Poweredge 840- Amber light Flashing

Question

I bought a refurbished/used Dell Poweredge 840 from a reseller over the internet.  Since buying it i have installed a raid card, added 4 hard drives, installed server 2008 standard, and have used the system sparingly.  I have kept the server unplugged from the outlet for several months.  Since I did not activate server 2008 it more than likely has expired. What is interesting is that the server initially turned on today with a blue light but after some time....started giving me an amber light.  At first I could get to the boot screen of server 2008 but it would restart the server.  Then I popped in the server 2008 standard disc and it would not go into the install mode, instead it seemed to perform a boot into the os on the hard drive.  I was able to log in and see my files.  The time seemed accurate.  I went to system and checked the activation status and I basically have a day to activate. So I decided to delete my raid 5 array and start over in quick init mode.  This time I pop in the disc for 2008 standard and I eventually get a bsod error 0x00000124.  So it looks like something has bugged in the hardware but I am not sure what to do.  I just bought the server so many months ago and had no problems with installing the raid card and the os...........  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

plp384123 · Answer

Another important thing is that I just plugged in the server and it initially shows blue light all the way up to the point where the os cd is trying to load the install gui. then it gives the bsod 0x00000124.

So it seems to reset itself from whatever error occurs just by unplugging and replugging in the server.

plp384123 · Answer

The RAID controller is :

Adaptec AAR-2610SA Dell 0H2052 64MB Serial SATA RAID Controller Card 6 Ports

I have one of these working just fine on another server. Was able to go into the raid utility and do the quick init.

Thanks for the suggestion and link.

theflash1932 · Answer

What RAID controller did you get?

Try booting into CTRL-E to see if you can access the ESM/SEL logs.

I would recommend trying to boot to an OMSA Live CD to check the Hardware Log:

linux.dell.com/.../omsa-54-040308.iso

plp384123 · Answer

voices.yahoo.com/dell-xps-amber-light-problem-solution-4124627.html

I read through this link and found something important. It turns out the memory modules were needed to be reset.

That's all I did. And now I can run server 2008 setup disc! Thank You

theflash1932 · Answer

There are dozens of things that can cause the amber light and cause the system to behave strangely (including amber lights at various stages of POST).  Memory errors are just one ... you got extremely lucky that that post just happened to be the same as yours.  If the amber light returns, you most likely have a DIMM (or more) that is giving single-bit errors - a sign one is damaged and should soon be replaced.

PowerEdge Hardware General

Adaptec AAR-2610SA Dell 0H2052 64MB Serial SATA RAID Controller Card 6 Ports

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