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WalterHarms

2 Posts

3473

February 16th, 2009 11:00

Reinstalling PowerVault 770N from scratch

I am trying to reinstall a powervault 770N from scratch.

I have the Dell Powervault Reinstallation CD Version 2.3.7.0 but when I boot the machine with the disk in, it won't boot off it. The CD spins as if it being read, but it never acts on it. It just says there is nothing to boot.

Is there a trick to get this to work? The machine was running W2K server until recently and I want to put either Windows 2003 or 2008 on it.

Thanks in advance

Walter

Update: I managed to get it to boot off the reinstallation CD twice, loading up Windows 98!. It drops to a command prompt then just sites there. I have not been able to get it to perform this trick consistently. Can some one walk me through what it is supposed to be doing?

tommo666

4 Apprentice

 • 

1.2K Posts

February 18th, 2009 02:00

Sounds like it could be a dvd/cd hardware problem. Try booting the cd's in a desktop to see if there's any difference.

WalterHarms

2 Posts

February 27th, 2009 09:00

Looks like I was over thinking the problem. Basically it was the CD drive that was toast. Since the CD drive is unique, I could not have it replaced in a costly or timely manner. So I had to work around the fact that I didn't have a CD drive to install a modern OS. I've decided to note here the steps I used in case some one else runs into the same issue.

  1. Create a DOS boot disk to create a 2 GB partition and did a sys c: to load on a DOS system. http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm
  2. Found an old SCSI card to match an old SCSI external CDROM drive that I had and put it in the machine. Attached the SCSI CD Drive. Note: I could not get the PowerVault 770N to boot of the SCSI CDROM drive. Looks like that is not supported in the BIOS.
  3. Create a DOS boot disk with networking to copy over the installation files for Windows 98. http://www.netbootdisk.com/
  4. Reboot into DOS on the local drive and install Windows 98. NIC detected but causes OS to fail to boot.
  5. Boot into safe mode to remove networking. Reboot to Windows 98 to access teh SCSI CD Drive.
  6. Put the Windows Server 2003 CD into the external drive and install from there.

 I've tried many permutations and combinations of installing but the above is the method that finally worked. Good luck.


Walter

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