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dgrauman,

First and foremost let me tell you that I feel your pain. I have seen practices that were overrun by IT morons and had thousands of dollars lost to the four winds. One practice I went to spent $80k on new servers and new workstations. Their servers were re-built HP's and their workstations were home-grown misfits - and all the software was pirated. You can imagine what happened when I walked in and explained all that to them. In short - I've seen it all.

Let's get down to the main issue you are talking about:


The first thing to do is find out why the system isn't stable. Most people, upon seeing their computer crash, just throw their hands up and say "STUPID MICROSOFT!!", reboot, then go back to work. Most IT guys are very quick (as in lightening) to blame MS as well when something goes wrong.

* But has anyone checked the event log? Do you subscribe to websites that help you determine what events in the event log mean, such as www.eventid.net, and list possible solutions?

* Did anyone analyze that blue screen of death?

* Are you following best practices or are you one of those "people" who tries to something like install Terminal Services on a Domain Controller then goes nuts when the machine behaves poorly?

* Do your computers have ONLY the software your employees need to do their jobs installed on them?

* When is the last time you updated your computers with the latest patches from MS?

* Are your users logging in with Administrator rights?

* Has anyone run the best practices analyzer? http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd759260.aspx

These are some first questions to answer to determine why your network has issues. Once you start narrowing it down, you may find the answers easier than expected.

JamesNT