Jim Guckin

Question:

I have a Dell PowerEdge 2970 server, and I’m trying to install Windows Server 2008 R2 with the Dell CD that came in the package.  It boots off the CD and loads the install GUI, and then stops before installing everything asking for drivers.  I tried putting the RAID array drivers on a USB and letting it search there, but it doesn’t find any, and still gives me the missing drivers error, any suggestions?
Rey Dennis
San Jose, CA
Answer:

This is one of those questions, that just happen to get me off my lazy but and look into something similar that I have.  I had a server similar to this one, that was doing the same exact thing, and you did the same thing I did, minus the hours spent on thinking something was wrong with the RAID configuration itself.  The issue ended up being so simple, but something that I overlooked.  In the 2970 you need to account for the Broadcom Chipset, that controls the DVD drive.
I made the assumption, that because the CD had booted up and began the process that it had the driver how else would it have started up, but in reality windows installer didn’t have the correct driver and would fail out.  So you need to go to:

 Broadcom HT1000/HT1100 Chipset SATA Controller QDMA

and download the driver to your desktop, once there you can extract the files to a USB drive and then when you get that error on the server insert the USB device, click the browse button and then select the drive and click OK, shortly you should have you install humming along.

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