nvuono's questions

Had a client application fail and when I checked the server processes I noticed that one of the critical application services was not running.

Went into the services control panel and found that the service was stopped and when I tried to start it I received the following error message:

Error 1058 The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it.

I was eventually able to decode the error message and realize that there were hardware profiles assigned to specific services that COULD be enabled/disabled but now I have no idea how this setting would have gotten changed.

Does anyone know of any windows processes that might do something like this in the event of some kind of problem with AD, User Accounts, GPO or anything like that?

We were experiencing problems with one of our Windows 7 client applications that maintains a windows file share connection to a local server and it seemed to require lengthy application restarts during night shift on a regular basis.

Upon checking out the System Event Log I saw the following events recurring:

3/24/2014 12:05
Intel(R) 82567LM-3 Gigabit Network Connection
Network link has been established at 100Mbps full duplex.

3/24/2014 12:05
Intel(R) 82567LM-3 Gigabit Network Connection
Network link has been disconnected.

3/24/2014 11:37
Intel(R) 82567LM-3 Gigabit Network Connection
Network link has been established at 10Mbps full duplex.

3/24/2014 11:37
Intel(R) 82567LM-3 Gigabit Network Connection
Network link has been disconnected.

3/24/2014 7:55
Intel(R) 82567LM-3 Gigabit Network Connection
Network link has been established at 100Mbps full duplex.

3/24/2014 7:55
Intel(R) 82567LM-3 Gigabit Network Connection
Network link has been disconnected.

…etc …etc

The NIC was disconnecting then toggling back and forth between 10Mbps and 100Mbps at random intervals of ~60+ minutes all day but most frequently occurred overnight when the system is seeing lighter usage.

(I'm documenting and answering this myself here because it was an elusive problem but I'd like to accept any specific answers that don't involve completely disabling the monitor power savings and aren't just a nebulous 'try updating the drivers'.)