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I have inherited a Dell PowerEdge R410 and no disks. I have downloaded the Dell Systems Build and Update Utility for the R410 and booted from the optical drive. In the management console you have the option to deploy and O/S which is what I have done, selected Windows Server 2003 and then all seems okay, until I have received a pop-up saying "missing CD/DVD Drivers".

I have downloaded all drivers from the Dell website and thrown them onto a USB. When I have selected the location for these nothing appears to be recognised. I'm at a loss as to how to move forward with getting an O/S onto the server and any advise would be appreciated.

Kyle Brandt
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Bill Johnson
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2 Answers2

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with w2k3 if you need additional drivers not provide by the oem on the install cd you'll need to have a floppy disk then hit f5/6 can't remember during the install and it will use the drivers found on the floppy.

tony roth
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    Hi, R410 does not have floppy drive...didn't think anyone still used them either. – Bill Johnson May 09 '11 at 22:33
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    @bill you can get USB Floppy drives they work just fine for F6 drivers – Zypher May 09 '11 at 22:41
  • Don't want to go down that route as it's further investment in buying floppies and drive. I would have thought that the Utility disk would have the associated drivers when deploying the O/S. Will have a chat to Dell tomorrow as see what light they can throw on the matter...thanks anyhow for suggestions. – Bill Johnson May 09 '11 at 22:45
  • The utility disc is not the first place to look for drivers. The drivers that shipped with the system are not necessarily current, and this could create real problems if firmware updates have been applied by a previous administrator: you have no assurance that old drivers have been tested with new firmware. You are far better off downloading current firmware and driver versions from the Dell web site after entering the correct service tag. – Skyhawk May 10 '11 at 00:35
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  1. Assuming that you have already configured a RAID array on your new drives, you can boot and install directly from the installation media without using the Dell utilities. Depending on your BIOS settings, you may need to press F12 at boot to specify CD or USB. Because your version of Windows is much older than your hardware, you should be prepared to provide a third-party RAID driver if your contoller is not recognized. This driver can be downloaded from support.dell.com.

  2. If you are having trouble installing Server 2003 from the optical drive, you certainly can install Windows Server 2003 directly from your USB device by following this tutorial.

  3. Are you sure that you want to be installing an outdated OS on contemporary hardware? It might make more sense to install Server 2008 R2 (or the free MS Hyper-V Server, or VMware ESXi) and then set up Server 2003 in a virtual machine. Any of the above will recognize your hardware out of the box, while providing provide a layer of abstraction that should eliminate the usual driver issues that one expects when installing old OS software on new hardware.

Skyhawk
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  • Hi, great response to the question; however, I have not set-up RAID and have attempted to install Ubuntu Server from both USB and CD/DVD - but it fails to mount the CD-Drive. Any thoughts? – Bill Johnson May 09 '11 at 22:22
  • What kind of controller do you have? If it's a PERC, you need to configure a RAID array using Dell's management tools before you can install an operating system. If you have only one drive installed, you still have to set it up as a single-disk RAID 0. If it's a SAS 6/i (which is really an LSI 1068e), then you may have the option of using JBOD (no hardware RAID) mode. – Skyhawk May 10 '11 at 00:24
  • Re: "any thoughts?": I would strongly recommend that, after configuring your RAID controller, you proceed to install an operating system (or VMware ESXi) directly from USB media. You can sort out the optical drive issue later. – Skyhawk May 10 '11 at 00:27