6. Troubleshooting installation
Most of the time, installation completes normally and the Windows
operating system starts without any problems. Some of the time, however,
installation won’t complete or, after installation, the server won’t
start up, and you must troubleshoot to figure out what’s happening. The
good news is that installation problems are usually the result of
something simple. The bad news is that simple problems are sometimes the
hardest to find.
Start with the potential points of failure
Setup can fail for a variety of reasons, but more often than not it’s
because of incompatible hardware components or the failure of the
system to meet the minimum requirements for a Windows Server 2012
installation. With this in mind, start troubleshooting by looking at the potential points of failure and how these failure points can be resolved.
Setup refuses to install or start
If a hardware component is incompatible with Windows Server 2012,
this could cause the failure of the installation or a failure to start
up after installation. Make sure that Windows Server 2012 is detecting
the system hardware and that the hardware is in the Windows Server
Catalog or on the Hardware Compatibility
List (HCL). As discussed previously, you can perform a compatibility
check prior to installing Windows Server 2012.
After you start the installation, however, it’s too late. At this
point, you have several choices. You can reboot to a working operating
system and then restart the installation from the command prompt using
Setup and one of the following debugging options:
-
/1394debug:<channel> Enables kernel debugging over a FireWire (IEEE 1394) port on a specific channel -
/debug:<port> Enables kernel debugging over a COM1 or COM2 port -
/usbdebug:<target> Enables kernel debugging over a USB port to a specific target device
These options put Setup in debug
mode, which can help you identify what is going wrong. If Setup
determines you have hardware conflicts, you can try to configure the
hardware and server firmware
to eliminate the conflicts. Troubleshooting firmware involves booting
the server to the firmware and then completing the following steps:
-
Examine the boot order of disk devices
You might want to
configure the system so that it boots first from DVD-ROM. Watch out,
though; after installation, don’t keep booting to DVD-ROM thinking you
are booting to the operating system—hey, we all get tired and sometimes
we just have to stop and think for a moment. If the installation problem
is that you keep going back to the installation screen after installing
the operating system, you are probably inadvertently booting from
DVD-ROM—and you’re probably way too tired by now to realize it. -
Check Plug and Play device configuration and interrupt reservations
If a system has
older components or components that aren’t Plug and Play compatible, you
might have a device conflict for a hard-coded interrupt. For example, a
non–Plug and Play sound card could be hard-coded to use interrupt 13,
which is already in use by a Plug and Play device. To work around this,
you must configure interrupt
13 under your Plug and Play BIOS settings to be reserved for a non–Plug
and Play device. This ensures that Plug and Play does not attempt to
use that interrupt and resolves the issue in most cases.
Note
The only sure way to avoid problems with non–Plug and Play devices is to avoid using them altogether.
Rather than spending time—which could run into several hours—trying
to troubleshoot a hardware conflict, you might consider removing the
hardware component if it’s nonessential—and you might be surprised at
what I consider nonessential at this stage. By nonessential, I mean most
anything that isn’t needed to start up and give you a display for
logon. You probably don’t need a network card, a sound card, a
multimedia controller card, a video coder/decoder (codec), or a
removable media
drive. If these items are incompatible, you might resolve the problem
simply by removing them. You can always try to install the components
again after installation is complete.
When you install directly from the Windows Server 2012 DVD-ROM or
perform a network install from a distribution share, you might encounter
a media error that causes Setup to fail. With an actual DVD-ROM, you
might need to clean the DVD-ROM so that it can be read or use a
different DVD drive. If a computer’s sole DVD-ROM drive is the problem,
you must replace the drive or install from a distribution share. If you
are working with a distribution share, the share might not have all the
necessary files, or you might encounter problems connecting to the
share. Try using an actual DVD-ROM.
Setup reports insufficient system resources
Windows Server 2012 requires a minimum of 512 MBs of RAM and about 32
GBs of disk space. If the system doesn’t have enough memory, Setup
won’t start. If Setup starts and detects that there isn’t enough space,
it might not continue or you might need to create a new partition or
delete an existing partition to get enough free space to install the
operating system.
Continue past lockups and freezes
If you can get past the potential points of failure, you still might find that the installation locks up or freezes. In this case, you might get a stop error; then again, you might not.
