dell server

[andymushu]

there's usually a "reset bios" jumper near the battery.. try to reset it, and see if you are still getting the error.

i have no clue what this looks like or how to reset it. a little more information would be much appreciated.

[Luke122]

No problem!

Give me a few mins to get some pics together for you.. brb.

[Luke122]

What is the service tag on the back of the case? Should be a series of letters and numbers, usually about 6 digits long.

If you can get that to me, I can get exact hardware specs for that server, which will let me get photos of the mobo for ya.

[andymushu]

i didn't see a service tag, but i got a serial number: 6CQEV

[Luke122]

OK, yes thats the service tag.

I've got all the documentation open now, and I'm not seeing anything about "Bios not found", but I am seeing "Boot drive not found".

Can you power the server up, and write down the error messages word for word please?

Also, does it beep at startup? If so, how many times? Beep codes can help troubleshoot errors also.

[Airbozo]

The "bios not found" is more than likely coming from one of the cards installed in the system. That message can come from the NIC or SCSI card built into the mobo. If the mobo bios was not found the system would not even post or try to post.

Tell me the lines that get spit out _before_ the bios not found message. I suspect it will be something to do with the scsi controller or ethernet interface.

[andymushu]

There are a lot of messages that go by fast, but i think i got them all. they go in this order:
"Firmware is out of date, please update"
"diskette drive 0 seek failure"
"array controller started (next line says "BIOS is disabled")
it skipped a couple lines then said "BIOS not installed!"
skipped a couple more lines, then said "no SCSI boot device found"
"SCSI BIOS not installed"-it repeated this message three times, then beeped 3 times, then said press f1 to retry boot or f2 to go to setup.

i hope this is enough information.

[Airbozo]

There are a lot of messages that go by fast, but i think i got them all. they go in this order:
"Firmware is out of date, please update"
"diskette drive 0 seek failure"
"array controller started (next line says "BIOS is disabled")
it skipped a couple lines then said "BIOS not installed!"
skipped a couple more lines, then said "no SCSI boot device found"
"SCSI BIOS not installed"-it repeated this message three times, then beeped 3 times, then said press f1 to retry boot or f2 to go to setup.

i hope this is enough information.

OK, just as I suspected. There is no problem with your bios, the system _may_ be set to boot from the network or scsi controller. Go into setup and do a factory reset, then make the CDROM the first boot device, throw in a windows or linux cd and you should be fine. If you are trying to boot from a IDE disk, make sure that is set to boot in the buios setup screens.

[Luke122]

Yup, that's exactly what I was thinking also.. there's no way that a missing bios would give anything other than a beeping error code... unless it was on a controller card.

[andymushu]

alright, thanks for the awesome advice guys. i will get back to you as soon as i have a chance to test it out.

edit: i looked in the setup, and either there is no factory reset button, or I am too blind to see it. is there another way to reset it to factory settings?