We had a power cut the other night, and have only just powered on all our pcs. Unfortunately the server (see sig) just wont boot. It posts, and I can enter the BIOS in which all drives (including the SSD boot drive) are listed and selectable for boot and as far as I can tell no settings have been reset. BUT, when I go past the BIOS i just get a message flash up for a split second (no idea what it says as it just isnt on the screen for long enough), and then a blank black screen with a flashing underscore about a quarter way down the left hand edge. Can anyone suggest anything to investigate?
Have you raid setup on it? Are you sure its trying to boot into the correct disk, perhaps try and remove any non operating system disks and manually select it to boot. Perhaps have a play with the RAM as well, trying each stick on its own in turn and in different slots.
spam F10 like crazy and if you get the windows options try last known good config (Repeat this 3 times) Windows will hold the last 3 good boots so you may be lucky, if not you do have a backup yeah?
You could try booting to a USB drive, like a live linux distro or just a windows install USB. Just to see if you can boot in to something.
Thanks for the suggestions No, no raid setup. Yup definitely sure its trying to boot to the right disk. Will try various hardware configs. Server is on Win10, so F10 will be tried. It had occurred to me, but as I had all of 10mins to investigate, all I've done was poke the BIOS. But will definitely try and boot from a win10 install usb stick. It has been suggested that it may be a power supply issue, and chance of this? Can anyone think of a way to see what the flashed message says?
Start by removing anything in the USB ports. If you get in the BIOS check that it hasnt been reset to defaults by the power cut. It could be trying to boot in IDE instead of AHCI or even trying to boot off one of the drives used for data. Oh, and go buy a UPS
Only thing in usb ports is kb/mouse, oh and external hdd, hmm will remove that... No checked IDE/AHCI and its set to AHCI. Only items in boot order are the OS drive, the DVD/CD drive and USB (in that order). My experience of UPS' are that they only last long enough to allow you to shut down safely? as the powercut was in the middle of the night, I don't think that would've helped... Good idea, what software will allow me to go through frame by frame? Nice idea, but I don't think even Bruce Lee would've had the reflexes to press it quick enough, the message goes so quickly!
Typically, the UPS connects to the protected system via USB (serial, for old-school units). Software runs on the protected system which listens for alarms from the UPS; when there's a power cut and the UPS battery has nearly expired, the software will safely shut the system down without any user interaction required.
Not sure to be honest - usually I try the less-than-scientific method of just trying to pause it when it reaches the point and then trying again when I stuff it up...
Shoot video on your phone. An iPhone will shoot at 240fps so will be more than quick enough to catch a single frame update even on a high refresh display.
Video taken. Error below: Yup, in my haste to assess/investigate yesterday evening, I wasn't paying attention and counted the drives incorrectly. Looks like the OS SSD is dead Good thing I've been backing the OS drive up Time to go looking for a replacement... Any recommendations on a UPS? Should i go new or is second hand ok?
For a UPS I would go new. The batteries are a bit more temperamental then other devices. I've had to replace batteries in a number of APC UPS batteries recently. If I was having one my homelab (Which I'll have to buy one soon really) I'd get new just for piece of mind.
I've had the cheaper APCs die on me within a few months, too, so if you're on a budget I'd suggest a different brand. My MicroServer is on a CyberPower 800VA jobby, which runs it for an easy hour and shuts it down safely; my desktop is on an Eaton Ellipse Eco which is an absolute pile of proverbial which can only run for about ten minutes and with crap software (at least for Linux - you can shut the system down during a power cut but *only* based on a time-since-power-lost stat, rather than amount-of-battery-left stat.)
Looking at the CyberPower models (for example) how do I work out what model (i.e. the VA number) I need? Or will any do the job, and all I'd be picking is running time?
