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P2850 hangs after POST
I have a P2850 that I recently had to reboot. It POSTED fine, but wouldn't load windows. I went into the Perc Raid and all disks and logical partitions are fine, and light up during POST. It stopped right after the BMC option which is normally when Windows loads. Can anyone tell me how to troubleshoot this problem?
Thanks
theflash1932
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July 1st, 2010 10:00
Did the system shutdown/reboot unexpectedly - power outage, following an update, reboot, etc.? What exactly led up to this? Is the LCD panel blue or amber? If it is blue, and you are not seeing ANY error messages during POST (like "memory/battery problems were detected" - *important*!), then you probably need to attempt to repair Windows. Boot to the Windows CD, to Recovery Console, run a CHKDSK /R and then FIXBOOT. If the LCD is amber ... what error message is it scrolling?
mcolman
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July 1st, 2010 12:00
Thanks for the response. LCD was blue. I shut it down gracefully as I wanted to join it to a domain. During the POST there were no problem messages. I would love to repair windows, but in order to do that I have to have the system get to the CD-ROM to read the WIndows CD. I have alkready tried this. Any other suggestions?
Thanks.
theflash1932
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July 1st, 2010 15:00
Why won't it read the Windows CD? Does it not try to boot to it at all? Is it in the boot order? Does the CD work in another machine? Can you boot to another CD on this machine or have another 2003 or XP CD?
mcolman
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July 6th, 2010 13:00
Hello The Flash. I'll answer your questions in order
1. If I knew why it won,t read the Windows CD, we wouldn't be having this discussion :)
2. Let me repeat, IT DOES NOT BOOT AT ALL!
3. The CD works fine in other machines, and I have booted to them.
Any suggestions?
theflash1932
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July 6th, 2010 13:00
Well, let me explain my questions ... you only said you have already tried getting the system to read the Windows CD. Without any details on why/how it was not reading the Windows CD, we're left to wonder what exactly do you mean by "read the Windows CD" ... Does it give a read error? (Could be a bad CD or drive.) Does the Windows CD not find any hard drives? (Windows needs storage driver.) Does it act as though there were no CD in the drive to boot to? (Could be a bad CD, drive, or the system BIOS is simply not set to boot to CD.)
Sounds to me like your CD drive is bad OR the BIOS is not currently set to boot to CDROM - unless you have experienced something as described above, or something else.
mcolman
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July 9th, 2010 14:00
Hello TheFlash:
In answer to your statements:
1. Normally after a POST, the system will cyle through the bios media sequence specified in the Setup menu (F2). In my case: floppy, cd-rom, then the HD's. This cycle never started (and I don't have a floppy stuck in the drive). However, I noticed when I rebooted that the lights for the floppy and the CD-ROM came on before the POST sequence started, but not after.
2. By "Didn't read the Windows CD", I meant exactly that - after the POST, the expected sequence in #1 above, did not occur i.e. no lights came on the floppy, and no lights came on the CD drive, and the cursor just stayed on the screen blinking after the POST.
Any suggestions? I swapped out the backplane just in case, but the same problem occurred with a new backplane.
Regards,
theflash1932
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July 9th, 2010 15:00
Do you see the BMC 'CTRL-E within 5 seconds' message - that should be the last step before boot? When you see a blinking cursor, is the screen blank, with the cursor in the top left corner? If so, then check the BIOS to make sure that your CDROM drive is set to AUTO (not OFF) under Integrated Devices, and make sure that your CDROM is not only listed in Boot Sequence, but has a checkmark next to it (enable/disable with Space Bar). It is not active unless checked.
If you are seeing the BMC message, the blinking cursor happens after the BMC message, CDROM is enabled AND active in the boot order, the LCD panel is blue, AND you are not getting some BIOS error message (like memory/battery problems detected), then I have to assume the CDROM drive is bad. You might look into creating a bootable 2003 USB flash drive to boot to confirm, and so you can repair Windows.
Do you have another server (or even some laptops) you could steal a CD/DVD drive from - or even an external?