Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations derfloh on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Server will not boot 1

Status
Not open for further replies.

heysox

Technical User
Joined
Jul 10, 2007
Messages
2
Location
US
Dell Server - Need help

I'm not really a hardware guy, but by default I have to deal with a problem I cannot solve. My wife's business has an older Dell PowerEdge 600SC server with a RAID 5 array. This is a back up machine in the event the new machine has a major problem. The server runs Server 2000 and will not boot. The 'progress bar' on the boot screen stops at about 1/4 of the way and will go no further. I have a legit copy of Server 2003 and the Dell bootable install CD. The machine will not boot from that either. I'm pretty much stuck at this point with the computer not wanting to boot from the HD or the CD. I have switched the hard drives around to no avail. Any suggestions? I'm over my head and know it, but still need to get this puppy running. Thanks.
 
Verify you have the latest BIOS installed.

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark

Check out my scripting solutions at
Work SMARTER not HARDER. The Spider's Parlor's Admin Script Pack is a collection of Administrative scripts designed to make IT Administration easier! Save time, get more work done, get the Admin Script Pack.
 
Heysox, first of all it is not recommended to swap around your drives (especially if they are configured as a RAID array). With that said, have you tried starting your server with the Windows 2000 CD and going into recovey console. If you are able to logon when prompted this means that it is likely that you are able to access the Windows partition but something has become corrupted. If not then it can no longer find your existing copy of Windows.
If you can't boot from the CD, go into your system SETUP and check to ensure that the CD drive has been set as the first bootable device.
 
Have you tried booting into safe mode, or last known good configuration? I'd try the latter first. What happened to make the server stop? Storms, old age, any ideas? Thanks, keep us informed. (If last known good config doesn't work, try booting into safe mode and see if you can find anything in the log files.) (Start the machine and keep pressing F8 until you get the options.) Good luck.

Glen A. Johnson
If you like fun and sun, check out Tek-Tips Florida Forum
Don't forget to Buckle up. It works.


 
It sounds like you have a corrupted file or three. The recovery console might help to fix that:




You can also use the setup CDROM of windows 2000 server to install windows over the top of itself, but at least the following items will break:

- All installed programs will no longer work
- Items in the MY DOCUMENTS folder will be in danger of being deleted (potentially)
- If your computer is part of a domain or a domain controller, it will break this configuration

Only install windows over the top of itself if you are unable to recover your data any other way because you can lose data by doing so. Installing windows over the top of itself should ONLY be used to get your documents and files. After that, just wipe the HDD clean and start over.
 
Thanks to all who responded. I was able to get some help from Dell. It appears that the machine could not 'find the OS'. I ultimately disconnected all the drives and devices and was able to reinstall Windows. It was disaster recovery at that point. The server is now working properly and almost back to where I started. No speculation from Dell how this happened.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top