Dl580G4 would not come back after reboot

[Mike O.]

We have a DL580G4 that we've been using with Windows 2003 R2 for about 18 months. It's got two dual core 3.2Ghz processors with 4GB of RAM and has been working OK with no problems.

Earlier today, I needed to reboot the server due to an application problem. I rebooted it, and then about 10 minutes later attempted to re-connect to it using Remote Desktop but was unable to connect. It didn't reply to a ping command, so I thought I had inadvertantly told it to "shut down".

I went to the server itself to check the system. All of the lights were one, but I had nothing on the display. Thinking it handn't shut down completely, I power cycled the machine and watched. I heard the fans come on high speed, then slow down and the various LED's come on. The internal and external health LED's both showed steady green, but nothing showed up on the monitor.

I waited a while and nothing ever came up on the screen. I power cycled it a few more times and got the same results:

--The two memory cards both had the "board" light blinking, which according to the manual meant "rebuilding".
--The two drives in the bays 1 and two were blinking sequentially.
--The NIC1 light was blinking randomly (as expected)
--The NIC2 status light was blinking steady 5 quick blinks then a delay, then repeating (There is no cable in the NIC2 connection).

I opened up the case and checked the Systems Insight board. No LED's showed any problem. The alphanumeric display showed "60". During a reboot the display cycled through several numbers (as I would expect), then ended up on "60".

I powered it off, reseated the memory modules, and removed and reseated the CPU board (not the CPU's themselves). The internal health LED's went red as expected when I removed the various components.

I noticed when the power was off, the internal alphanumeric display quickly cycled between 00, 40, 80, C0, then repeated.

I then physically removed the power cords, waited a minute, then reconnected them. I then powered up and everything came up normal.
Nothing showed up in the Windows or HP Integrated log, and it seems to be working OK now, but any ideas on what caused that problem?

Fortunately, this server is used for some report generation and similar functions, so the outage didn't directly impact users, but I'd like to figure out what happened.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.