Inaccessible boot device

[ICTICJTilson]

Hi all

 

I'm hoping you can all help me with a major issue we are having. We have had two server 2012 R2 servers and one 2008 R2 server give us the dreaded inaccesible boot device (0x7b) BSOD. One of them we no longer needed (2008 server) so was no loss but the other two I couldn't get going again and time was of the essence so I had to do a disisater recovery on them which was succesful but painful to say the least and caused a significant amount of downtime for the schools.

 

All three of the servers are physical and they all have a RAID 5 configuration using LSI MegaRAID so I wonder if there is a link here.

 

All of them appear to have done this following a reboot and from what we can gather after installing some recent Windows Updates.

 

Things I have tried are:

 

Check the BIOS hadn't reset

Rolled back windows updates

 

I have tried a couple of other things in the panic of trying to sort it but in the mayhem I cannot remember what they we're exactly but I am certain we cannot be the only ones to experience this.

 

Has anyone else experienced this and know how to fix it? We are nervous that it will happen again and are reluctant to install any windows updates until we can find out a fix? Which is obviously something we cannot continue as we need to be able to patch our servers.

 

Many thanks

[mavhc]

Don't forget to update the megaraid firmware as well as the bios.

 

Can you view the raid5 "disk" from the megaraid firmware?

 

See if the mbr sector looks correct

[ICTICJTilson]

Hi Mavhc

 

Thanks so much for your response.

 

I think this might be the problem the drivers and firmware haven't been updated on these servers for some time I believe.

 

The disks are intact and I can access the RAID config on boot and all looks fine. I can access the data on the disk via a CMD prompt in the recovery tools and everything is intact.

 

Windows starts to boot but then just before it starts configuring devices I get inaccessble boot device. Does this suggest the storage controller do you think?

 

Thank you

[mavhc]

if it starts to boot, guess so, can you run a windows repair?

[ICTICJTilson]

Sadly not mavhc, it must be something with a recent windows update but I see to be on the only one suffering it from an extensive google. Tried this but no joy https://richardjgreen.net/inaccessible-boot-device-windows-server-2012-r2-kb2919355/

 

I think it has to be driver issue but can I update drivers from a cmd prompt do you know?

[Katy]

Sadly not mavhc, it must be something with a recent windows update but I see to be on the only one suffering it from an extensive google. Tried this but no joy https://richardjgreen.net/inaccessible-boot-device-windows-server-2012-r2-kb2919355/

 

I think it has to be driver issue but can I update drivers from a cmd prompt do you know?

You can install drivers from a command prompt, pnputil -i -a driver.inf

 

I've used that to install Intel drivers over the top of the default Microsoft ones for a network card before which I guess is technically updating the driver.

[ICTICJTilson]

Thanks Katy, I will give this a go first chance I get. Will this replace the existing driver and then hopefully resolve my issues?

[Katy]

Thanks Katy, I will give this a go first chance I get. Will this replace the existing driver and then hopefully resolve my issues?

 

Yes, not sure what happens if Windows decides it prefers the previous driver but in my case it replaced the network card's Microsoft driver with the Intel one I was trying to install.

[ICTICJTilson]

Just to complete this thread, this has now happened on three different servers at completly different locations, never had any do it to me in over 10 years. Two of the servers have very similar hardware but the other is quite different. We suspected it might be an issue with the Storage controllers drivers or BIOS firmware as they we're out of date but we had to get them back online so couldn't investigate further, in the end we had to do a restore which was painful but succesful. Lesson learnt, always update your drivers and firmware.