Troubles encountered after installing 7.40b Support Pack

[Ben Watson Yurgartis]

Hello, I posted earlier about prepping a ML570G2 for a 2003SP1 upgrade, as the last time it was attempted it failed, resulting in a spectacular reboot loop.

It has a Smart Array 5302/128 controller and a NC3163 NIC.

Based on research and the helpful advice of the forum members here, we first ran the Firmware Maintenance CD 7.40. The machine booted up and seemed to have no ill effects. I was quite impressed by the user interface and the ease of use; the scanning ability made my morning.

We then installed the ProLiant Support Pack for Microsoft Windows Server 2003 version 7.40b. Again, nice interface, everything seemed to update and install smoothly. Feeling positive, rebooted.

Everything appears fine. Go to check the event logs and its shock and horror time:

-the machine is not being being allowed to initialize itself as a domain controller
-the virus throttling agent is saying it cant get info from the WMI (but this may be date back to installing 7.30 a month prior)
-a SMTP service error
-a LSASRV service error
-several SNMP service errors

No one can log into the domain, but other workstations can access network drives and the email system seems to be working, so the NIC is still operational. The HP tools see the NIC, but the windows “network connections settings” is blank!

Did the 7.40b driver-pack corrupt some of the settings on the NC3163 network adapter or other critical system files?
Can we fix this with further updating or is it time to scrap it and start restoring backups?

Potential actions that are being considered in order of least severe to most:

Find a potential fix
De-promote and re-promote to domain controller
Do a windows repair
Reinstall over windows
Wipe the partition and start over with a smartstart cd

Thank you for your assistance,
Ben

-------------Cursory research-------------

Searching Google Groups yields:

“You have a network service disabled run services.msc”

Searching Microsoft’s forums yields:

“How to troubleshoot missing network connections icons in Windows Server 2003 and in Windows XP”
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;825826

There are 17 laborious steps to fix a variety of potential problems. Can anyone narrow the field?

[Igor Karasik]

Hi,
I was see similar behaviour during update to newest Proliant support pack on servers with NC31xx and NC77xx network cards. In my case network connection was just disabled after installation NIC driver from PSP.
I tried to do "enable network connections" without success. Only way I found to solve the problem was UNINSTALL network card from Device manager and restart server. After server restart NIC driver installed automatically and you just need to define your TCP/IP properties for the NIC.
I hope it will help in your case as well.

[Scott_59]

We had a similar problem however our issue was related to the teaming driver and caused a BSOD. The solution was to back rev the nic/teaming driver from 8/20.0.0 to 8.15.0.0 (cpqteam.sys)
We have NC7782 Gb Nic cards configured with VLANS and installed on a DL360G4 with Windows 2003.

Scott

[Ben Watson Yurgartis]

Update: removed the NIC from the device manager and rebooted. No effect. Performed the 17 different possible remidies listed on the Microsoft page. No effect. Any other ideas?

[Erez Berman]

We got the same problem, namely applying PSP 7.40b disable the active NIC on DL 380 G3 and G4.

The first solution was to move the address to second NIC after the installation.
We then found that removing the NIC from the devices and doing a scan reinstate the NIC but the original settings will get lost in the process. This doesnâ t work very well when you canâ t get to the server for obvious reasons.

Finally, we found that applying the firmware (7.40b) update before the PSP actually sometimes works so we are going that way at the moment but still no 100% success.

Several hundred servers to go so will get it right eventually. In the meantime if you got a solution I will be very grateful

Regards,
Erez