WHS2011 unable to restart (but can shutdown ok)

[tangcla]

I have an issue where WHS2011 is unable to restart but can shutdown fine. When I restart it either gets stuck on the "Shutting down..." GUI screen, or it goes to a black screen after the shutdown screens, and gets stuck there.

 

I have reinstalled WHS2011 and it happens even on the initial reboots during the installation.

 

I initially thought it was an issue with my RAID card (HP P410 with 256MB BBWC) and had posted in this thread initially: http://homeservershow.com/forums/index.php?/topic/5595-n40l-p410-and-the-inability-to-reboot/page-1

 

Any advice would be appreciated.

[ikon]

My approach would be to go back to basics: strip the system down to the bare minimum and build it back up 1 item at a time, testing after change.

 

For example, I would remove the RAID card. If the system has an add-in video card, and also has onboard video, I would remove the add-in video card. I woulod leave only 1 drive in the system.

 

After reducing the system to the bare essentials I would install WHS and check for 'rebootability';

 

Assuming it does work, I would next reinstall 1 item and do a clean reinstall of WHS and test again. I would repeat the process until the system is either complete and still reboots OK, or I locate what was causing the issue.

 

If the system does not reboot OK after being reduced to the bare essentials, I would then look at the RAM and the disk drive. If there is more than 1 RAM stick, I would cut the number in half, do another reinstall of WHS, and test again. If that doesn't work, I would try another HDD. If none of this works, then I would look at replacing the motherboard.

 

With vexing problems like this I've always found that a step-wise, methodical approach work best.