So I'm new here and to posting in general. Usually I find my answers in a forum and move on but I thought I would try being a member for once. Also, I'm not sure if I'm putting this in the right place. Anyway I'm sure the admins will let me know..

Here's my problem

I'm working on an old Dell PowerEdge 2950 II and an having trouble installing any OS. I've tried a bootable Win7 usb drive, a bootable Win7 DVD, and a bootable XP disc. All failed. The XP disc actually loaded to the point where you choose a destination but it couldn't find any HDDs. So the first problem is why can't I load Win7. The second problem is why can't I XP find the HDDs. I assume this has to do with the DRAC, something I have zero experience with. But why it wont load win7 baffles me.

I posted here b/c my goal is to end up on WHS2011. At the moment I am just trying to get my hardware to work for me before I drop anymore money into software.

Usually I can figure this stuff out but I don't have any experience with servers so I'm kindav in the dark.

Any help is appreciated!

It sounds like you're trying to load a desktop OS on server hardware. It's probably missing drivers, I'd visit the Dell website for that model server and see what storage drivers are available.

DRAC is remote access hardware, I believe, and unlikely to be related to your OS installation.

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Alex Kuretz
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Thank you yakuza for the post.

You're right. I was trying to install a desktop version of Windows. I was able to get it installed too. In the bios I had to set the usb boot option to emulate a hard drive. Booting from flash worked after that. I currently have WHS2011 installed and am figuring out how to utilize it.

Thanks again

As you work with WHS2011 I would recommend you also get Stablebit Drive Pool installed on it unless your going to setup a RAID Solution. If you use Stablebit Drive Pool just look at each hard drives configuration and turn off Shadows and any backup that maybe set for each drive since Stablebit Drive Pool will handle these tasks for you and having Shadow Copies turned on will cause some misc issues.

Good Luck with your server.

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Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8