This week I ran into a very slow to respond computer that was giving this error “This operation returned because the timeout period expired”. This was on a SBS 2011 server and I ended up sending a reboot command from another computer, but had to do a hard reset. Once I held the power and reboot the machine the remote command I had pushed got executed so I had to wait another 15 min for the server to cycle.

Once it came up I still had trouble running things, however, I was able to use Desktops to create another desktop instance and from there run some system scans and virus scans. Everything came up negative but after the next reboot things were once again working well.

The next troubleshooting step will involve a clean-boot of the system. I plan on writing a tutorial for that and linking it back here in the near future. But for now you can look at Microsoft’s version