Most stop errors
have cryptic error codes rather than clear messages telling you what’s
wrong. If you get a stop error, write down the error number or code, and
then refer to the Microsoft Knowledge Base (available online at http://support.microsoft.com/) for help troubleshooting the problem. To break out of the stop, you most likely will have to press Ctrl+Alt+Delete
(sometimes several times) to get the server to restart. If this doesn’t
break out of the stop, press and hold the power button on the server
until it reboots. Alternatively, disconnect the system power, wait a few
seconds, and then connect it again.
The Windows operating system should start up and go directly back to
Setup. In some cases, you will see a boot menu. If so, choose the
Windows Setup option to allow the Setup program to attempt to continue
the installation. Setup could freeze again. If it does, stay with it,
and repeat this process—sometimes it takes several tries to get
completely through the installation process.
RAM and CPUs can also be the source of problems. Issues to watch out for include the following:
-
Incompatible RAM
Not all RAM is compatible, and you can’t mix and match RAM of different
speeds and types. Ensure that all RAM modules are the same type and
speed. Further, RAM modules from different manufacturers, in some cases,
can perform differently (read incompatibly). In such a case, try
changing the RAM so that all modules have the same manufacturer. -
Malfunctioning RAM
Static discharges can ruin RAM faster than anything else. If you didn’t
ground yourself and use a static discharge wire before working with the
RAM modules, you could have inadvertently fried the RAM so that the
modules don’t work at all or are malfunctioning. RAM could have also
arrived in this condition from the manufacturer or distributor. There
are several troubleshooting techniques for determining this. You could
update firmware to add a wait state to the RAM so that if the RAM is
partially faulty the system will still boot (but you still must replace
the RAM eventually). You can also try removing some RAM modules or
changing their order. -
Incompatible processors
Not all processors are created equal, and I’m not just talking about
their speed in megahertz (which you generally want to be the same for
all processors on a server). Some processors might have a cache or
configuration that is incompatible with the server hardware or other
processors. Check the processor speed and type to ensure that they are
compatible with the server. In some cases, you might need to change
hardware jumpers, depending on the speed and type of your processors. -
Misconfigured processors
Adding additional processors to a server isn’t a simple matter of
inserting them. Often, you must change jumpers on the hardware, remove
several terminators (one for a power subcomponent and one for the
processor—and save them because, trust me, you might find that you need
them), and then insert the new components. Check the hardware jumpers
(even if you think there aren’t any), and ensure that the processors and
the power subcomponents you added are seated properly. If you can’t get
the installation to continue or the server to start up, you might need
to remove the components you added. Watch out, though; you probably
don’t want to continue the installation until the processor issue is
resolved—single-processor systems have a different threading and default
configuration than multiprocessor systems, meaning this situation might
not be a simple matter of adding the processor after installation and
making it all work properly. -
System processor cache problems
Sometimes there can be an issue with the system processor cache and its compatibility
with Windows Server 2012. Consult the server documentation to determine
the correct configuration settings and how the cache can be disabled.
If you suspect a problem with this, boot to firmware and temporarily
disable the system processor cache, following the server documentation.
After the installation is complete, you should be able to enable the
cache to avoid a performance hit. Be sure to check both the hardware
vendor support site and the Microsoft Knowledge Base to see whether any
known issues with your server’s processor cache exist.
Most of the time, the installation or setup problem is caused by a
compatibility issue with the Windows operating system, and that problem
can be fixed by making changes to firmware settings. Sometimes, however,
the problem is the firmware, and you’ll find that you must upgrade the
firmware to resolve the problem.
Check with the hardware vendor to see whether a firmware upgrade is
available. If so, install it as the hardware vendor directs. If a new
firmware version isn’t available, you might be able to disable the
incompatible option prior to setup. If this doesn’t work, the option you
changed wasn’t the source of the problem and you should re-enable it
before continuing.
Note
Re-enabling the option might be necessary because some
hardware-specific firmware settings cannot be changed after the
installation. Thus, the only way to enable the option would be to
reinstall the operating system.
Finally, hard-disk-drive settings could also cause lockups or freezes, particularly if you are using Integrated Device Electronics (IDE)
drives. When using IDE drives and controllers, you want to ensure that
the system recognizes both the drives and the controllers and that both
are enabled and configured properly in firmware. You might have to check
jumper settings on the drives and the cables that connect the drives.
As discussed previously, check for conflicts
between the drives, controllers, and other system components. You might
need to temporarily remove unnecessary components, such as the sound
card, to see whether this resolves a conflict. If a DVD drive is on the
same channel as the disk drives, try moving it to the secondary channel
and configuring it as a master device. You can also try lowering the
data transfer rate for the IDE drives.
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