Poweredge 2400 Problems

Question

I have a Poweredge 2400 that I want to install Windows 2000 Server on.  When I boot up the machine I see 'Press F2 = Setup','F10 = Uitlity Mode'.  Everytime I try to press for one of these options, it will say 'entering setup', or 'Entering Utilility mode', but It will never actually enter.  What happens is the boot process continues, showing the scsi ids and their drive respectivly and then a cusor blinks at the end of the page.    If I put a windows 2000 disk into the drive, at the end of the page it says 'A bootable cd-rom is detected in your cd-rom drive'  and under that it says 'The boot sections on your bootable cd-rom are: 0. Default Entry.  No matter what I press nothing will happen.   I do not have the Dell open manage server assistant cd for this system.  I have tried to locate it, but to no avail.  I believe I have one for the SC430, but I dobut that will do any good.  Anyway, I am at a stand still and would appreciate any tips, hints, tricks, unrelated information, weather reports, Stock quotes, sports scores, WHATEVER!  As you can see I am frustrated.   Thanks in advance,   Jonathan

jk358 · Answer

OK, I unplugged the powercable going to the backplane, and I am able to get a dos bootdisk to give me a A: prompt.  I was also, able to get into bios, with the powercable unplugged.  I still can not get into utility mode.  When I plug the backplane back up, It goes back to the same state.    I know it seems the backplane must be bad, but it detects all the hard drives correctly, as well as the cd rom drive.  One last note, after unplugging the power, and plugging back in I got this message:   '!!!!****Warning: Firmware is out of date, please update****!!!   I downloaded the latest firmware, but if the backplane is plugged up, the machine will not boot to floppy, even though it is set that way in the bios.  I ran the update without the backplane but it still gets the same error.    Comments, questions, criticism, appreciated!   Thanks,   Jonathan

jk358 · Answer

OK,  I have 3 poweredge 2400 servers.  One poweredge, goes through the normal boot process and at the end, I get a message to 'F1 to retry boot, F2 to enter setup'.  On this machine I can begin windows install with no problems.   On the other 2 2400's, They go through the normal boot process, but at the end they stop just before getting to the F1 or F2 message.  They all have the same specs, but 2 of them will not enter setup, or bios.  I have even tried taking the drives with a Clean windows install on them and putting them in one of the machines that will not cooperate, but they still will not go any further.     This is frustrating, any help is appreciated.   Jonathan Message Edited by jk358 on 05-02-2005 10:07 AM

Silvas Ilcanjar · Answer

I'm by no means an expert, but let's look at this systemically

With the Backplane hooked up, the machine will not boot
With the Backplane disconnected, the machine boots

This narrows it to one of 4 things (just off the top of my head, I may be missing some)

1. The cable between the backplane and the motherboard (2400 should have a control cable to the mainboard in addition to the SCSI data cable just like a 2300 right?) is bad and sending erroneous data. VERY uncommon but not totally unheard of

2. The backplane is bad.

3. The backplane firmware has been corrupted.

4. 1 or more drives connected to the backplane is experiencing issues and causing the hangup.

Ok, so we need to narrow it down more. Since you have to have the backplane hooked up to see if any other diag work changes anything, we start from the opposite end.

Try hooking up the backplane with no drives attached. If it continues to hang up, the problem has got to be somewhere within the backplane, firmware, or cabling. I would suspect, however, that with no drives attached it will boot fine. Just a hunch based on similar behavior I've seen.

Lemme know what happens.

jk358 · Answer

First, Let me say THANK YOU for helping out.

Second, you are correct in this statement:
(2400 should have a control cable to the mainboard in addition to the SCSI data cable just like a 2300 right?) Question..Are 2300 parts compatatble with 2400 parts (such as backplanes, drives, etc)

Third, you are correct on your hunch. If I remove all the drives and boot, I can get into bios, or I will get the option to try to reboot, or enter setup at the end of the boot sequence. This is usually where I would put my windows disk in and start a install.

