PL1600R - El Torito Hard Stop

[Andrew Stafford-Brown]

After BIOS checks SCSI CDROM drive detects bootable SmartStart CD but returns a message
Retry El Torito
Retry El Torito
Hard Stop.

How can I rectify this error so I can boot from Smartstart CD and Erase System Utility.

[Tom Mucha_1]

El Torito is a bootable cdrom standard. Chances are the CD itself, or the even the drive may be bad.

If you need the system erase utility, you can get it here: http://h18023.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/download/16251.html

[Andrew Stafford-Brown]

Tom

Thankyou for replying, very much appreciated. The CD-ROM drive is fine when W2K o/s is loaded. I can read various types of CD's and if present, the Autorun facility works fine. Why does this error occur just prior to W2K loading. Have tried another Version of Smartstart (5.4) instead of 5.3 and just the same. Will try bootable W2K CD to see what happens. Could this have anything to do with the system utility files which Smartstart creates when setting up the server.

[Tom Mucha_1]

Ok, I thought this was happening during smartstart itself. Is the System Partition installed?

[Terry Hutchings]

Is this the cdrom drive which came with the machine? If so, then this should be an IDE cdrom drive.

If it's able to boot off other bootable cds then I would say it's likely there's something wrong with the Smart Start CD.

[Pedro Emiliano]

Be sure if cdrom isn't scratch or damaged.

Once i had that problem, and de cdrom was dirty.

[Jens Baumann_2]

Yep, the server recognizes the CD as bootable (thus the "El Torito" message), but he cannot boot from it. So it's either the CD itself (scratched? dirty? Try a different CD or try copying it onto a CD-R to boot from, CD writers have a better error correction than standard CD drives, so it should be able to read it) or the CD drive in the server is defective (laser lens dirty or mechanics). If you cannot boot from a different CD, try replacing the CD drive.

[Frank Kaufman]

We had a similar problem with a ProLiant 530. Most CD-s would boot, some would not. Replacing the CD ROM with another IDENTICAL Compaq drive (32x) did not make any difference. Replacing it with a Compaq 40X drive fixed the problem.

[Andrew Stafford-Brown]

I have replaced the drive with an IDE and can boot directly from a W2K bootable CD, but still cannot fully boot from the SmartStart CD either 5.3 or 5.4 versions. I have only used the 5.4 version once. When the Smartstart CD in the IDE drive it boots specific DOS drivers and then when it attempts to load the SmartStart software I now get a Spawn Error - unable to find path or file win.com error 13. Help!!!!

[Terry Hutchings]

How much memory is installed and is it all supported memory? These type of Smart Start errors are usually caused by incompatible memory. The server may run fine with this memory, but Smart Start may produce errors.