Windows Server 2008 R2 stops responding when an application performs many I/O operations to a network share

A new hotfix has been released that might be interesting if you publish applications on a Remote Desktop Session Host 2008 R2 server that heavily use network shares.

Details, see below.

Article ID: 2582112 - Last Review: September 7, 2011 - Revision: 1.0

Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 stops responding when an application performs many I/O operations to a network share

Consider the following scenario. You use an application to access a network share from a computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2. The application performs many I/O operations to the network share. In this scenario, Windows may stop responding.

This issue occurs because of a new behavior of the Server Message Block (SMB) mini-redirector (mrxsmb.sys) in Windows 7 and in Windows Server 2008 R2.

In Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, a power request object is created and then destroyed for every SMB network file operation. When an application performs heavy I/O to the network share, many threads that read or write to the network share create many power request objects. Therefore, the Power service cannot process the power request objects as fast as they are generated.