Sbs 2003 Install Problem

Zaphod · February 3, 2004

OOOPS! I should have placed this in Non-Car chat - sorry.

Clean install all new server build.

MSI 865PE Neo2 FIS2R M/B

512MB Kingston DDR400 RAM

P4 2.6

Radeon 7000 AGP

2 x 250GB Hitachi SATA HDD RAID mirror

Promise Fasttrack 378 RAID drivers installed (F6)

300W + 300W redundant PSU

Onboard Gigabit ethernet

Install runs o.k. till 60% through "Installing Drivers" on

SBS setup screen. Screen then goes black and all HDD

activity stops. No Keyboard or mouse actions. Monitor LED

is orange indicating nil o/p from video card.

A hard reset is required to restart the server. The

windows "resuming setup" screen appears and it restarts

the install process. It hangs at the same point a second

and sometimes a third time before it gets past

the "installing drivers" section and carrys on to do

the "registering components" section of the install.

I have also tried the installation - starting from scratch

using a single SATA drive with no additional drivers (i.e.

not using F6), and an also tried with a single 80GB IDE

drive with the same results. I swapped out the M/B (brand

new) with another one (same breed, also brand new) with no

change in the pattern.

I have little enough hair as it is and this is just

reducing coverage by even more. Fortunately it is the eval

version, but my decision on whether to go the whole hog

and recommend this as the next step in our companies

technology strategy is somewhat dented.

I have seen the notice pertaining to the Sharepoint

services prob and wonder if this may have some bearing on

this frustrating situation. Although I finally seem to get

the OS on, it does not fill me with confidence about the

stability of the installation when the pressure comes onto

it.

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated. :duh:

Be well.

Zaphod.

aido · February 3, 2004

May be worth checking out this article:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;828267

It might be worth taking a look at the log file that it talks about - are there any other OS's on this box or can you install one temporarily just to get to the file (you may be able to use the recovery console if you have an XP cd) otherwise it might be worth putting a parallel install of XP or 2000 or something on there that can read an NTFS partition

OTher things you could try would be to reset the BIOS settings etc and maybe try disabling USB, firewire ports etc in the BIOS and then bring them back one at a time to see if you can identify the dodgy device.

Other thing to check is that you have the latest BIOS version installed on the Mobo.

Apart from that maybe dodgy RAM or CPU??

MS Server OS's do run much better on server specific hardware, I've not touched it on anything other than Compaq / HP server kit and never really had a problem like this....