Poweredge 2800 with Perc 4/DC lost boot partition

That is very odd.  Does it show up as having virtual disks when going through the raid controller in post?  If it's not seeing your virtual disks you may need to import them or attempt a retag if importing isn't an option as it sounds like the controller lost the raid configuration after the firmware flash.  If it is showing the proper number of virtual disks you may have deeper problems though.

Yes it is showing the virtual disks. As I mentioned , the server is up and running but it won't boot in to the OS on its own .  It quickly defaults to the PXE boot.  Without the boot partition it doesn't seem to see the server os.

 " If it's not seeing your virtual disks you may need to import them or attempt a retag if importing isn't an option"

Do not go there, bad advice !!!! Forget importing or retagging in this instance.

Your system did not lose it boot partition,

There is nothing seriously wrong if you can get it to boot from USB. Most likely the boot order changed in the computer bios setup or refer to the link

http://www.computerhope.com/fixboot.htm

" If it's not seeing your virtual disks you may need to import them or attempt a retag if importing isn't an option" Do not go there, bad advice !!!! Forget importing or retagging in this instance. Your system did not lose it boot partition, There is nothing seriously wrong if you can get it to boot from USB. Most likely the boot order changed in the computer bios setup or refer to the link www.computerhope.com/fixboot.htm

What are you talking about?. If the controller wasn't seeing his vdisk that would be the only way to get them to show back up. I clearly was saying to try that IF the perc isn't seeing the vdisks as expected which can definitely happen after a firmware flash. That being said though it is seeing the vdisks so it doesn't even matter. 

To TC, does your windows 7 install have the perc 4 drivers installed? 

So disk management within windows is only seeing the 31MB of unallocated space and nothing else when referencing the array?  

Yes , the perc drivers are installed, only way it would allow a boot to the raid drive.  I've tried fixmbr, fixboot and bootcfg /rebuild.  The last has an error.  At first glance it looks like it should be a simple fix but has been far from it.  Just to reiterate, the boot partition show as a 31Mb unpartitioned space, and no recovery tools have worked so far.

No, it sees the C: drive (Raid 1) and it sees the D: drive (Raid 5). But on the disk with C drive the first 31Mb where the boot sector usually resides is unallocated space.

Not sure if it makes a difference, but both Raid arrays are on the same channel, channel 1 with channel 0 empty.

As I said in the last post I misunderstood what he was initially saying.  I took what he said as he booted off an entirely different drive to check the partitions, not that he used a different boot loader to boot off the main OS drive.  But anyways none of this is helping TC, didn't mean to get worked up.

I have tried both as well as the recovery console command prompt. Chkdsk ran for hours and showed no errors.  Checked boot order in Bios and Boot Disk in Array, all are pointed at the right spot, just can't seem to fix or rebuild the boot sector of the C drive.

Oldhatt

You missing something. Retry the links I gave you. Forget the raid as a possible issue, the only thing in the raid setup which could affect it is the boot order, your raid is OK.

In 30 years at this, I have not seen an instance where the boot could not be corrected, under these circumstances. I would recommend an "over the top" Win 2003 repair install BUT It might affect your Exchange .

"What are you talking about?."

 "I am able to boot up the server from a windows 7 dual boot option on an external drive.  It is running fine."

He already stated he booted in the server, so at that point he is beyond an issue with VDs. Importing/retagging is not relevant at that point.

"Not sure if it makes a difference, but both Raid arrays are on the same channel, channel 1 with channel 0 empty."

Nothing to do with raid, has to do with OS boot.

Open and follow....

www.dell.com/.../EN

If you have ultimate CD, run fdisk, you can mark a partition bootable

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2751

I gave it a bit more thought, I believe you would be safe doing an over the top repair. 99% of the time it causes no issues, except you need to do tons of  MSupdates afterwards.

Do your backup before anything.

.

I will try making the partition bootable, I think that is why I am getting an error with bootcfg /rebuild.  I will also recheck the boot order on both bios and the controller.  I will post back tomorrow with the results as I will leave the server running overnight to do cleanup and backup and try the fixes in the morning.  Thank you for you time and help.