Blue screen + smartstart failure

[Ayman Altounji]

My saga with ProLiant 800. I have decided to try and utilise this old server in a test environment. Tried smartstart, and found that when I tried the server profile diskette, it just sat there. Tried another diskette, same thing, replaced the floppy drive same thing.

Tried straight NT4 setup, and received blue screen on disk 2. Couldn't think what to do, so bought a new hard disk, still receive blue screen.

Have read all the messages on this site, and have therefore tried reducing the ram to 32mb and 64mb, creating own server profile disk, and upgrading rom, still no luck.

I cannot now get smartstart to boot, even with any of the above changes, get the error message 'Invalid system disk', and NT4 setup still blue screening.

Please help! My colleagues are starting to laugh at me!

[Ayman Altounji]

Thank God....i was beginning to go spare....The exact same fault happened to me. Trying to set up a test server and no joy with smartstart 4.20 4.30 4.9....Server Profile disk just sits there.....the only way i could get it to work is to use smartstart 3.50 (this has a different sort of profile disk).....I'm thinking of trying the Manual config (i assume you were trying the Assisted config).
Now the bad news once we had configured using 3.5 smartstart we decided we'd try and make it win2000 server, so i tried 4.9 smartstart - server profile disk sits there (Ho hum !!)....i tried going back and starting again with 3.50 and it blows up with a memory parity error....i then had to download a compaq softpaq to Blast away the system config and reset the CMOS.
At the moment guess what....i'm sat at the Cant find server PRofile disk...the one benefit i have over you is that my colleagues aren't laughing at me...they're banging their heads on the table the same as me.

Any more info you find out will be greatly appreciated.....i'm stuffed...i'm now going to try www.experts-exchange.com

[Ayman Altounji]

Yep, I got p$%?ed off with it, and disconnected all unnecessary components like the dat drive, and in fact the floppy drive. I set the cd drive jumper settings to master, then booted up with nt server cd. I have been able to load nt4 server now, and am now using the server in a test environment. However, have found 2 problems with this work around, 1. getting '162' error on boot up, and just have to hit F1 to continue and 2. then get occasional memory parity errors after installing extra ram, but after a few attempts it goes through!!!!! Please let me know if you are able to build the server in a more conventional way!

[Ayman Altounji]

Similar situation.... hope what I did helps. I just purchased a used Proliant 800 6/400. Tried to config using SmartStart 3.50. SmartStart didn't want to recognize the server at all.... since I wasn't planning on loading the OS(Windows 2000 server) with the assist of Smart Start, I just down loaded the System Configuration Utility from (http://www.compaq.com/support/files/server/us/down load/9180.html), and configured the system partition, and the hardware using this. I then proceeded with the normal Windows 2000 Server install, and everything is working great. I have a ! next to USB controller(which there is none) in Device Manager, but I think the latest CMOS upgrade is supposed to fix this issue. Hope this helps.

[Ayman Altounji]

I had the same problem but it turned out to be pretty stupid, my smartstart 4.90 cd had a small scratch on it, after booting up with a brand new set of smartstart ,management cd's and profile disk, I erased the system Info, shut it down, started it back up and it worked perfect. Now no one borrows cd's from me anymore!