20 Minute Boot on 745N

Question

I have 4 of my 200 PowerVault 745N systems that take 20 minutes to boot. I think I have exhausted my normal troubleshooting techniques. The servers post fine, display the starting Windows 2003 Server screen, screen goes black, drives LEDs indicate churning, 18 minutes later, desktop loads. Suggestions welcome.

So Far -

Backed off all firmware / hotfix / driver updates
Reapplied 2003 SP1 (OEM Storage Edition)
enabled bootlogging in boot.ini (no help w/o timestamps)
enabled /SOS boot.ini (doesn't show driver load like 2003 standard)
Read CERC logs / events
checked Event log (not much there - 6006 then 20 minutes later 6005 events)

Thanks

CGage · Answer

1. ntbtlog.txt doesn't really help. It shows the sequence of the boot process but it doesn't stamp each line so I can't tell which one hangs.

2. The /SOS boot.ini switch apparently doesn't do anything on a 745N.

3. Event log shows the following
6006 - event log shuts down 0:00
4295 - IPSec starts - 0:03
33 - Intel detects spanning tree - 0:03
31 - Intel E1000 NIC Link Established - 0:03
6005 - Event log starts up - 0:18

Nothing is written between minute 3 and the desktop loading (18 minutes). And I can't ping until minute 18 either.

4. CurrentControlSet has wrapped so that I have no known goods.

5. Safe mode takes the same amount of time to boot

6. MSINFO problem devices reports one nic disabled

7. I have disabled all non-microsoft and non-critical microsoft services / devices and it still boots in 20 minutes.

pcmeiners · Answer

Message Edited by pcmeiners on 02-09-2006 03:25 PM

CGage · Answer

As a joke, I went into disk defragmenter. There were 320 E:\ drives listed in the 'Volume' column. I turned VSS off for the E:\ drive and rebooted. The reboot took 2 minutes.

pcmeiners · Answer

WOW, never saw that many false drives show up ! Glad you got it going.

PowerVault

20 Minute Boot on 745N

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