supermicro - nvidia boot

[waymonc]

I'm building a system with the following components:

1 - Cooler Master 1000 Chassis
1 - Supermicro X7DWA-N Motherboard
1 - Intel BOX QUAD XEON E5405 2.00G 12M 1333 64B XD VT FAN
2 - Kingston 2GB 800MHz DDR2 ECC Fully Buffered CL5 DIMM (Kit of 2) Dual
Rank, x8 (4GB total)
1 - Kingwin ABT-600MA1W 600W Nickel-Plated Modular ATX / BTX Power Supply
4 - Maxtor 200GB hard drives (PATA) through a PCI card in slot 3
2 - NEC 3550A CDROM drives (only one is connected to the CDROM header) PATA
through the blue motherboard IDE connector)
1 - Floppy Drive (PATA)
2 - PNY NVIDIA Quadro FX1400 PCIE 128MB DDR 3D Graphics Cards (with bridge
in slot 4 and 6)

On power up I can set the bios settings. Then when rebooting the system the screen shows the graphical startup page and configuration page (correct data) but then hangs. No post messages - no beeps. I've tried changing the CDROM drives, removing one graphics card, various system settings, and etc. No luck! No boot! Any ideas?

 

[rozar]

You may need to verify that the bios you currently have will support the processor you are using. It may be necessary to update the bios. I remember about 2 months ago I ran into a problem like this with a X7 series Supermicro server board. There was a bios update for Harpertown processors. Unfortunately you may need an older Woodcrest or slower Harpertown for it to work.

Of course there is always 408-503-8000 x2

 

[waymonc]

Thanks for the reply. I am checking with Supermicro about the problem. I'm hesitant to update the bios since it invalidates the Supermicro warranty. Also, I've never updated the bios of a system that does not boot. I don't know if I even have a DOS boot disk around, but, if so, I'll try to boot with that. Is it OK if I keep in touch?

 

[rozar]

Sure keep in touch. Also I have never heard of updating a bios vioiding a warranty though. At my company we sell thousands of Supermicro boards a year and on servers we always update the bios before shipping. Call them on that number I listed above. They have pretty good tech support.

Your problem still might be that you need a bios update and will not be able to do it with the processor you have. Depending on where you are a computer store might be able to help you.

 

[waymonc]

I neglect to add that I have a PCI IDE card installed and that was causing the system hangup. Supermicro tech support suggested removing the card to see if the system would boot from the CD ROM. It did. However, now when I load the driver the system aborts during the setup. I'm talking to the manufacturer, Koutech, to see what the problem is. This is for a Windows X64 O/S. I may just switch to SATA drives.

 

[rozar]

Are you loading a "F6" driver for the optical drive? Where exactly does it stop?

 

[waymonc]

The Koutech installation says to enter the RAID configuration when windows first starts by pressing F3. I did this and setup four drives as mirrored sets (two in each set).
Then after restarting I press F6 during the install and after windows loads its drivers. It properly displays the drivers I copied to a floppy from Koutech. I selected the windows X64 driver and the install continues. I get the blue screen of death after selecting the partition on which to install windows. It formats the partition then dies.

 

[rozar]

Thats a strange problem indeed. There are reasons why a windows installation will fail after it says "setup is starting windows" (just before you hit f8 to agree to terms), there are reasons why it will say no hard drives found, or even fail during the file copy process. A blue screen other than this normally means something is wrong with the driver of the controller or a defective part or some compatibility problem. I would give the manufacturer of the controller a call. Windows does find the array to install to correct?

 

[waymonc]

Yes, I'm certain it is the driver. The instructions for the card are vague and I am trying to verify that this is the correct driver. I installed the O/S fine when I disconnected the drive from the card and connected it to the motherboard.