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3 Posts
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22240
March 31st, 2004 13:00
Boot halted by BIOS message
Hello all,
I have just completed an install of software RAID on my new PowerEdge 1600SC.
As always part of my routine was to test the system by pulling the plugs on one or other of the IDE hard discs. Upon re-booting I was greeted by the following message:
"Strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run the setup utility".
Aaargh. Please don't tell me I can't turn this warning off. This sysytem will be a remote (60 miles) server and I will not be there to press F1. Additionally, the system will not normally have a monitor nor keyboard attached.
Is there a different BIOS that doesn't have this feature or am I missing something in the current BIOS? I really need to switch this warning off.
I hope the machine never has to boot with a broken disc but...
I have just completed an install of software RAID on my new PowerEdge 1600SC.
As always part of my routine was to test the system by pulling the plugs on one or other of the IDE hard discs. Upon re-booting I was greeted by the following message:
"Strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run the setup utility".
Aaargh. Please don't tell me I can't turn this warning off. This sysytem will be a remote (60 miles) server and I will not be there to press F1. Additionally, the system will not normally have a monitor nor keyboard attached.
Is there a different BIOS that doesn't have this feature or am I missing something in the current BIOS? I really need to switch this warning off.
I hope the machine never has to boot with a broken disc but...
No Events found!
Thomas Taimu
3 Posts
0
November 6th, 2004 12:00
I also have a similar problem and in my case 2 servers. We just bought 5 PowerEdge 1600SC. The first one I opened up the chassis before setting it up and there is this annoying message about striking f1 to continue. The other one I was in the middle of setting it up and seemed as if it hang up because it staying for over 10 minutes without doing anything. I rebooted the server and from there it couldn't boot even from a CD. I resetted the BIOS and that was the beginning of the annoying message. I thought it was a security issue (chassis intrusion). I turned off chassis intrusion detection but the message is not going away. Like yourself I am deploying these servers to our field offices where there is very little expertise. If anyone has a solution please indeed help.
Thomas
lolek
3 Posts
0
November 6th, 2004 18:00
I had forgotten about this posting! As you can see your post was the only reply I got. I did pursue this issue with UK Dell Support who were friendly but were unable to solve the issue. Quoted below is an extract from the last email from UK support
"This is only an IDE phenomena, if you have hardware raid it will
report failure and carry on. My understanding would be that this
is the same on all machines (Dell or non Dell) as my experience
with white box home PC's is similiar to what you see.
If you have the channel set to auto, then there is nothing further
you can do to our servers to work the way you want them to (for
IDE at any rate!)"
If you change the disc config, or a disc fails, the bios notices the change from the last state and you will be prompted with the message upon reboot. The telling statement is the last sentence of the first quoted paragraph. I have since checked other home or desktop PCs from Dell and they do indeed behave this way. My guess is that the 1600SC is a cheaper server because it is a dressed up desktop PC.
The solution for you might be to move to using SCSI discs as the BIOS doesn't operate in the same way with them. Personally I am going back to using HP & IBM servers.
Thomas Taimu
3 Posts
0
November 10th, 2004 12:00
Hello Lolek,
Those Dell guys are right. I stumbled on the solution because I was pretty convinced this was coming because of some BIOS setting. Unfortunately this message was coming together with the "Chassis Intrusion Alert" message so I was thinking the booting was halting because of this. When I turned this message off to my surprise the booting was still stopping. There I went back to the BIOS setup and changed the IDE settings like this:
Primary Drive 0........Off (I had it set to Auto at first)
I did the same with all the drives except Secondary Drive 0 which is set to CR-ROM Reader.
This worked and the booting process is not halting any more.
It just seems somehow like the server is not detecting the hard drives. Apparently because of the RAID setup I cannot figure out.
Thomas
Thomas Taimu
3 Posts
0
November 10th, 2004 12:00
Hello Lolek,
Those Dell guys are right. I stumbled on the solution because I was pretty convinced this was coming because of some BIOS setting. Unfortunately this message was coming together with the "Chassis Intrusion Alert" message so I was thinking the booting was halting because of this. When I turned this message off to my surprise the booting was still stopping. There I went back to the BIOS setup and changed the IDE settings like this:
Primary Drive 0........Off (I had it set to Auto at first)
I did the same with all the drives except Secondary Drive 0 which is set to CR-ROM Reader.
This worked and the booting process is not halting any more.
It just seems somehow like the server is not detecting the hard drives. Apparently because of the RAID setup I cannot figure out.
Thomas