Power surge, Dell PowerEdge 6300 Problems

Sendarie · Post by **Sendarie** » August 10, 2006, 3:27 pm

Ok so last night we had a transformer nearby literally explode on us. This sent a nasty power surge just before the power went out completely.

Our server is connected to an UPS/Surgeprotector and our building has an automatic generator that fired up and powered us up after about a 15 second delay.

The server is running Windows 2000 Server Family.

Whenever we boot up the server now though we get the blue screen of death, it says:

*(Lost of memory gibberish here if its needed I can copy it down) INACCESIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE*

If this is the first time you've seen this Stop, error screen restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps.

Check for viruses on your computer. Remove any newly installed hard drives or hard drive controllers. Check your hard drive to make sure it is properly configured and terminated. Run FDSK /F to check for hard drive corruption, and then restart your computer.

Refer to your Getting Started Manual for for more information on troubleshooting Stop errors.

This wasnt an issue before the power outage and FDSK hasnt shown anything wrong.
Given this machine was working perfectly before the transformer blew what would be the most likely culprit?

Sure as hell hope the hard drives arent dead.

Thanks in advance.

Animalor · Post by **Animalor** » August 10, 2006, 3:38 pm

Hmm. Doesn't look very encouraging.

Do you get to the Windows load screen before this appears? If so, it means that you can get to the drives but the OS is corrupted.

If the hardware can't even see the drives, then it is quite possible that your motherboard is done.

Sendarie · Post by **Sendarie** » August 10, 2006, 3:58 pm

Yes I do get to the Windows splash screen for a split second or 2 before this blue screen pops up.

Aabidano · Post by **Aabidano** » August 10, 2006, 4:21 pm

That you get a splash screen is encouraging, are your OS and data on seperate devices?

Does the disk controller have any low level utilites to check out the drives integrity? If sectors were lunched and replaced by SMART you won't see it with most high level utilities.

Worst case if it's not a raid array you can put the drive in a different machine and recover the data.

AFIK a commercial grade UPS actually segments the protected device from the grid, most home\small office grade stuff does not.

Sendarie · Post by **Sendarie** » August 10, 2006, 4:29 pm

More things to look at thanks Aabidano.

Long story short the only guy that new anything about the server up and left and is not contactable anymore.

I'm not sure if the OS/data are separated on different drives but I do know that it is a raid setup which I can see from the boot up process.

The UPS is one place that it looks like they went cheap on and while it would be great for my home PC is no way in hell it was meant to handle the 2 servers that are plugged into it.

Gonna go start digging now and find out what kind of software I can find and maybe boot from.
Hell we dont even have the key to unlock the drive bays but...that is easy to get around.

Animalor · Post by **Animalor** » August 10, 2006, 4:37 pm

If you have a service contract you could always contact Dell. Server Support knows all the management tools to troubleshoot stuff like this and I believe they can have someone sent over to your office to help deal with the problem.

cadalano · Post by **cadalano** » August 10, 2006, 4:42 pm

I dont think your drives are dead.. you shouldn't be getting that far, if so.. I've had 7B (i'm just guessing that your stop error is 7B) a couple of times in the past and its always been a driver problem.

Try to boot up into safe mode and reinstall SCSI, ATA, or whatever drivers your hard drive uses. If you either crash prior to the F8 menu, or crash in safe mode... then go get a bootable OS disk like BartPE or the window recovery console. At any rate, you should be able to still access the hard drive in one way or another.

Once you have your access, either try to fix the problem manually or move any important data onto another device.. follow that with a windows repair.. or a reformat.

Sendarie · Post by **Sendarie** » August 10, 2006, 5:39 pm

I'm done for the day I'll give it another shot later.

Giving them a call couldnt hurt though, thats the next step.

Kelshara · Post by **Kelshara** » August 10, 2006, 5:49 pm

I had a similar issue after a Windows Update of all things heh, ended up having to reinstall the SATA and RAID drivers. As the others have said, I do not believe your disks are dead but I would not rule it out 100% yet. Smells like corruption to me.

Sendarie · Post by **Sendarie** » August 10, 2006, 5:59 pm

cadalano thats EXACTLY what I'm getting (7b).

I can get to the Safe mode boot menu but when I try and enter just regular Safe mode I go right back to the same blue screen.

I am getting a flashing error while booting up:

*Flashing* BATTERY MODULE IS MISSING. DO NOT USE WRITEBACK MODE

Then:
No SCSI BIOS Found
SCSI BIOS Not Installed

Deward · Post by **Deward** » August 10, 2006, 7:00 pm

We got a 6300 here too and it crashed about 2 weeks ago. The RAID on it cannot handle a busy load at all. I was running a full text index on a sql server and I think it went too long and killed a couple of the drives. Was a real bitch.

One thing to be careful for the 6300 is that the Raid drivers are a bitch. They are all dell proprietary crap. Dell has all sorts of custom support tools that you run off a boot disk so go grab them. It will help you get things going again or help you figure otu teh problem.

Ebumar · Post by **Ebumar** » August 11, 2006, 6:18 pm

Sounds like your CMOS could have flashed too. Check the Mobo battery, replace it if you have too. Radio Shack carries most dell batteries. After replacing the battery, you're gona either have to repair install or try to boot into safe mode to clean up those drivers.