2003 Standard DC hang during preparing network connections

[GANGSTA]

We are having a 2-site domain with 2dc's in each site. Just couple of day back, the main DC, which was first installed in the domain, restarted by itself and if it restarted in never gets past "preparing network connections". I have tried starting in safe mode with and without network but it does now help. There is not direct indication to what caused the restart in the logs. The server is partially functioning still, ping responds, mail server logon requests through via LDAP are accepted, even though performance is low, but no logon via RDP. Some of the event id's found which may be of some info are - 1003 which only appears in safe mode and 1168. I also got schannel faults event id 36872 also before the restart. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[ApPy10]

You have to make sure that the setting for incompatiblity is set hight than 3. Also, when you are in safe mode, then you will have to clear the security log file because if it is full then it can cause your server to restart and lock itself until you clear the crashonauditfail back to a setting of 1 or 0, while turned off. The setting of 2 in the registry means that it has been activated. After clearing the logs and resetting crashonauditfail, restart and the DC will be able to logon. When that fixes the problem, then change the incompatibility level back to what ever it was and see if the issue happens again.