Question : Windows Server 2003 strange issues booting normally.

Hello, our plant had a power outage yesterday, all servers were shutdown before losing power but after the mains were restored, a database server is acting very strange.

This is a Windows 2003 Server 64 bit with MS SQL Server 2005 running on it.   One 320g "C" drive for load source and a pair of 320g drives in a mirror making up the "E" drive, all SATA2.   C drive on the primary SATA driver ports, E drives on the secondary SATA ports.

Normal boot:  After the Win 2003 Server splash screen with the progress bar, it shuts down the video display.  Monitor goes into power saving.  Machine has limited disk activity but is not booting fully.  You can ping it, but cannot RDP into it or access the SQL server.

Safe Mode boot:  Everything works 100%   There are no entries in the Event log whatsoever to show an error.   All drives are accessible.

If I disconnect both of the "E" drives, the machine will boot normally!   Naturally, the SQL databases reside on the E drive so I rather need them. ;)    

I first tried moving the E drives from the secondary SATA ports to the Tertiary SATA ports.  (Motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6)   No good there.   Tried running the E drives on the special SATA2 ports (different driver chip) and also no good there.   Next I broke the mirror and tried just one or the other of the pair in an attempt to just get the machine back online.   At one point, I *was* able to get it to boot with one of the pair attached but Disk Manager saw it as a mirror pair with a missing drive.   I removed the mirror from it with Disk Manager and could then access the drive fine.   Rebooting at this point went back to the original fault issue, screen shuts off, doesn't boot normally until the second drive is removed from the picture.

I briefly considered since it was a power event, that maybe there was a power supply problem, not enough juice to run the additional drives.   Replaced power supply, no difference.

At this point I have a replacement motherboard being overnighted and an considering an inplace reinstall of Windows 2003 Server.   Also considering moving the E drive data off to an external USB drive just to get this machine back operating.

Again, no clues in Event manager on System or Application tabs.    Just no video, and no full boot.

Thanks in advance!

Answer : Windows Server 2003 strange issues booting normally.

Installation can take as little as one day.  Please use the following URL for installation guise (look for part one - there are about 6 which cover every bit of installation including some of the pitfalls when it comes to prerequisites):

http://how1think.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2010-03-15T15%3A34%3A00-05%3A00&max-results=7#uds-search-results

Once you have it installed, you go through the following process:

1)  Download the msi/exe or extract the media contents to a source file on your server.
2)  In SCCM you create a new package and point it to the folder for the previous media.
3)  Create a program in the package which is basically the name of the executable and any other switches you want such as /quiet /norestart for invisible install and no restarts at the end.
4)  Advertise the program to a collection of computers.

I can honestly say that I had it up and running and installing applications well within a delay using the above tutorial URL I have specified.  you can choose to install at login, restart or straight away.

This is a brief run down of the process.  It takes a few attempts to get used to all the options (most of which you don't need right away).  Also there is a lot of other things you can do with SCCM once you're used to it.  I've been playing with it for a few months now and I have to say it's a fantastic bit of kit for managing educational networks (as I'm doing right now)

As for WinINSTALL LE I've never used it but I would doubt it's as comprehensive as SCCM.

Let me know if you have any more questions.