may not be created.

Note Some network-related operations to this computer may be affected by this issue. For example, you try to use some remote administration tools to manage a Windows Server 2008-based domain controller that has been running for more than 497 days. In this example, the remote administration tools cannot connect to the domain controller.

Solution:-

Microsoft has released hot fix only for below operating systems.

  • Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1)
  • Windows Vista Service Pack 2 (SP2)
  • Windows Server 2008
  • Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 (SP2)
You can download fix from here.

There is no resolution for computer running Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2, so need to wait for next release by Microsoft.

Though this problem exists under Windows Server 2008 R2, no real incidents are reported to MSFT and there is no QFE available for Windows Server 2008 R2.

Of course you can easily avoid this problem by rebooting the system before system uptime reaches 497 days. J