I have a Dell PowerEdge 4400 server (out of warranty). It was a SQL server for our company and it went down with unspecified errors last September before I joined the company. Another Dell 4400 running Exchange 2003 went down at approximately the same time–again with unspecified errors. The 2 machines were given to me since they had already been written off. The “Exchange Dell 4400” would power up, but I could never get it past the POST. I ended up totally dismantling it (2 Xeon processors, 4 gigs of RAM, 6 SCSI drives—18 to 36 gig Cheetahs, 3 PSUs, etc.) for the parts.
The 1st machine has the same physical configuration but with more drive space. I’ve succeeded several times in getting it booted to Windows 2003. It will power up OK now, but I can’t get it to boot to Windows now. I succeeded once in reinstalling the OS, but it blue-screened on reboot. I have little SCSI (IDE and SATA for me!!) experience—here is where I most need help. It has the embedded Adaptec SCSI (“7900 family”–Dell’s description–“integrated Adaptec AIC-7899 SCSI controller”) adapters and a Dell PERC 3/DI RAID controller. I have read and multiply re-read all the Dell documentation–all to no avail.
The drives will respond to various SCSI adapter commands and configurations. I can create a new container and such but then, upon reboot, it will say no logical volumes found. I’ve set it to OS install mode with the 2003 CD in the drive. Which SCSI drivers need to be installed and in what order? Should the drives be low-level formatted? What am I missing? Your help will be most appreciated–thank you!