I have a less than one month old server on which Windows Server 2008 R2 is installed. I have a 2 mirrored disk drives in there. I attempted a RAM upgrade, which did not go well possibly due to memory density issues. The server refused to even POST, so I rolled back the upgrade and installed all of the original RAM back. I should mention that I probably turned the server on and off about 12-15 times during the upgrade process due to trying different RAM combinations. After I reinstalled the original RAM, the server started up fine, but the boot screen presented me with:
Windows Server 2008
Windows Server 2008 – Secondary Plex
I chose each option after the other didn't work, but the screen would blank out at the Windows Loading progress bar. Even the Windows icon would not show up.
I then tried booting up in safe mode, which went through fine. I resynchronized the mirror drive, and then tried rebooting again, but same problem, stalled at the loading progress screen. I booted into safe mode, then removed the mirror drive, then restarted, but same issue.
I downloaded EasyBCD in safe mode then tried the option of fixing the bootloader, but same problem again.
Event logs don't show anything useful as far as what's causing the problem. Do I need to fix the MBR somehow due to the previous mirrored setup?
EDIT 09/16: A Dell tech came out and replaced the mobo, ram, and CPU, and after a few reboots, the system comes up fine now. However, after I enabled Virtualization in BIOS, the system again started exhibiting the problems I had to begin with. I disabled VT and started it up again, it came up fine.
I then tried to flash the BIOS as the one on the new mobo was from January 2010. I ran the installler through Windows then allowed it to restart, but the server never comes back up. I let it sit there for at least 45 minutes, then did a hard reboot. BIOS still shows the old version installed! I tried the same process again, but don't have any high hopes for it. The whole reason I bought the server was for HV VT, and now it seems to be causing this problem. Argh
Best Answer
Sometimes the best answer is to burn it down and start from scratch. Since it's less than a month old, I'm going to guess (rightly or wrongly) that you don't have much invested in it yet. Would you be able to set up a new mirror and reinstall? You'll find out real quick if you have a hardware problem then.