Perc 5/i firmware update needed

Before updating your PERC, you will first want to update your BIOS and ESM.

BIOS (requires reboot):

ESM/BMC (does not require reboot, but fans will speed up for up to 10 minutes):

PERC 5/i Driver (skip reboot and reboot after firmware update):

PERC 5/i Firmware (reboot required):

theflash - those links are dead, is there any way you can get an updated list for those links? I've searched everywhere and I can't seem to find the PERC 5/i Integrated Driver version 2.23.00.64 on a Windows 2008 R2 64-bit PowerEdge 2950.

BIOS (Update Package for Microsoft Windows):
http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04/DriverDetails/Product/poweredge-2950?driverId=16RCK&osCode=LHS64&fileId=3000127368

ESM/BMC (Update Package for Microsoft Windows):
http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04/DriverDetails/Product/poweredge-2950?driverId=4NNNG&osCode=LHS64&fileId=3078114158

Backplane (Update Package for Microsoft Windows):
http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04/DriverDetails/Product/poweredge-2950?driverId=9WH0P&osCode=LHS64&fileId=2981326779

RAID Driver (Update Package for Microsoft Windows):
http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04/DriverDetails/Product/poweredge-2950?driverId=M4F88&osCode=LHS64&fileId=3008804849

RAID Firmware (Update Package for Microsoft Windows):
http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04/DriverDetails/Product/poweredge-2950?driverId=2RPK0&osCode=LHS64&fileId=2974571956

HDD Firmware (bootable):
http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04/DriverDetails/Product/poweredge-2950?driverId=4FJ7Y&osCode=LHS64&fileId=3077597141

Latest OSMA (I'm guessing you are running 5.3 or 5.4 - latest is 7.1):
http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04/DriverDetails/Product/poweredge-2950?driverId=30T1C&osCode=LHS64&fileId=3075983142

Do you have to press F10 to get it to boot or F1?

F10 is the hot-key for the Utility Partition, which only contains diagnostics (when OS is installed using Dell tools), and should not make any difference on whether it boots or not.

If you are getting an F1/F2 message, then F1 would acknowledge/bypass the message and allow the system to boot.  Updating firmware will likely not fix this.  F1/F2 means there is a misconfiguration of 'some kind' in the BIOS.  It could be hardware failure (although this will usually accompany the F1/F2 prompt with some message related to the error - fan, memory/battery, etc.), but it could also be as simple as a SATA port being turned on in the BIOS with nothing physically connected to it.

Boot to the BIOS and look for anything that is listed as UNKNOWN.  Turn off your SATA ports (if on), double-checking to make sure there is nothing connected to each port.

Is the LCD panel on your server amber and scrolling an error message/code, or is it solid blue?

Oh, well cool then - glad you could point me in the right direction :)

It says the minimum version required is 2.23, so that's what I was looking for. A later version is just fine and dandy though.

Basically, OpenManage reports the following:

Firmware version..............5.0.1-0030

Min Firmware V. Req........5.2.1.-0067

Driver Version....................2.13.00.64

Min Driver V. Req...............2.23.00.64

Storport Driver Version.....6.0.6002.18005

The server will not reboot without someone being physically present to press 'F10' a few times during bootup because of this. Looks like I may have been wrong about the OS - It's Windows Server 2008 Standard, Service Pack 2 - 64bit. (Not sure if that's the official title of the OS, that's just a compilation of data from the System Properties window).

We're trying to update the Firmware and Driver so we don't have to have someone physically present at the remote office every time we need to reboot that server for patches or whatever else.

If this happens at the beginning of the POST phase where the bar is at the bottom of the Dell screen, then this has nothing to do with a Windows update ... Windows isn't even allowed in the picture until after the 5-second CTRL-E prompt.  The bar is the progress of the initialization of the system memory.  If this is where it is hanging up, I would strongly suggest running 32-bit Diagnostics (bootable) MPMemory to see if any of the memory sticks fail.  You might also try a single DIMM in the first slot, cycling through each DIMM to see if you can isolate a single one(s) that is causing the hangup.

I might also try clearing the NVRAM using the jumpers on the motherboard to see if the problem just goes away.

Thanks for the links!

As far as what's going on with the server? It's definitely F10 for some reason, during the stage where the DELL logo is showing and the white bar beneath it is filling up. The white bar gets hung and, without a prompt, if you press F10 it continues onward.

This started happening after a Windows Update for some reason, and it might be unrelated to the report from OpenManage, but that's literally the only thing we see that looks odd. Everything checks out in the BIOS, and it has never done this before we tried rebooting after the most recent wave of Windows Updates.

Sound advice - we'll give that a shot. I haven't personally touched the server so I suppose I can't be 100% certain that what I'm saying is exactly what happened. I'll let the tech that has been working on it know and if he can't get it going with that, I'll have a chance to get my hands on it. At that point I'll probably open my own topic! :)

Thanks a bunch for being so helpful.

1. Create a DOS bootable USB drive. You can use http://rufus.akeo.ie/ to do this but the drive needs to be 4G or smaller.

2. Download and exact the files to the USB drive from here: http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04/DriverDetails?driverId=2RPK0

    Select the Hard-Drive version.

3. Boot from the USB drive by Pressing F11 on boot up and then Selecting USB drive from the Hard Drive submenu.

4. Run the Update.bat file from the command prompt.