Windows Server 2003/Small Business Server hangs on "Applying Computer Settings"

Posted on March 9, 2007 at 2:40 pm

Horribly, I had this happen to me as I walked into work one morning (thankfully a Friday) and it took me a whole weekend to figure out what the problem was. Basically, the reason your server is hanging is because there is a service that is not loading correctly when Windows tries to start up. So basically this service hangs and then your computer hangs! And it might take 2 to 3 hours before you get to see the desktop…not really what you want to happen when you have 100’s of users wondering what’s going on!! Thankfully for me, most of the other services were able to load, so even though I was not able to get to the desktop, people were still able to access the network drives.

Anyway, getting to the fix: You need to restart the server in safe mode and log in. This will work because only the necessary services are started up. Once you’re in, go to your Event Viewer and check for any “Service Failure” entries in the System or Application logs. For me, it was the APS PowerChute service that was the culprit! I had installed it a fews days back, but since I had not restarted the server after the installation, I didn’t get any inkling this was going to happen!

Go to your Administrative Tools and go to Services. Find the service that is causing the error, i.e. APS PowerChute, and disable it! Now restart and you should be able to get in!

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