Hello Everyone,
I recently "inherited" a PowerEdge 2900 server. The machine works fine in all areas (so far) except for a strange delay during POST-BIOS execution.
DETAILS: System boots normally at the "DELL" opening screen and scans all adapters in a reasonable length of time. *After* reaching and *passing* the "Press CTRL-E for remote access setup within 5 sec..." message, the system hangs with a blinking cursor in the upper left for about 2+ minutes before continuing to boot into Windows Server. After that point, all seems well, except there MAY be a problem with Ethernet interface #1, which seems non-responsive under Windows. This may be a configuration problem however since there is no yellow "?" on that adapter in the device manager. Admittedly I have not had time to pursue this issue since the other port is working.
Please note the other important details: The same delay occurs simply when using F2-Setup. After hitting ESC to leave and save setup settings, the system again hangs for 2+min before rebooting to the DELL screen. I noticed this when booting a Linux Live CD also. Interestingly, one can see the ISOLINUX loader execute immediately after the "remote access message" mentioned above, but then it seems to suspend-- again for the 2+ minutes-- before the CD continues to boot.
I have pulled out all boards plugged into the PCIe buss except the PERC 5i and the add-on Nvidia Quadro NVS 290 video card. So far nothing has positively affected this issue.
Bios: V-2.70
Backplane: V-1.05
FlexBay: V-1.05
Perc 5i: 5.2.2-0072
Baseboard Mgmt: V2.37
BMC: 6.5.0 (BLD_19)
CPU: dual Xeon 3GHz, 4GB ram
Any ideas on the cause and possible remedy of this strange boot delay :-) ? Thanks.