Installing Windows Server 2008 R2 on Dell PowerEdge 1850, 2850
Many data centers have been updating their hardware to servers that support virtualization, so there are a lot of older Dell PowerEdge 1850s and 2850s available on eBay and Craigslist right now. I recently bought six of these for under $150 each, including shipping, dual hyperthreaded dual-core CPUs, DRAC, PERC RAID and plenty of drives and RAM.
While these 8th generation Dell servers are the last ones to not support virtualization, the latest Windows server operating systems run on them just fine and make a great development or low-cost production environment. This article solves a couple quirks when trying to get them up and running.
Installation
Windows Server 2008 will install on the 1850 and 2850 without any problems. If your server does have a RAID controller, however, Windows won’t be able to recognize the drives out of the box, and the appropriate driver needs to be provided prior to starting the installation.
At the time of this writing, the current driver for the LSI Logic PERC RAID 4e series cards is 6.53.0.64 A00.
I have successfully used this driver with both the PERC 4e/Si and the PERC 4/DC.
Missing Drivers
The only hardware not automatically recognized by Windows Server 2008 R2 is the Dell Remote Access Controller (DRAC 4/P or DRAC 4/I). The Windows Device Manager will warn about three PCI Devices with the following hardware IDs:
- VEN_1028&DEV_0011&SUBSYS_00111028
- VEN_1028&DEV_0012&SUBSYS_00121028
- VEN_1028&DEV_0014&SUBSYS_00141028
There’s a single driver in the Systems Management category on the Dell support web site that will install all three of these. At the time of this writing, the current driver version is 1.0 A00 from 8/9/2009.
Driver Updates
The default graphics driver installed by Windows only supports screen resolutions for up to 800×600. For higher resolutions, an updated driver for the embedded ATI 7000M graphics card needs to be installed.
At the time of this writing, the most recent driver appears to be ATI_Radeon-7000M_A00_R177829.exe from the Dell FTP site, supporting resolutions up to 1600×1200.
Thanks for your article. I’m installing 2k8 R2 on an old 2850 and it helped me out.
I have tried to install windows 2008 sbs on a 2850 and I have not been able to.
If I try to boot with a 2008 dvd it bombs out before anything is loaded with a an error message :windows has encounterd a problem cimmunicating with a device connected to your computer
This error can be caused by unplugging a removable storage device such as an external USB drive while the device is in use…..
status 0xc00000e9
I tried loading wiht OM from dell and it gives me this error:
Script c:\remindpopup2.cbx
line 144
char 4
error f:\sources\setup.exe is not a valid win32 application
code 800700c1
source wshshell.exe
any idea’s?
I have a Dell PowerEdge 1850 as well its a tower machine. trying to install the Windows Server 2008 R2 however not able to see the hard drives. I tried to follow your instructions however still no solution.I would be great-full if you could guide me how to resolve the problem. I am trying to do a clean install of windows server 2008 R2. Regards.
@Farooq: Put the RAID drivers on a USB stick. On the screen where you can’t see your drives, there’s a button to load custom drivers. Select your RAID drivers from there, and you should be able to see your drive(s). If the drive(s) are still not visible, then you may not have built the RAID arrays. Reboot the server, go into the RAID setup and configure and initialize your disk arrays.
Well, if you can figure out how to map an iso on a drac4 then you can make the all the driver into a iso and mount it. But I’ve been trying this and drac 4 just dont’ play nice. virtual CD works sometimes but not all the time as well.
very nice article indeed, helped a lot I had 6 of dell 1850s to build and everything worked like a charm.
Hi,
Solved my video problem … Have a BIOS issue that I would like to resolve.
The BIOS is branded ECM Corp and they no longer (if they ever did) support this product, so I need to find a way to “unbrand” the BIOS so I can get it updated with the latest Dell one.
Any idea?????