Failing Reboot

[Ayman Altounji]

I have a DL580/Quad 700Mhz Xeon/2.5 Gb RAM/NT4 SP6. Occasionally, If I initiate a REBOOT from either PCAnywhere or the console itself server will POWER OFF. I have performed a couple dozen reboots today just to find any pattern. It seems to be on the 4th or 5th reboot. NT will shutdown properly, the video signal will blank as it normally does then I get nothing. It will stay powered up for 30-45 seconds then shutoff with the Power LED Flashing Amber- then turn to solid Amber. When it does work correctly it immediately boots back up with a video signal and normal POST. If I select Shutdown - the machine goes through the normal sequence and the "It is now safe to power off computer" with the restart button. Hit restart and it is fine. Because it is a intermittent error that I can somewhat recreate I am up for trying things should anyone have a solution.

The Memory Expansion Board doesn't have a capacitor at C349. The ROM date is 1-21-2001 which is the latest I have seen published. I have 2 NICS, RILO, and an Emmulex Card. The RILO is in Slot 6 - a non-hot-pluggable slot. I have even tried to pull the RILO out to see if that was a problem. It is all Compaq memory of the same speed. I have 4)128Mb DIMMs in sockets 1-4 and 4)512Mb DIMMs in 5-8. I have quite a few servers with this same configuration running without an issue. Just wondering if there is something I am missing.

Thanks for listening to me ramble - hopefully I gave the right details.

[Ayman Altounji]

Service advisory EH010320_SW0 suggests a faulty NIC either NC3131 or NC3134

[Ayman Altounji]

Bob - I did a search for this article and came up with nothing. I am going to give it a shot however just to see what happens. I will post back tomorrow with my results.

Thanks

[Ayman Altounji]

I pulled out both NICs (3134) to see if I could get the machine to fail without a NIC installed. Rebooted probably 10 times without an issue. Put the first NIC in and rebooted 10 times no issue. Pulled that NIC out and put the other in - failed after the second reboot. Grabbed a new NIC and put it in along with the first and rebooted a dozen times without a problem. I am pretty confident that this will fix it. Thanks for your help.