Windows server is not booting

We need more information to give you appropriate advice.

What are the symptoms?  Where does the boot fail?  Can the machine be brought into the BIOS setup screens?  Is the machine configured for BIOS or UEFI boot?  Are there any messages?

If you do start with the Recovery CD and if there is something wrong, it may try to recover the server, so make sure you have a good backup before you start.

What version of Windows Server are you using?

Are the drive lights on the server flashing anything other than green?

Nvm...see that you flagged it as 2003.  IF you get that server running, you need to get the data off, and install a supported OS.   2003 support ended YEARS ago.

Here is the thing,  they don't even know what windows version it is running. here is the error message

When you boot (reset) the machine, try to press F8 multiple times to access the boot menu.
You should see some recovery options to choose from.

Here is the thing,  they don't even know what windows version it is running. here is the error message

Are you physically on site with the afflicted machine?  If you're not, it will be much more difficult to troubleshoot this problem.

Also I can't see the error message you're referring to.

yes,  I do have physical access, but not now. I need to checkout tomorrow.   What is causing this issue? Looks like one of the disk is failed. AM  I right?

Sorry about ,  here is the error message. Please  check and provide your comments.
serverdrivefailure.jpg

It could be a drive but does not have to be. If a drive and not the OS you should be able to boot fine with a server CD

Looks like one of the drive is gone,  we may need to rebuild the RAID level?

Hmmm A server should run if only one drive went bad in that case it can be replaced

Thank  you  so much guys, I will do today and let you know.

That's why I asked about drive lights and colors...to see if the array is/has gone bad.

If you are not 100% sure of what you are doing and how to correct it, AND the data is that important, you really should call in outside help from people who have experience with this.

Getting advice from us is fine, if you are already familiar with the processes, if you are flying blind, this is no time to "try" things.

Thank you.  yes, I am not going to play with critical data, but trying my best to understand and fix.

Just a quick question,   If we clear the foreign configuration form the failed drive, would it remove all the data from the disk?

I believe foreign configuration keeps only metadata and wound't cause any issue by clearing. We can rebuild from the RAID controller.  AM I right ?

If you have a backup, then yes

Thank  you guys.  The boot disk under Raid 5 , but only one drive is failed, why it is not booting ?

Don't know.  I've seen plenty of servers with one failed drive in a RAID 5 boot just fine.

It says current boot mode is set to BIOS,  but haven't changed anything. Some thing changed?

It is hard to say, does you system support UEFI boot, changing to that and see if the system boots. Difficulty deals with what happened before the boot. i.e. were updates installed and on reboot the issue arose.

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have seen a situation here on EE where a system was rebooted, and the controller used the wrong drive as the reference on whose basis the VOLUME was "assembled" ......

At this stage, when booting was there a prompt that got you into the RAID controller with a question on resolving an issue.

Thank  you very much and I  opened another thread for this error message/

Hi mokkan,
any news on your issues?

Could you provide more details concerning the RAID status (which I already requested earlier)?

We never got the requested info of the RAID status (hitting Ctrl-R)
Really sad :-(