Trouble Booting UnRaid on old Dell BIOS (Inspiron 580s circa 2010)

[crusemm]

System

 

Dell Inspiron 580s (circa 2010)

Dell Inspiron 580/580S BIOS, A06 Release date 06/2010

Following drives installed:

240 GB SSD - formerly the Windows drive for this PC, planning to use for cache, still has a (broken?) version of Windows 10 pro running on it

2TB shucked Seagate HDD  - May be bad, not sure yet

500GB HDD- was good, no idea what’s on it

 

Other Important Information

 

12 GB RAM (2) 4 GB sticks (2) 2 GB sticks-I think either 1 stick is bad or there is a bad RAM Slot

Dell MOBO has an amber 5VSB LED1 light lit 

I have another 4TB HDD on the way, which when installed will be the Parity drive

Using a 32GB Sandisk USB as the UnRaid boot drive created with unraid USB creator

 

Desired Use

 

I plan on setting this up to run Shinobi as a replacement security camera NVR to use with my existing POE and Wifi Cameras, and possibly a doorbell camera in the future.

 

Attempt 1

 

Powered on, all drives connected, booted into BIOS, PC shutdown

 

Attempt 2 & 3

 

Same as 1, but was able to get to boot drive section before power down

 

Attempt 4

 

Removed all but 1 stick of RAM in the DIMM 1 slot

Booted into BIOS, Sandisk USB not visible

 

Attempt 5

 

Disconnected all drives except UnRaid USB

Booted into BIOS

Sandisk USB visible

Changed hard disk and Boot order to USB Sandisk

Saved and exited

Attempt to boot to UnRaid USB with UEFI boot allowed-not a bootable disk

 

Attempt 6

 

Reformat 32GB Sandisk USB as the UnRaid boot drive created with UnRaid USB creator, with UEFI not allowed

Disconnected all drives except UnRaid USB

Attempt to boot to UnRaid USB-not a bootable disk

 

Attempt 7

 

Reconnect 240 GB SSD

PC boots to Windows, attempts to repair

I power down the PC before it’s complete

 

Attempt 8

 

Reinstall All RAM

Won’t boot. Just goes to black screen with flashing cursor

 

Attempt 9

 

Back to 1 RAM stick in the DIMM 1 slot

Remove 240 GB SSD

Copy updated BIOS (A07 12/2010) to new thumb drive-try to boot to this

(I now know that’s not how you update BIOS, but thought that might work)

Unable to boot

 

Attempt 10

 

Reconnect 240 GB SSD

Insert Windows 10 Install USB

Boot to Windows install

Attempt repair of Windows, that’s where I left it last night.

Woke up this morning to an error message similar to this one (but not the exact same)

 

Next steps:

 

1. Attempt to load a clean install of Windows 10 onto the SSD
2. Load the updated BIOS
3. Attempt to boot into the Unraid OS USB again
4. T/S RAM issue, probably by swapping out sticks of RAM until I find the bad one, or inspect the RAM slots and see if I can find a bad one.
5. Replace PSU, but I don’t want to go down that road until I know I can actually run UnRaid on this box

 

Any help or guidance you can provide would be greatly appreciated. I started my last UnRaid build on an Old Dell tower, and that one went way better than this.

Edited December 7, 2021 by crusemm

[crusemm]

Attempt 11

 

Connected new 4TB HDD

Removed SSD

Connected 2Tb and 500GB HDD

Installed 2nd stick of RAM into DIMM 2 slot

I was able to boot into Windows 10 either installed from a USB Windows Media drive or it was legacy on one of the HDD's

Currently unable to boot into UnRaid

Cannot get into BIOS, loads straight to Windows, even with Media Drive removed

[trurl]

7 minutes ago, crusemm said:

Cannot get into BIOS

Seems like something you are going to have to fix before you can make any progress. Are you sure your keyboard is working?

[JonathanM]

9 hours ago, crusemm said:

 

I plan on setting this up to run Shinobi as a replacement security camera NVR to use with my existing POE and Wifi Cameras, and possibly a doorbell camera in the future.

Have you run the specs through the estimator to see if it will even work for what you want to do?

https://shinobi.video/estimate

[crusemm]

1 hour ago, trurl said:

Seems like something you are going to have to fix before you can make any progress. Are you sure your keyboard is working?

Verified that the Keyboard and mouse work, I think I was just too slow hitting the keys

Attempt 12

got into BIOS

Looks Like the BIOS did actually update, at least it says BIOS Version A07

Still won't boot to UNRAID drive

 

[crusemm]

34 minutes ago, JonathanM said:

Have you run the specs through the estimator to see if it will even work for what you want to do?

https://shinobi.video/estimate

I looked at the specs, doesn't even have one for an intel i3.  I'll keep looking

[crusemm]

Attempt 13

 

Was able to access boot order [F12}

set UnRaid USB as the boot device.

Got 2 beeps [memory error according to this website]

monitor was blank with a flashing cursor - same as Attempt 8

Edited December 8, 2021 by crusemm
bracket

[crusemm]

Attempt 14

 

Was able to access boot order [F12}

set UnRaid USB as the boot device.

Got  beeps [BIOS ROM error according to this website]

monitor was blank with a flashing cursor - same as Attempt 8 and 13

[trurl]

1 minute ago, crusemm said:

memory error

You should really take care of that. Even if you could get Unraid to boot, you don't want to run any computer with bad memory. The CPU only has access to RAM, so everything goes through RAM, including the OS executable code.

[trurl]

Everything else is a waste of time if memory isn't good.

[crusemm]

But I think memory is good.  It's not consistent, sometimes it comes up, sometimes it doesn't.  At this point I'm thinking of scrapping this build and starting over with something newer. I just hate to toss an old PC that could still have life in it.

[trurl]

11 hours ago, crusemm said:

But I think memory is good. 

23 hours ago, crusemm said:

I think either 1 stick is bad or there is a bad RAM Slot

 

Whether a bad stick or a bad slot, it's bad

12 hours ago, trurl said:

Everything else is a waste of time if memory isn't good.

 

Have you done memtest? Test each stick by itself, and if that passes test each slot by itself. You should let each test run for at least 2 passes.

[crusemm]

I'm done, going to put the PC up for sale for scrap, and start over fresh.  Thanks for the help anyway guys.