Proliant 1600 Boot order 2

[blkphotoman]

I have been given a Proliant 1600 stand alone server running Dual PII 400 processors and 1GB Ram that is runing ok, I need to add addtional hard drives to the system but can not run smart start as the server will not boot from the CD drive, I also can't get in to the BIOS to change the boot order. Is there something i am missing? Can anyone help me out with an idea.

 

[iolair]

Can you get to the system partition with F10 when the cursor blinks solid in the upper right corner? If not, is there a system partition?

Iolair MacWalter

 

[crstine]

I too have a Proliant 1600 server with a smart array 3200 controller. I do not have the smartstart CD nor a small system partition. I did update the BIOS and the controller BIOS to latest as of 2000.

I tried loading windows 2003 server. It found the smart 3200 controller and started the first phase of the installation. However when the system reboots to continue with the second phase of the installation it just hangs at "F1" and "F10" key.

I even added an IDE drive and loaded windows 2003 server on that. When the system reboots for phase 2 of the install, the same thing happens! How can I get the server to boot from the RAID controller or the single IDE drive?

Thanks for any input,

crstine

 

[iolair]

Sounds like a BIOS problem. For some reason, it's not finding the MBR (Master Boot Record). When you added the IDE drive, did you remove the 3200 controller? If not, the BIOS might be confused as to which disk to boot. Can you boot a DOS floppy disk?

Iolair MacWalter

 

[crstine]

No, the 3200 controller is still in the system. I connected an IDE drive to the IDE bus which the CDROM is using. Here's some other info:. There are 2 logical drives configured on the 3200 controller. When the system was an NT4 server, I used the ACU gui to configure a new RAID logical drive (I extended the scsi buss and added 3 73GB drives configured as a RAID 5 logical drive. I then physically removed the drives the NT4 server was booting from. I suspect the 3200 controller is still pointing to the NT4 logical drive (drives failed since they are physically removed). I then did a Windows 2003 install on the other logical drive, it installs during phase 1 of the install, but when Window reboots, it never sees the logical drive to continue with phase 2 of the install. I'd like to get an ISO image of SmartStart 4.9. Do you know where I can get one?

Thanks,

crstine

 

[sandav92]

One thing that you have to remember is that Compaqs are very picky on OSs. I would check to see if you have the latest BIOS update. You will maybe find that the BIOS does not support Windows 2003. Proliants BIOS unless the BIOS supports 2003 it will not load a lot of times. The BIOS is written to make this happen.

 

[crstine]

Hello Sandav,

I'm not impressed with Compaq at all. Don't think I'll ever recommend one as well. Having said that, the problem I'm having now is, I can never get the Proliant 1600 into the array configuration mode using the SmartStart 4.8 or 5.5 CD. It boots up and starts the process, but just hangs after loading the array configuration. I've loaded the latest verison of FW for the 3200 array controller and the system board. I've had a couple of other co-workers try their hand at it, nothing seems to work. Thanks for your input.

 

[pietjebell]

Ahh the old Compaq Smart Start issue

In order to boot from the smart start cd 's one must do following;

Remove the system configuration..
Nice isn 't?

Use floppy 's to load up the system erase utility
(download from HP site)

Mind you, this will completely erase the system settings, also the RAID config.. Which means: all data from the disks!

After that you can boot from the SS cd 's.
To completely set up your system again, RAID config etc. AND install the OS..

Regarding:
Installing an OS on (& booting from) IDE HardDisks:
Booting from an IDE HDD will never happen alas..
It cannot be done.
One can use an IDE harddisk, but it will never boot from it.
(Proliant systems are not designed for that)

 

[lordcompaq]

when doing a system erase, you can remove the cable from your SCSI cage and you wont lose your array config, or its data. Then, after you are prompted to powercycle your system, reconnect the cable. the drives will teach thier config to your controller, and you should then be able to boot from a CD, or from the F10 utils. Run the SCU, save the settings, reboot.

- LC

 

[christian2dn]

My proliant 1600 server freezes at times, the display holds the last image before it crashes out, can anyone help me?

 

[jterry]

I have a Proliant 1600 running NT 4 that crashed last week. It says it cannot find a file on the boot drive (winsrv.dll), but I can not get it to boot and read the drives. They were apparently setup as mirrored drives under NT. Is there anyway I can do this? Any help would be appreciated, I would really like to get the data off this machine and get a new OS loaded on it.