PowerEdge R340 will not boot

Question

I've got a PowerEdge R340 that's only about a year and a half old, which puts it a few months out of warranty (of course). Friday, it decided that it was tired of life and refuses to turn on anymore. When I plug it in, I can hear fans turning on like the system is about to boot up, but they stop after a second. If I press the button on the left side of the case with the italicized i underneath, I'm able to press the power button again for another attempt, but the same thing happens. The i button on the left hand side will blink amber until I press it again, at which point it'll blink blue and I can try booting again. There are some blinking lights on the motherboard, but I can't find any information about what they represent: near the CMOS battery, LED3004 is blinking amber and LED3005 blinks green. LED 3002 is steady green. At the very edge of the motherboard near the PCI slots is a row of 7 LEDs named OMNIVU_LED - 1, 2, and 4 are steady green, and 6 and 7 blink green.

I've tried disconnecting the drive backplane and the DVD drive and reseating the control panel cable, and I've reseated the RAM and processor as well. At this point, the only things plugged into the motherboard are the processor, fans, a stick of RAM, and the board containing PCI slots. There are redundant power supplies, and I've tried each one separately and both together.

I can access iDRAC, but everything is showing green checkmarks in there.

We've got 4 SSDs in RAID 5 attached to the computer, and I'm trying to recover the data from those now without much success. Any pointers there would be appreciated as well.

Please help!

Dell-DylanJ · Answer

Hello,

Looks like there is a problem with one of the power rails to memory. The issue may be with memory or with the board. Considering you reseated the memory and tested with a single stick, I'd be inclined to think the motherboard is at fault. You might also want to test with a couple different sticks in slot A1, just to be sure. If you didn't have both power supplies disconnected from source for a few minutes, you might also disconnect them and perform a full power drain, as well. That would involve disconnecting power, then holding the power button down for a few seconds. If none of this results in different behavior, I'd be looking at replacing the motherboard as a next step.

DELL-Shine K · Answer

As you have access to iDRAC I would suggest to check System Event Log and Life Cycle Controller Logs to check any details on failure. You can also go to Troubleshooting page and check what POST code is shown while trying to power on the server. You can find these details on Maintenance page on iDRAC GUI.

You can recover data from the drives using foreign disk if you have RAID on a PERC controller. You can take the drives and insert to another server with similar storage controller. On the second system all these drives will be shown as foreign disk. Then you can use iDRAC to import foreign configuration to get the RAID back on the new server.

You can find more details on importing foreign configuration using iDRAC from below link

https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-us/idrac9-lifecycle-controller-v4.x-series/idrac9_4.00.00.00_ug_new/importing-foreign-configuration-using-web-interface?guid=guid-47763c8d-c542-4e1c-831a-369370352d2d&lang=en-us

itsmwar · Answer

Thank you for the information.  I replaced the RAM with a known good stick and the problem continued, so it sounds like it's the motherboard.  I did try draining any reserve power, but that didn't have any effect.

uniquate · Answer

@itsmwar​ I have same problem with R240. How did you solve the problem?

DELL-Chris H · Answer

Uniquate,

It looks like after they tested a known good dimm in slot A1 and still had the error, they replaced the motherboard. So if you are having the same issue I would start with testing a known good, and supported, dimm in A1, If that fails to resolve the issue then you may also need a motherboard.

Let me know if this helps.

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PowerEdge R340 will not boot

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