T5500 issue booting

Question

Hi all,

I have a T5500 which I have had for some time and previously used with Windows Server 2012 R2. For a while all ran fine. I did remove the 150GB SAS drive and put a bigger 1TB SATA drive in to run from.

I have been looking at the specs and have been quite surprised, resulting in me looking at purchasing more memory, a 2nd CPU Riser and a pair of better CPU's. The system setup now consists of the 150GB SAS back in running Server 2012 R2 and a pair of 1TB SATA drives in RAID1. Before purchasing any additional hardware I would like to resolve an issue I am having as the machine boots.

I had to strip the machine down somewhat to clear out the dust and have reapplied some fresh heat compound on the CPU. However, the machine starts, POST kicks in, I see the SATA RAID and the member drives and the Dell SAS 6 HB adapter is detected and it searches for a device.

It locates the Seagate drive 136GB and the adapter LSILogic SAS1068E-IR with the message "Dell Inc. MPT boot ROM successfully installed!". The issue follows this message where I get:

Alert! Memory failure detected in DIMM 2
Strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run the setup utility
Press F5 to run onboard diagnostics.

I have run the diagnostics, the full diagnostics, no problems detected with the memory.
I've re-seated all the RAM modules and also changed the module in DIMM 2. I have move the "password reset" jumper and also replaced the CMOS battery. Although I was surprised when booting in to the BIOS the time date had not changed and were current, so maybe this didn't reset properly??

I really want to upgrade the hardware and use this to run several VM's but need to sort this out first as it will be sat with KVM devices connected, so should the server be rebooted it will hang at this point until F1 is pressed.

BTW if I press F1, I boot in to Windows Server 2012 R2 and everything looks fine. The full 24GB RAM is showing correctly no spurious messages in event viewer.

To me, the fact the RAM has been swapped around and everything is running and Windows detects and shows all of the RAM indicates the RAM/DIMM slot are fine.

Does anyone have suggests at all please?

Many thanks.

Kind regards,
Jim

stringmaker · Answer

Hello Jim, I have only just registered with this community and have found it difficult to navigate and post my 'T5500 non-booting issue', so please bear with me. I am sorry I am not able to help but you may be interested to read my issue which is similar re. ‘uncorrectable memory errors’?

Issue – PC Crashes when trying to install Windows 7 or Windows 10

I am rebuilding a Dell T5500 as the diagnostic lights on the front panel consistently showed green on 1 and 4 indicating a fatal main board failure.

I acquired a replacement main board and transferred processor, memory and graphics card to it and fitted a new CMOS battery.

Running PC without CPU2 Riser Module - When first powered the PC emitted continuous beeps but only while detecting the hard drives and then beeps stopped. (I don’t know whether this is normal behaviour? as I know it normally indicates a memory issue, but subsequent testing of the memory showed no problems with it.

I continued with setup and the PC appeared to complete POST (with no front panel diagnostic lights lit) and I was able to enter the BIOS settings and change them as needed.

When running Dell diagnostics it showed a hard drive error, even though I was using a tested good hard drive (unallocated without partitions) I also tried a brand new drive and again got the same error (error code 0146)

(The Hard Drives are detected correctly in BIOS)

When I tried to install windows 7 pro from the internal DVD-Drive the PC froze after approx. 3 minutes at the Windows logo screen (dancing lights) It did the same thing when trying via an external USB DVD Drive and also via USB Memory Stick. I also tried with other known good Windows Disks.

At the point where it froze, the screen sometimes displayed ‘uncorrectable memory errors’ with 2 of the modules. I thoroughly tested the memory with Dell Diagnostics (extended test) but it showed no memory errors. I changed the 2 modules anyway for good measure.

Other things tried, in no particular order.

Using the memory tested as above, I tried with 1 bank only of 3 modules (I have 9 identical 4GB PC3-10600, ECC, Registered modules available so could try with 3 different sets) All worked OK but it did not change my issue.

Reset the CMOS

Changed CMOS battery

Re-seated memory

Examined the processor socket (no visible damage

Re-seated the processor.

Replaced processor with identical good one.

Changed the Graphics Card

Different Keyboard, Mouse, Monitor and DVI cable.

(Have not changed Power Supply or the cable that runs from front panel to mainboard as don’t have available)

My intention if I can solve this is to install Windows 10 on an SSD. The current BIOS version is A16. Will Windows 10 run with this? (On Dell site, versions A17 and A18 are marked as ‘urgent’ but don’t know why they are so)

Any help or suggestions gratefully received.

Thanks, Peter

Precision Fixed Workstations

T5500 issue booting

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