Proliant DL380 G4 Will Not Post

[Chris Goodson]

I have two Proliant DL380 G4 servers that will not post. Both have the same symptoms. At first blush when power supply is activated, all LED's light up correctly, but as soon as you attempt to boot the server, the system critical light displays(and it makes a terrible beeping sound). The only lights I see as being a problem on the board are the DIMM bays. This doesn't compute because I purchased new RAM, PC2 4200 533mhz Dual Layer ram, and I had it tested before I tried it. Unless there is a more specific requirement for the ram on this server, I am somewhat lost.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

http://www.hp.com

Does have specific requirements for hardware such as memory. You should follow those guidelines exactly.

Boot the system with its smart start CD.

Run the hardware memory tests to try and find a problem. This system may have limited diagnostics built into the nvram. If so there would be a console prompt to let you conduct the test.

SEP

[Steven Schweda]

I know nothing about this system or the new
memory, but I'd guess that the manual for the
system would say what the beeping means.

Because you seem to have changed the memory,
I'd suspect that the beeping is its way of
telling you that it can't find enough working
memory to do anything other than beep.

> Boot the system with its smart start CD.

I wouldn't expect that to work, if there's no
useful memory (but I know nothing).

If things worked before the "upgrade", then
I'd try to restore the previous (working)
configuration.

> [...] and I had it tested before I tried
> it. [...]

In one of these systems?

In some systems, there are placement
requirements on memory. Again, the system
manual should reveal these, if there are any.
And there are lots of possible physical
installation problems (incomplete insertion,
...).

[Steven Schweda]

I still know nothing, but the ProLiant DL380
Generation 4 Server Maintenance and Service
Guide

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/CoreRedirect.jsp?redirectReason=DocIndexPDF&prodSeriesId=397634&targetPage=http%3A%2F%2Fbizsupport1.austin.hp.com%2Fbc%2Fdocs%2Fsupport%2FSupportManual%2Fc00687567%2Fc00687567.pdf

suggests that there are LED indicators by the
memory modules. These might be informative.

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DocumentIndex.jsp?contentType=SupportManual〈=en&cc=us&docIndexId=64180&taskId=101&prodTypeId=15351&prodSeriesId=397634

There's also the System Memory
Troubleshooting Best Practices for HP
ProLiant Servers

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/CoreRedirect.jsp?redirectReason=DocIndexPDF&prodSeriesId=397634&targetPage=http%3A%2F%2Fbizsupport1.austin.hp.com%2Fbc%2Fdocs%2Fsupport%2FSupportManual%2Fc00852658%2Fc00852658.pdf

which at least mentions the possibility of
beeping.

(One could probably extract the meat from
those nasty URLs, if one were less lazy than I.)

[Chris Goodson]

I like the flow chart in the troubleshooting page, I am trying to get my hands on two sticks of known good memory. When I purchased this server, it was second hand, and it contained no memory, just processors and HD's. I am taking it for a test drive over the weekend to troubleshoot more extensively, and I will let you know what the results end up being.

Thanks for the links and information!