After SP2 Update I have hundreds of IP already exists errors

I upgraded both of my Windows 2003 servers over the weekend to SP2, only one
of which is a DHCP server, but all day today I kept geeting users with the IP
address already exists on the network error message with limited or sporadic
connectivity. I rebooted, stopped and started DHCP server services, etc but
kept on geeting them. In the Leases list there were many with BAD_ADDRESS
listed as the machine name. I can delete them, but after a while they come
back along with users getting these messages. ANyone with any ideas of what
happened to DHCP with the new "update". Seems like with every "update" it is
really just another introduction of problems. Anyone else with this problem
and/or know what to do to fix it?

 

*bump*
Has anyone else experienced this? We are still having problems with multiple
IP's and BAD_ADDRESSes in the DHCP lease list. I have shut-down every
computer on the entire campus, deleted all leases in the server list,
rebooted servers, rebooted all computers etc. This all started with the SP2
update on Sunday. Anyone even have any vague ideas of what to check next?

 

This generally happens when there are some clients in the network that have
static addresses configured and which coincide with the scopes set on the
DHCP Server. Could this possibly be the problem?

--
Chris Keroack

Release Program Manager
Windows Sustainability
Microsoft Corporation

 

Hey Chris. There are no 10.x.x.x addresses set as static in our network. We
do have some 170.211.153.x machines, of which 170.211.153.2 is the DHCP
server that hands out the 10.x addresses. It is the 10.x addresses however
that are constantly getting errors and logging "BAD_ADDRESS" in the DHCP
lease list. We never had a single DHCP issue for 4 years now until this
update last weekend, and all week last week it was a nightmare. This week we
are on spring break so no-one is at school, but I figure next week it will be
bad again. I have gone through step by step the original setup and everything
looks fine. I guess I am going to have to totally reformat the DHCP server
and reinstall Server 2003 and just not do the SP2 update. I hate it when MS
does this without fully testing their releases, and then wants a couple
hundred dollars just for me to call and ask them what's up. Any other ideas?
Thanks again for the reply!
Thomas

 

(ps Chris, I really wasn't talking about you per se in the MS comment as I
know you do not control the policies, but I tried calling them last week
about the issue and they refused to even talk to me without a credit card
number even after I explained that all I did was run Windows Update and it
happened after that).

 

Before you blow away and reinstall your server, let me check on a couple
things here and post mid-day (PST) tomorrow.

--
Chris Keroack

Release Program Manager
Windows Sustainability
Microsoft Corporation

 

Cool. Thanks. If you really wanted to take a look at the server itself and
see if you saw anything I am missing in the configuration, I could give you
an admin password so you could remote desktop into it. At this point I don't
see where it would hurt anything at all. It is a public school server running
DHCP and file storage - nothing secretive or private records or anything. If
you decide you want to look, just email me with your email address and I can
send it to you that way. Thanks.
Thomas

 

Also, Chris, I had forgotten that on Thursday or Friday two teachers who have
been bringing their home laptops to school and connecting them to the network
all year without trouble could not get on the network any more after the DHCP
server was updated. I looked at both laptops using ipconfig and neither could
get an IP address from DHCP - both said they could not find a dhcp server or
some message like that. Both laptops were using DHCP and worked fine before
the upgrade to SP2. I gave them static IP addresses and they worked fine, but
when I switched back to DHCP they would not. Both laptops were using XP Home
edition. We do not have XP Home on any of the other 200+ computers on campus
(mosttly XP Professional, some 2K, and a handful of 98SE. All of the campus
computers do manage to get IP addresses, but repeatedly throughout the day
they give the ip conflict error and either totally drop offf the network
altogether or might start working again on their own. I have had to restart
the DHCP service on the DHCP server a few times to get them working again,
but nothing I did would work with the 2 XP Home computers.

 

Actually, network captures could be really useful. It would at least
ascertain where the BAD_ADDRESS is coming from.

If we can have the DHCP Server leases cleared, and then have a network
capture till the time we get the BAD_ADDRESS, I can pass that along.

--
Chris Keroack

Release Program Manager
Windows Sustainability
Microsoft Corporation

 

We do not go back to school until Monday, but I will clear the leases before
then. What do I need to do to setup the network capture? I would imagine by
8:30 monday morning there will be a slew of BAD_ADDRESS'es since that will be
when all labs and teachers will be starting up their computers. Let me know
what to do catch what you need and I'll be happy to do it.
Thomas

 

I believe this KB article will let you know how to do this:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/158744/en-us

--
Chris Keroack

Release Program Manager
Windows Sustainability
Microsoft Corporation

 

Well, today we had a state field tech come to the school as I never could
figure it out. He said other schools have also had this issue in the past
couple weeks so he was aware of the problem already. It must be a valid
problem that MS needs to address sicne it isn't just isolated to us. From
their viewpoint, they believe it to be a corrupted access database or
database index , since that is the underlying structure where the IP tables
are stored. He said the only way they have found to fix the problem is to
totally delete the private ip scope from the DHCP server, then also delete
the files in the DHCP subfolder from the system drive, then add the scope
back as a new scope. Of course if you have any reserved addresses you need to
write all that down as you will have to re-enter it. Luckily we had no
reservations so we had the whole campus powerdown all their computers, we
blasted the scope and the folder, then added it all back. You have to make
sure that every single nat ip using computer is powered off, otherwise you
will keep getting IP conflicts because those machines will not be in the
newly created tables. We had a couple machines on campus (copiers and one pc)
that were logging bad_address errors again after adding the scope back, but
we found them and rebooted them which fixed the problem. Maybe Chris can pass
this on to the release people and have it checked out. Thanks
Thomas