Strange crashing/rebooting problem

[Dan Charrois]

>
> On 10/25/05, Dan Charrois <dan at syz.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi all.  I'm wondering if anyone can shed some light on a strange
>> crashing/rebooting problem I'm having.  First, the specs:
>>
>> Hardware: Dell PowerEdge 2850 rack mounted server, Dual 3.4 Ghz Xeon,
>> 5 Gb memory
>>
> [snip]
>
> You didn't mention, have you run Dell diagnostics on the machine to
> rule out hardware issues?


No, I haven't been able to run diagnostics and rule out the hardware  
for two reasons..  First, the server is located about an hour's drive  
away, and I haven't had the chance to get to it yet.  Of course, this  
can be fixed.  But secondly, I have no idea *how* to run Dell  
Diagnostics.  The "Dell PowerEdge Service and Diagnostic Utilities,  
Version 4.4" CD that I have insists on being run from Windows, right  
down to a setup.exe in the root directory and a ReadMe that starts  
describing how to use the CD as:

1. Insert the Service and Diagnostic Utilities CD into the CD drive
    on a system running Windows. The setup program should start
    automatically. If it does not, click the Start button, click Run,
    and then type x:setup.exe (where x is the drive letter of your CD
    drive).

This isn't a dual boot machine - it's sole task is running FreeBSD  
for an SQL server, so that's not an option for me.  You'd think that  
they'd have a self-booting CD that would be able to diagnose the  
machine, since for the life of me, even if I *were* running Windows,  
I wouldn't be able to figure out how to diagnose a problem if part of  
the problem made Windows unbootable...  I must be missing something.

Dan
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