Hi,

I have a problem with a Compaq ProLiant 5000, that i could desperately do with some help with.

It worked perfectly until i moved house and after a few months of being in a corner i turned it on for the first time to discover that it would not boot up at all.

It powers up, the fans come on, all the lights on all the (Hot Pluggable) disks light up momentarily, 2 lights on the keyboard light up for the briefest second. The big red Compaq logo appears on the screen and sometimes the memory check starts. But then the screen just goes blank, sometimes the memory check doesn't even start at all and the screen just blacks out after the Compaq logo.

The computer does not die altogether, the fans keep whirring and the green power light remains on, but that is it. I do not get any beeps, but a couple of times the middle green light on one of the disks came on and remained on, but nothing else happened, even if i left the machine for hours. No amount of rebooting or pulling disks in or out or pulling the cover on or off made any difference at all. It just does the same.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, just point me in the right direction.

Thanks in advance

Alan

Interesting how you say that a light comes on and remains on, usually this suggests that the hardware is not connected properly; have you checked to make sure all of the wires in your case are securely fastened and plugged into the right places?

Also, it would help us solve your problem if you gave us some system specs. How long did you have your computer before moving house? And finally, have you ever left your computer on and experienced a power surge or something similar? This could cause some problems for your PSU and usually the damage would stay there (in normal circumstances). So if you could post the above and other relevant info, it would be greatly appreciated .

Hi Tim

Thanks very much for your reply. I have spent the whole day researching this problem on the Internet and your advice is bang on with the other stuff that I have been reading. So the first thing that I will do tonight is re-seat cards, memory, CPU, cables, etc and ensure that everything is in the correct location. The reason that I didn't do this (apart from it being late last night) was because it all worked perfectly last time and I suppose I didn't see why it would suddenly stop working... I now know this is very naive!

I'm afraid that I can't give you much in the way of spec's, like a lot of people with these sort of problems I picked the machine up from a friend, who had been given it when they were chucking it out at work! I didn't note any of the specs when it worked and now I can't get it to boot up to see them again! It is a Compaq ProLiant 5000 tower unit, it has a single CPU, and 2 half-filled banks of memory. It holds 4 hot pluggable 9.1 GB Ultra-Wide 2 SCSI disks, which I have tried in every conceivable order! I'll try and find out more tonight to tell you tomorrow.

I don't believe that the computer experienced a power surge, but I couldn't swear on my life that the removal men didn't give it a damn good kicking when I moved from England to Ireland!

I'll give your suggestions a go and get back with more info tomorrow. Thanks again.

Alan

Hi M8,

Try removing your memory sticks and reinsert them and also do the same with your cpu, any pci cards the your system has, as this looks like something has come dislodged while you were moving, hope this works.

Hi

Thanks very much for all of your responses. I spent all last night at it and the problems now appear to be fixed. If this is any help to anyone, this is what fixed it.

I found it very hard to understand why it has gone from working perfectly to not working at all, so I thought that it must be to do with transporting the machine during my house move. So I took out every single card, cable and wire. Anything that was plugged into the motherboard I plugged out, checked that it was in good condition and plugged it back in again. I noticed that the SCSI cable on the back of the DAT drive was loose, whether this had had anything to do with the machine not starting I don’t know.

The cards and the boards I took away and cleaned up, gently using a rubber (eraser) in the direction of the contacts and then giving them a wipe over with a soft cloth to ensure that there wasn’t any dirt on the connections. This is a trick I picked up from repairing printers and machines in dusty environments. I cleaned every single contact on every card, board and dimm, it took ages.

Once I carefully put everything back together and gave it all one final check over. I moved the internal switch (dip switch 4 on SW1 on the motherboard) so as that the machine will boot from floppy if need be. When I switched it on it all worked perfectly and I didn’t need to boot from floppy as it correctly went on to boot up from the Compaq SmartStart CD.

There is still a lot to do, as it doesn’t appear to be seeing all of the memory, the disks are not configured on the RAID array and there is no O/S. But I am confident that after I set up the machine’s basic configuration using SmartStart 5.5 (the last for old Compaq servers) it should all be pretty straightforward after that.

So thanks again for all your suggestions and help. It’s reassuring to know that there are good, helpful people out there.

Alan

i have a compaq proliant 5000

i would like to pick your brain on the server that we both have i seen all your posts but my problem is mine turns on for a sec and then turns off do you have any idea why that is?

read the NO POST guide in the guides forum.