Compaq DL380 G2, SmartStart Hanging At "Detecting"

[vlinc]

One day last week our Compaq DL380 G2 server running Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server failed to come up after a scheduled reboot, and instead is giving us an error similar to:

"No DHCP or DHCPproxy offers were received..."

After a moment or two it would switch to a standard non-system disk or disk error message.

First thing we did is try installing a new hard drive by way of the SmartStart CD, which walks you through setting up the array and operating system. We've done this in the past with another DL380 and had no problems, but this one seems to halt at the "Detecting..." screen of the Array Configuration Utility, just after we select our operating system type.

I've tried 5.2 and 5.3 versions of SmartStart, which have worked in the past, and I'm downloading the latest release to burn to CD (though I'm doubtful that has anything to do with it). Anyone else experience this before?

Could it be the network card/controller instead of a drive failure? How could I tell?

[vlinc]

Forgot to mention that today the former "No DHCP or DHCPproxy offers..." error has changed to "No boot filename received...", probably as a result of our continued attempts to go through the SmartStart setup.