Last chance for Dell server - cannot get enough support

Hi,

A new customer of mine has a 3 yr old Dell server that the hard drive failed on (no raid at all, ugh).  I ordered in a replacement drive but cannot get the OS to load on it.  I have posted a few times here but never get enough info from ideas here to get past the problem.  The support had run out on the server so I have no good options except this forum.

Here is my message thread and right at the bottom you can see I am stuck again.  Have put hours into this and am ready to tell the client to just buy a new server -  which is a shame as it is just a backup server that is not that old.

In short, it always seems to fail either on not having the drivers or perhaps something to do with the partitions (sorry, but I do not understand the "PBR" error noted below).

Finally, it would be nice if someone from support stuck with this thread until I indicate it is resolved.

Thanks.

>>>>> first post (removed intro) >>>>>>

- boot to F10, Unified Server Configurator

- then Deployment, OS Deployment

- it prompts to select driver source and I figured out that I needed to download a CD called "DELL EMC LIFECYCLE CONTROLLER OS DRIVER PACKS DVD VERSION 17.07.00" and put this on a USB

- I picked "use CD/DVD/USB" and it found the stick and then put in "Repository" as the drivers are within that folder

- it prompted for the OS choice and I chose Win Server 2008 SP2

- it failed with an error "unable to copy driver files"

B) I then rebooted with the the Dell Windows Server 2012 Foundation" disk that I had (I did not use this at first as a previous post reply suggested that this 3 yr old server did not have the drivers for 2012)

- it came up to "deploy OS" and then it said it would reboot the system and finally it said to click to finish the installation" (there might have been other prompts along the way)

- this time it failed with "Loading PBR for descriptor 1...done" and then right after "Bad PBR signature"

>>>>>>> (response from Dell Support, Chris H ) >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Thank you. You can update the Lifecycle Controller via the F10 at startup, then Platform Update , from there you can run the Platform update and then point to that file.

Chris

>>>>>>>>>> (my last response ) >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Hi Chris,

When I boot into F10, there is  unfortunately no "Platform Update" option - only OS deployment, Hardware diagnostics, USC settings and about.  The UEFI ver is 2.1; the USC ver is 1.5.5.18.

The download file for updating the Life cycle Controller Legacy is an exe file that needs to be run from Windows - but I cannot boot to windows.

So it seems I am stuck as cannot update the Lifecycle Controller and without that, it seems I cannot install the OS?  Next ideas?