I have a PE2650 that will occasionally fail during the boot process.  The exact error text reported is "System Halted!"  No additional details are given.  This problem is intermittent - most of the time the machine will boot normally.

When the error occurs I've observed the following:

+ The error consistently occurs all at once.  What I mean by this is I do not get mixed results during a set time period.  The error will occur every time I attempt to boot the machine and once it's gone the machine consistently boots normally.  For example, if I rebooted or powered down 100 times in a row then all 100 would be failures.  I would not get a mixed bag of 60 successes and 40 failures.

+ The keyboard is nonresponsive.

+ The RAC boot path analysis log gets to "POST Code 92 | Initializing ACPI" and then reports a failure thinking the system might be hung (which it is).

+ The "System Halted!" error occurs immediately after the the 5 seconds expire when the system is waiting for you to configure the RAC using CTL+D.  The RAC works fine so I'm sure this is not caused by the RAC.

+ The RAID controller works fine.  There is no evidence to suggest that the RAID configuration is an issue.

+ The server incorrectly reports having two, 2400 MHZ processors with a 400 MHZ bus speed.  Actually, this server has two 3066 MHZ processors with a 533 MHZ bus speed.  This property is 100% repeatable.  I can reliably predict that the system will hang as soon as it reports the incorrect processor and bus speeds.

+ This error occurs before the BIOS setup (F2) or Utilities (F10) applications can be entered.

When the error does not occur I've observed the following:

+ The OpenManage Server Administrator web site does not report any errors.

+ All memory tests pass.

+ The operating system - Windows Server 2003 R1 SP2 - works great.

While troubleshooting I've noticed that rebooting has never fixed the problem.  I have to do a cold restart and completely power off the machine.  However, we have to rule out a temperature issue because the "System Halted!" error will occur after the machine is off for days.  All sensors indicate temperatures are completely normal.

To me it seems the best thing to explore first is why would a system report an incorrect processor and/or bus speed?  Like I stated above, there is a 100% repeatable link between the system being able to boot and it reporting the correct speeds.

The following screenshot shows the beginning of a successful boot since it the processor and bus speeds are reported _correctly_ at 3066/533.  A "System Halted!" message would appear if the processor and bus speeds were reported incorrectly as 2400/400: