PowerEdge 2400 partial boot

Question

I have an older PowerEdge 2400 server that refuses to boot completely after a recent power failure. I am at a loss as to where to look for the problem, and hope that someone here can point me in the right direction.   The machine boots and displays the systemboard firmware revision, finds the processors fine, loads the PERC 2/Si BIOS without issue (the RAID 5 containers show up as degraded, another issue that I'm working on caused by the power outage), followed by the Adaptec 7880 BIOS. The 7880 BIOS finds the NEC CD-ROM, after which the boot process stops with no drive activity or anything else. The system will not even try to boot from a floppy or bootable CD-ROM (although if the CD drive has a bootable CD-ROM in it, that fact is stated when the 7880 finds the CD drive).   I cannot get into the setup (via F2) or the utilities (via F10), and since nothing will boot, I can't even run diagnostics. I can get into the PERC 2/Si BIOS utilites by pressing Ctrl-A at the appropriate time, or into the AIC-7880 BIOS utilities via the same method later on.   Does anyone have any tricks to try or other ideas? I'm at a loss as to where to go next in troubleshooting this issue. There aren't any error messages reported or anything else that I can find wrong -- the boot process simply halts.   Thank you in advance for any help/advice on this!

Gcar123 · Answer

I'm having the same issue with a PE2500SC with an AIC-7899 controller and PERC 3/Di connected to 1x6 Backplane (2 36gb disks RAID1). It's just a test server and was running fine but it was sitting unused for a couple of weeks and tried to boot up and got the same issue. After the Adaptec message, the cursor would scroll a couple of lines and then do nothing. I left it for hours but nothing happened. Rebooted, tried to enter setup via F2 and the entering setup message show at the top of screen but it never gets that far - just sits with flashing cursor after the adaptec messages. In the PERC SCSISelect, under disk utilities, it listed the two disks (channels 0 &1), the backplane (ch 6) and the AIC-7899 (ch 7). In the Adaptec SCSISelect, the two disks were not listed. I noticed in the logs (via Ctrl-A followed by Ctrl-P) for the PERC, that it mentioned no battery voltage. I decided to disable PERC (even physically removed the chip and RAM) so that it would be out of the equation. After the standard 'Poweredge 2500.. Embedded server management firmware revision...etc', it shows Adaptec AIC-7899 SCSI BIOS Build 25357 (c) Adaptec, Inc. All Rights reserved <<< Press CTRL> for SCSISelect(TM) Utility! >>> Ch A, SCSI ID : 0 SEAGATE ...... (Data not an issue, just trying to get the darn thing to boot!!)

Gcar123 · Answer

... Cont'd (Sorry hit enter too early) SCSI ID : 1 SEAGATE .... SCSI ID : 6 DELL 1x6 U2W SCSI BP ASYN   And that's it - no more response, only option to power down.   Help

igordo68 · Answer

i too have a poweredge 2500 and it worked fine then i tried to install memory , i guess it was not ecc so it just beeped . so i removed the memory then it would not boot beyond showing the 7899 stuff and just has a flashing curser it will not go to f2 f10 f12 but i can get into the scsi drives and look and do stuff but i cannot get into set up can someone please help

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