Hello everyone,
tl;dr
PowerEdge T110 II couldn't boot up after windows server 2012 update shutdown, removing and placing back RAM and SATA helped, how to diagnose direct cause and avoid similar behaviour in future?
Full story
Yesterday at night I logged in to the server via rdp. Windows Server 2012 told me that it has installed updates and will restart in 15 minutes. I've closed everything and logged out of the server. This morning employees told me that nothing was working and they had no contact with the server. Quick telephone diagnosis revealed that server was running (diodes, fans), but it didn't respond to any form of user interaction. Also, nothing was displayed on the attached display. Therefore, I went to the location and diagnosed machine. It seemed like it couldn't get through the POST procedures, it didn't even react to the regular power button press. Also, it gave me the 1 3 4 error code - “Possible system board resource and/or system board hardware failure”. I have removed both RAM sticks and detached hard drives (unplugged hardware controller) and DVD drive, leaving only the motherboard and power supply. When I tried to boot machine, I got the 3 4 error - “Memory failure”. Then I tried plugging in one RAM stick - machine boot up and displayed SATA failure on the monitor. After plugging in HDDs and DVD, server as well as Windows boot up and finished the update process. After it was complete, I plugged in the second RAM stick and the server boot up completely fine. Right now it is working just how it used to. However, I am afraid of getting the same error with the next windows updates installation. How can I check exactly what has caused this behaviour? I've browsed through the Windows system log, and there were no errors, just the regular information about services being stopped and the planned windows update shutdown. I tried to get into the IDRAC, but I'm not sure whether this particular computer has its full version installed. Below I attach some technical details about machine and OS, as well as the installed updates list.
Dell PowerEdge T110 II ; 2 x 4GB RAM ; Intel Xeon CPU E3-1220 V2 @ 3,10 GHz x64
Windows Server 2012 Foundation x64
www.dropbox.com/.../dell_t110_windows_update_list.csv
I would love to hear your diagnostic tips.
Also, sorry for my bad English. I hope that everything is understandable.