Issue

After installing Microsoft Windows 2003 with Service Pack 2 (SP2) or Microsoft Windows 2003 Scalable Networking Pack (SNP) on a server that has TCP/IP Offload enabled, you will experience network communication issues.

The following list includes a few network-related issues that the server may experience:

• Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) cannot be used.
• A client cannot be joined to a domain.
• The server cannot connect to the Exchange server.
• Network performance is slow.
• Network performance is slow when communicating with a Microsoft Windows Vista system.
• Performance is slow when logging to the domain.
• Intermittent RPC communications failures are experience.
• The server stops responding.
• The server runs low on non-paged pool memory.

Solution

From the Network Configuration Utility, disable TOE and RSS .

At the same time, install the HotFix from Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 948496, An update to turn off default SNP features is available for Windows Server 2003-based and Small Business Server 2003-based computers . Click here to view Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 948496 and download the HotFix at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948496.