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On 29/10/2021 00:44, Simon Waters wrote: On Thursday, 28 October 2021 23:52:51 BST Simon Avery wrote:
Sometimes I seriously hate computers.I have a similar issue I really ought to fix before it bites someone else, where one of the backup devices can prevent booting (it just needs to identify its disks more carefully).
Oh man this is going to be a great thread but before I chime in on HP, gated firmware+support downloads (don't even get me started) and the psychology of boot messages I might actually have some practical advice. I don't know if the rogue backup device annoying SW is USB like the rage-inducing camera keeping SA busy but I've run into this myself plenty of times over the years.
I once had a full VMWare ESXi host running an entire business suddenly refuse to start booting after a Dell technician had come out to "upgrade" it. Everything ground to a halt at the company, a new technician got sent back and nothing was done for 48 hours of bitter arguing until I let myself back into the server room, crawled round the back of the stack and found the Dell consultant's personal USB thumb drive still stuck in the back of the server. He'd been taking shortcuts to avoid having to go through the hideous download procedure for all the gated firmware etc tools he needed so was sensibly caching them on a drive for easy access and had simply forgotten he'd left it still plugged in. It was stopping the entire system and it's disk array booting... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I've also shipped more older gen (7's and 8's mostly) HP DL380 servers to remote sites than I care to remember and although they're decent and very cost effective machines, they are so sketchy sometimes. Clients for that company were frequently running surveillance gear off them and yes, we'd sometimes get the exact same "server won't boot anymore" errors from them.
Practical advice bit: sometimes, but not always, you could sidestep the problem by believe it or not just adding in a third party PCI-e USB card and plugging the offending device(s) into that. It didn't always work and never worked for certain devices but the fix is cheap to try, especially if you've got the USB card lying around. Switching to a powered external USB hub will also sometimes work so try both as cheap/lazy fixes, you might get lucky!
Oh and those hateful USB license dongles for stuff like old school Cubase or a lot of mega expensive CGI tools like Discrete Flame, etc would prevent systems booting a lot in the past as well. You've not lived until you've fixed a million pound SGI rendering system by clambering around the back and popping out the license dongle before rebooting.
Damn, just remembering that sometimes I seriously hate computers too. Or more specifically, the people who design them. The poor computers didn't do anything after all, except what they've been told to by us inept humans.
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