poweredge 1850 wont post or no video

Thanks man that worked, I reseated both cpu's one by one and put new thermal paste of them then it posted. I still have the blinking amber lights but at least I got video. I'll post again with any questions. Thanks a million.

The blinking amber lights could be the tamper switch. I have an 1850 which will not post and I have no video, keyboard etc. Still waiting for the thermal paste to arrive and have two spare processors. Nothing seems to work so far. : (

I have Linux on it now. I had to disable the raid and just run the HDD's straight up. Do you have any knowledge on the raid card? I don't like no using the raid. But at least I got a OS on it now. Thanks

Mine has Linux but trying to put on Win 2003 Standard until it messed up. Can't get into the bios at all or get any sense from the peripherals. What's happening with your RAID?

Nope, wont post, can't get any response from the monitor/VGA. I was upgrading with a second CPU and putting in a CD drive to remove Linux/Ubuntu as I am a windows user. Tried NVRAM_CLR trick by switching the jumpers, swapped out back to the original CPU. Checked for duff RAM. Re-seated the PCI/Riser card and checked the backplane too but I am getting a response from the CD drive and Hard drive just no boot or no post. Frustrating. At my old work we had spare parts lying around to rule out possible hardware faults/failures. I hope it isn't the motherboard.

I'm not sure about my raid card. So yours won't post? Any beep codes? Any symptoms? Maybe I can help from all my troubles.

See that's the thing, throughout the whole post I never had a control m option. I went in the bios but I'm not in front of it right now but I put it on the other option where it says raid. Linux only shows my 156gb HDD but I guess if its in mirror it would only show it that way. I'll post what I did after work today.

Did you configure RAID in CTRL-M?  The PERC's do not support non-RAID, so it must be configured and initialized before any disks are presented to the OS, even with the correct drivers.

My raid just won't allow OS's to see the array. I have the drivers on a cd and a floppy just in case but it still won't see the array.

In the BIOS, under Integrated Devices, you should be able to enabled RAID.  If that option is not there or not available to be changed (from SCSI), then the RAID components (key, memory, battery) are either not present or not functioning properly.  If you can enable RAID, but you aren't getting a CTRL-M prompt, then something is wrong with the controller (on the riser card).  Usually, if there is an issue with the controller it will either 1) give you an error during POST about the status of the controller, or 2) won't let you enable RAID in the BIOS.  Turning off RAID (SCSI Enabled) will bypass any issues with the controller itself, and allow you to install without RAID ... or to avoid driver issues with the RAID controller, which may be the case, depending on your version of linux.

You MUST remove the processor from the heatsink.  Attached, there is NO way to properly seat and latch the processor in place.  I suggest using a credit card to separate them, as it is unlikely to scratch or damage either.

Correct, one processor which was attached to the heat sink with thermal compound and is still in tact. Attempted an upgrade to second CPU and has since been failing. Thank you.

So, your system had a single processor, you attempted to add a second ("upgrading with a second CPU"), and since then you get no video?  Or did you replace both ("swapped out back to the original CPU")?  When you removed the processor, was it stuck to the heatsink?

I have tried with two other processors and a spare heat sink with no thermal compound paste so they are seated properly. Unless the spare supplied are faulty.