I have a PE4400 that I just recently acquired.  It came with the basic A: and a NEC SCSI CD-ROM. No hard disks.

I have not installed any hard disks on the AIC 7899 SCSI BIOS v25306 yet, as I am stepping up through the build process.

I have updated the BIOS (A11), ESM (A56 FW 5.50 Backplane 5.51), PERC (A25 BIOS 3.35) from current Dell downloads.

During the boot process the machine recognizes the SCSI CD Drive with the assigned ID 0 and by name NEC CD ROM on the AIC 7880 SCSI BIOS 7880 v25701

I can boot the system with a MSDOS 6.0 boot disk and the SCSI CD works fine using DOS MSCDEX with ASPI drivers. It establishes itself as the C: drive and I can read the CD and DOS EDIT any *.txt file and do all the normal DOS based programs and functions including running QBASIC off the CD-ROM. So I am sure my cable connections are good.

I cannot get the CD to boot as a boot device for a Windows 2000 Advanced Server load. It does not "see" the CD ROM as a boot device.

In BIOS, I use a Device List that looks like this:

Boot Device Priority:
Diskette drive A:
AIC-7880 SCSI CD_ROM Drive

Exclude From Boot Device Priority:

Device Controller Priority:
System BIOS boot devices

When I couldn't get the CD boot I switched to the 4 Windows 2000 Adv Server Setup Disks method.

I get all the way to the end and again it does not "see" the CD ROM.

I have tried loading new SCSI/PERC drivers downloaded from Adaptec/Dell using the F6 line. Adaptec Drivers and Dell PowerEdge RAID Controller Device Driver for Windows 2000. Version: 5.46

Perplexed because under normal DOS 6.0 it is loaded fine and works fine. But I can't get the CD to act as a boot device or be seen after the 4 disk set up.

Suggestions?

pfrost83