1. Now there is a flashing red light on the front of the server due to this ASR. How do I clear the flashing light?
2. I know I could go into the BIOS and disable the power reset upon watchdog timer events, but would rather have a fix that allows Windows updates to complete prior to the watchdog incorrectly deciding that the server is hung. Is there a fix from Dell?
Automatic system recovery (ASR) is asserted (set to power reset in BIOS) a few minutes after Windows restart although Windows is running and appears to be functioning normally. This crashes Windows. The ASR was observed after installing Microsoft Updates (FWIW which usually includes long-running high-CPU .Net compiles and high-CPU utilization by the TrustedInstaller service). Since we don't restart our servers "for no reason" and the "reason" is usually Microsoft updates, it is hard to know whether this is a cause-effect relationship.
In the iDRAC system event log (SEL):
System Board OS Watchdog: Watchdog sensor for System Board, timer expired was asserted
Dell PowerEdge M600
iDRAC Firmware 1.60 (Build 3)
CPLD Version 1.0.1 BIOS Version 2.4.0
Dell OpenManage Server Administrator 6.5.0
Windows Server 2008 R2