Black Screen at Boot

[Ayman Altounji]

Hello,

We are having a problem with 4 servers all at the same time not booting. What they are doing is after the SCSI detection the get ready to start to load NT and just sit at a blank screen with a blinking cursor. We have tried everything under the sun: Fdisk /mbr, NT repair of boot sector and startup enviroment, replace NTLDR file with known working one. We found the two articles from MS about the MFT and the MBR but niether one of them worked. We are able to run the server with the NT boot disk with the startup files on it. I did notice that two other people posted the exact issue with thier servers recently and have had no responses.

If anyone can help it would be greatly appreciated, please respond to this message and the response will be emailed to me.

Thanks

[Ayman Altounji]

What service pack level are they at? What type of hardware options are involved?

[Ayman Altounji]

Hi,
We're experiencing exactly the same problem.
POST boot is without any error, and right before starting NT.... nothing.
Blank screen with blinking cursor.
No error message, no event log, nothing.

Any help is welcome..

Thanks in advance.

[Ayman Altounji]

Hi
I too am having exactly the same problem. Any body got any answer for this yet. If any body found some please help me with the answer.
Thanks in advance

[Ayman Altounji]

I had the same problem over the weekend with an 1850R, 3x4.3gb drives, Smart Array 3200 and NT 4 with SP5. Machine does memory check, initializes the Array controller and finds the logical drives then goes to a black screen right before the NT boot loader comes up. There is just a flashing cursor. This was a business critical box...tried swapping the drives and controller into another 1850r..no go.. same deal...was forced to reload...with ours it definitely wasnt the box itself...was something to do with the Array Controller losing the config or corrupting the data..first time it had happened..VERY frustrating...and nearly impossible to troubleshoot...Tried doing the above mentioned tecniques including the /mbr, boot sector and startup environment and NTLDR...no go.. Good luck!

[Ayman Altounji]

By the way.system rompaqs and array rompaq's were updated to the latest version...

[Ayman Altounji]

I'm told that the problem could be caused by the microsoft hotfix patch for code red. I applied the patch yesterday, and the same thing happened to our server. Apparently, the hotfix patch overwrites the drivers on Winddows NT servers. I haven't received all the details yet, but I'm told the only fix is to (1) reinstall the drivers (which we tried, and it didn't work) or (2) install Windows NT on a parallel drive and move your files to that drive (we're trying that method tomorrow).

[Ayman Altounji]

By chance are yall using the Remote insight Board?

[Ayman Altounji]

bsande2, We dont have a remote insight board in the server. Had the same thing happen yesterday to ANOTHER PL 3000 Dual P2 333 Array 2DH 3x9.1GB raid 5 with 512MB Compaq ram...wouldnt boot after changing a subnet mask and default Gateway! This one had NT 4.0 and SP5 on it...the last one that had the same issue was NT4 and SP6A...still no fix for this? I'm afraid to reboot any 3000's! It's happened twice in the past month. Had to reload the boxes...