Running the diagnostic programs

Use this information to start the diagnostic programs for the blade server.

Important: The DSA diagnostic programs do not support USB CD-ROM drives. If you run the DSA diagnostic programs while any USB CD-ROM drives are attached, ignore any optical drive test results that are returned for USB CD-ROM drives. You can also remove USB CD-ROM drives before you run the DSA diagnostic programs to get accurate optical drive test results.

To run the DSA Preboot diagnostic programs, complete the following steps:

If the blade server is running, turn off the blade server and all attached devices.
Turn on all attached devices; then, turn on the blade server.
When the prompt Press F2 for Dynamic System Analysis (DSA) is displayed, press F2.
From the diagnostic programs screen, select the test that you want to run and follow the instructions on the screen.

For help with the diagnostic programs, press F1. You also can press F1 from within a help screen to obtain online documentation from which you can select different categories. To exit from the help information, press Esc.

To determine what action you should take as a result of a diagnostic text message or error code, see the table in Diagnostic messages.

If the diagnostic programs do not detect any hardware errors but the problem remains during normal server operations, a software error might be the cause. If you suspect a software problem, see the information that comes with your software.

A single problem might cause more than one error message. When this happens, correct the cause of the first error message. The other error messages usually will not occur the next time you run the diagnostic programs.

Exception: If there are multiple error codes or light path diagnostics LEDs that indicate a microprocessor error, the error might be in a microprocessor or in a microprocessor socket. See Microprocessor problems for information about diagnosing microprocessor problems.

If the blade server stops responding during testing and you cannot continue, restart the blade server and try running the diagnostic programs again. If the problem remains, replace the component that was being tested when the blade server stopped.

The diagnostic programs assume that a keyboard and mouse are attached to the BladeCenter unit and that the blade server controls them. If you run the diagnostic programs with either no mouse or a mouse attached to the BladeCenter unit that is not controlled by the blade server, you cannot use the Next Cat and Prev Cat buttons to select categories. All other mouse-selectable functions are available through function keys.

To view server configuration information such as system configuration, memory contents, interrupt request (IRQ) use, direct memory access (DMA) use, or device drivers, select Hardware Info from the top of the screen.