So, it seems we have narrowed it to a faulty drive?? Since I have 2 of these machines doing the same thing, I can try to boot with different combinations of drives. What is the best way to determine weather a drive is good or not, outside of trial and error? Thinking out loud..I could put the drives into the machine that is working and run a hard disk check utility on the drive (any suggestions on a good utility, maybe there is a dell one I could download?)

Update

I booted computer with no drives, and it will go to windows setup, booting from the cd-rom. Of course I can not continue install because windows does not see any hard disks. I tried 3 different hard drives in slot 0, and they all do the same thing. Could there be something in the backplane (SCSI) utility that I am missing? I ran a check media option in the scsi utitlity and the it completes without a problem. The drives show up in the startup scan, and the backplane shows up as well. I changed the scsi card to look to slot 4 instead of 0 and moved the hard drive there, just to rule out the possiblity of slot 0 being bad. It didn't make a difference. Earlier, I said we had bad hard drives, because It will go into setup without drives in the machine. Do you still think its HD's, or could it still be the backplane?? I appreciate your help, 2 minds are always better than 1.

Jonathan

Message Edited by jk358 on 05-04-2005 12:39 PM

Silvas Ilcanjar · Answer

if you put the same drives in the same order into the working machine, does it still boot?

If so, then I would have to say that the problem definately lies somewhere in the backplane, firmware, or cabling. Oh, now that you have been able to get the machines to boot up with the backplane connected, try updating the firmware for the backplane.

As far as whether 2300 and 2400 parts are compatible, I'm not sure on that one. I only have 1 PE2300 that I got just over a week ago, so I'm still on a learning curve here =)

jk358 · Answer

>Oh, now that you have been able to get the machines to boot up with the backplane connected, try >updating the firmware for the backplane.   I downloaded The Embedded Server Management (ESM) flash utility and updated the server management and system backplane boards.  They updated correctly, however as soon as I put the drives back in, the same problem occurs.  Right now the computer that is working is at my house, but yesterday I took the drives that had the windows install on them and put them in one of the bad computers (same configuarations), and the bad computer did the exact same thing.  The only thing, I feel I have not done at this point is:   1) Take these drives and put them into the good machine to see if it will boot properly 2) Take the backplane out of the good machine and put it into a bad machine and see if it will boot properly, first with drives from the bad machine, and if that doesn't work, then with drives from the good machine.   I'll update you as soon as I do both of these.  If there is anything you want me to help you  think through with your new machine, let me know.   Thanks,   Jonathan

Silvas Ilcanjar · Answer

sounds like you're on the right track. Also a couple other things to look at

In the bad machines -

Do you have the backplane connected to the mainboard or to an addon SCSI/RAID controller?

Are the drives configured as a RAID Array?

If you have the backplane connected to an addon SCSI/RAID controller, try swapping controllers.

The only things I can think of at this point if the drives from the bad machines work in the good machines, is the backplane is bad, cable is bad, or the controller is bad. Something is going haywire when the machine tries to be able to access data on those drives, so if the drives work elsewhere, it would seem to be something within the backplane, controller, or cabling. Hope this all helps, and good luck!

jk358 · Answer

>Do you have the backplane connected to the mainboard or to an addon SCSI/RAID >controller?
The backplane is connected to the mainboard via 2 cables

>Are the drives configured as a RAID Array?
It is non-raid config.

>The only things I can think of at this point if the drives from the bad machines work >in the good machines, is the backplane is bad, cable is bad, or the controller is >bad. Something is going haywire when the machine tries to be able to access data on >those drives, so if the drives work elsewhere, it would seem to be something within >the backplane, controller, or cabling. Hope this all helps, and good luck!

I took the drives from the bad machine, and put in the good machine. NO PROBLEMS.
So, its the backplane right??
I took the backplane from the good machine and put into the bad machine. SAME RESULT = NO GOOD. I also used the cables from the good machine, to rule that out.

I had ruled out every possible thing that I could think of, until this morning. I upgraded the bios on the motherboard from A05 to A08 (A09 is for Windows 2003), and BOOOOOM it worked. I don't really think there was anything wrong, I think it just "reset" the bios. I will try the same thing on the other bad computer, but I think it will work.

Thanks for all your help!!!

Jonathan

PowerEdge Hardware General

Poweredge 2400 Problems

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