Network down: Dell Poweredge 1800 hanging at PXE boot after dhcp server turned off

[Tara]

Our domain controller/fileserver died today, while I was midway through creating a backup controller. The new server is a recently acquired Poweredge 1800. I disabled dhcp server and dhcp client (as it began serving the wrong address range as soon as the PDC went down), set a fixed ip (so that it would not matter that the dhcp server was off) and restarted. My intention was to restore the dhcp and dns backup onto this new server after restart, but unfortunately I didn't get that far.

 

Upon restart the server hung at PXE boot with the error:

PXE-E51: no dhcp or proxydhcp offers were received

 

Research indicates this happens when the RAID is dead. However I can see all the RAID drives in the bios raid manager, online and waiting to go. I have tried going into the boot sequence of the server and disabling the network card, but that just gives me "no boot device found" error.

 

The really odd thing is that when the network cable was unplugged, and dhcp server running, I could restart the server no problems. So I realise the problem is the dhcp server - but without the ability to get into Windows I can't turn the service back on again.

 

I can use Hirens to boot into Mini Windows, set an IP and access the Internet fine (but the IP configuration is cleared once the server restarts).

 

Any help gratefully - and urgently appreciated. School starts in 4 days and we have no domain controller, and my best copy of the data was on the server which is now refusing to go past boot.

Edited August 27, 2013 by Tara

[fiza]

Are you trying to PXE boot the server to install an image? If not then look for the PXE setting in the BIOS and switch it off. Looks like the server is looking for a PXE server.

[Tara]

Hi Fiza

 

No, there is no PXE server onsite, or on the site who donated the server to us (we are small budget). The server restarted perfectly into Windows without asking for the PXE server (even with the network cable unplugged), until the point at which I turned off the dhcp client and server services.

 

In the bios there are 2 options under integrated devices - embedded nic with pxe on, with pxe off, disable embedded nic. Embedded with PXE on (which was the default) hangs with the error mentioned earlier. PXE off, and NIC disabled, both lead to no boot device available error.

 

I have checked the raid - it is fine! My options at this point are to figure a way to skip past the Intel boot manager and boot directly from the RAID, OR restart the DHCP services OR find a way to manually set the IP configuration of the embedded NIC at boot time.

[cpjitservices]

Hit the ESC key when it looks for PXe servers - You get a screen with a spinning cursor looking for DHCP - hit ESC and it should continue to boot.

[fiza]

"Embedded with PXE ON" means that it will try to find a PXE server even if one doesnt exist. Pressing ESC when its looking should get you past it.

[fiza]

Hit the ESC key when it looks for PXe servers - You get a screen with a spinning cursor looking for DHCP - hit ESC and it should continue to boot.

 

Beat me to it!

[fiza]

If you set it to Embedded PXE OFF then check your boot devices to make sure that there is more than boot from network available.