Compaq DL360 - not booting 2

[KozmoUK]

Hello all,

I've got an old Compaq ProLiant DL360 (800mhz P3/256MB ram/9GB scsi) which has been running fine previously. Today it locked up which I had to do a hard reset and now it won't boot up. It turns on, does the POST on the scsi card, recognises there is a drive and then beeps twice and that is all it will do. The cursor flashes as if it's going to boot up windows 2000 server but it doesn't actually do so. I'm absolutely stumped as to why it's doing this and any help would be very much appreciated.

Any suggestions what to try?

Thanks,

Alastair

 

[KozmoUK]

Would anyone have any suggestions on where I might find some help from regarding this? I don't have any kind of contract with HP/Compaq as the machine is fairly old. Any help would be very very much appreciated.

Thank you,

Alastair

 

[ADB100]

Have you tried booting from a CD? Such as a Windows 2000 or XP CD. It may be the hard-drive has become corrupt, although you would normally see a message saying the disk doesn't have a boot sector or something.

HTH

Andy

 

[KozmoUK]

It does exactly the same thing when I try to boot up from a disk. It simply beeps twice and then flashes the cursor and then nothing. It's very bizarre.

 

[nweqcompaqreseller]

This could be a Hard Drive issue, or an OS Issue. What OS are you currently running on it. I am assuming this is a G1??

 

[pharwood]

Sounds like a hardware issue. You need more information to say what.

Will it boot the smartstart cd?
If not it can be anything from bad drive, ram, video, or even a fan failing to run.

Phil

 

[KozmoUK]

Hello again and thanks for the replies!

It's running windows 2000 server but it doesn't get as far as booting anymore. It did boot the smartstart CD, but it doesn't seem to have done recently. I suppose these things work differently to standard desktop PCs where as you can't specify which drive boots up first? I'm going to try it with a floppy and see what happens. Everything seems to be working - it turns on fine, the fans whir away in their nosy way, i've tried it with one stick of ram in and there's no errors on the ram. It recognises the hard drive. I'll try again with the smartstart CD and a floppy with a copy of DOS on or similar and see where I get with that.

 

[pharwood]

My car is broke what is wrong ?
That about what you are asking.
Perhaps many could give you hand but you have to give specifics as to what is or not happening.
Give specific details as what happens from the time you turn it on. Also state what hardware you have in the machine. Possible you have two items taking the same memory address or addressing the same irq, even something defective.
Just too many variables at this point, but I bet something very simple.
Phil

 

[KozmoUK]

Ok, it's a DL360 with 800Mhz Pentium 3 with a 9GB SCSI hard drive and 256MB (2 x 128MB) RAM.

From boot up, it shows the Compaq ProLiant splash screen, then does the memory test. It passes the memory test fine, and then checks the processor and shows that. After this, it checks the hard drive- shows Compaq Integrated Smart Controller Array - 1 Logical Drive and then from here, the screen clears, it beeps twice and then doesn't boot. It sits on a clear black screen with a cursor at the top flashing away. If I press ctrl-alt-del it restarts. If I have a CD-ROM in the drive (the Compaq SmartStart disc), it won't even try to boot from that. I've just put a floppy in the drive as well to see if it tries to boot from that - no joy.. it just sits on the black screen with a flashing cursor.

 

[lunahost]

The DL360 G1 servers are very prone to drive failures (a misnomer because the problem is not the drives but the motherboard supplying power to the drives). Generally, they give you some warnings, like resets, booting to "non-system disk or disk error" screens but will often come back up after a power reset. Don't take it lightly, it is about to fail hard. In your case, it may be the end for that unit. I've had several that exhibited this behavior and eventually they won't even power up the drives any more. The data was fine however. I just moved the mirrored SCSIs to a good machine and brought the system back up. The only thing that will fix this problem is a replacement main board but eventually those will fail too. There are no updated main boards available for the G1s. Best to migrate off to a later model like a G4. You should be able to find a used G3 or G4 chassis and move the drives to it.

 

[KozmoUK]

Many thanks, I think that's what I'm going to have to do. I've had no success in getting it back up and running and luckily there was no important files on the server (it was a development server). Up to the big data warehouse in the sky for it I suppose!

 

[newBPhoneGuy]

eliminate the possible issues one by one try different cd drives different memory different everything till you find the one thing causing the problem most likely the system board

 

[ksumner]

I too have an issue with the same model server (512MB RAM, 2 HD - mirrored). I am getting errors 9 & 11 pertaining to the disk and controller. The server would just reboot randomly. I thought it was the HD's, but when I place the HD in a similar machine there are no problems and the data is fine. What can I do about the integrated array controller? I need this system up for one of my users to extract critical data.

The last resort is to plug the drives in the other server, but that means making my terminal server and other apps offline. Any other suggestions. New integrated array controller??

 

[ntinlin]

ksumner

Don't have one in front of me so apologies for haziness or if I'm talking complete rubbish.

Get a Smart Array 431 or similar and put in the PCI slot then connect to the drive backplane, you'll probably have to change the cable out.

SA will pick up the array config from the drives which should allow you to get the data off that you need.

Only thing to watch out for would the the Windows RAID driver, ISA and 431 should both work from the cpqarry2 driver if memory serves. If not you would have to get fancy with the recovery console and DLL copying and renaming I'm afraid.

 

[ksumner]

Thanks ntinlin!

so you are saying i should install the 431 SA in a PCI slot and connect both drives? I am not sure I can see how the two drives will be connected to the controller. does this mean I would have to disable the integrated smart array controller in the BIOS?

 

[TheLad]

You should find that there will be one SCSI connection to the onboard (integrated) SCSI controller going to the drive cage which contains the two drives. This connection to the onboard SCSI should be moved to the 431 card.

You will probably have to go into SmartStart and at least set the 431 to be first in the boot order so it does not try and boot off the Onboard SCSI anymore.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Who is General Failure and what is he doing on my computer?"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[TheLad]

Actually that is incorrect because looking at the technical specs, the SCSI backplane in the DL360's connects directly to the system board. So with that in mind, you cannot add a PCI RAID controller and connect the disks to it.

Check out this PDF document from HP to confirm this, page 6 is what you need to look at, under the heading "Virtually no internal cables":

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/UCR/SupportManual/TPM_tc000601tb/TPM_tc000601tb.pdf

Looks like you might need a new system board after all

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Who is General Failure and what is he doing on my computer?"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[ksumner]

I was trying to see where that cable was going to go. Thanks TheLad. Guess I will have to use the other production dl360 to get the data.

 

[jfrantz]

The DL360 has an optional cable which is used to connect the integrated SCSI bus to an add-in RAID controller such as the 431, 5300, etc. The part number is 173833-001 and can be purchased used for about $50.

-Jeff

 

[ksumner]

So i will have to purchase the new RAID controller and this optical cable? i guess i will have to see how that is setup!