Got a call from Chris, he sounded rather frustrated, he was having problems with smartstart 5.5 failing when he was trying to rebuild and reconfigure a Compaq Proliant 2500r. The conversation is below for reference, just in case you’re having the same kind of thing.
Hi there, smartstart keeps failing on a Compaq 2500, you had this before, it’s done this a few times gets half way through and then goes black screen. Any ideas? Asked a rather frustrated Chris.
“Em, well I’ve had smartstart 5.5 fail a few times, normally it’s when the server has kind of erased but not erased or reset properly so when it tries to run it doesn’t work (or that’s why I assume it fails), unless you’ve got a hardware fault?” I replied
“No, rebuilding it, it’s got a virus and blew up, blue screen with windows type errors winlogon type stuff.” Said Chris
“Ok, try the system erase one more time using the smartstart cd, do it very slowly, don’t rush it. If that doesn’t work I’d do the following:
- Upgrade/refresh the system and array controller firmware
- Download the system erase utility - hp support site
- That’s the dos hard core version which will certainly wipe everything
- Then try smartstart again. If that fails, try shutting the box down, remove and reseat the hard drives, check the middle bit which holds the processors and memory try reseating it, remove the power cables, plug it back in and see how you go.” I replied
Very cool, it turned out that Chris used the downloadable floppy disk whcih wipes the system configuration to standard.
