Revisions
Date
Description
August 2014
Initial draft
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Troubleshooting Guide for BIOS POST on Dell 13th Generation of PowerEdge Servers
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Troubleshooting Guide for BIOS POST on Dell 13th Generation of PowerEdge Servers
Executive summary
The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) is a set of industry-standard firmware interfaces that is
designed to replace the legacy BIOS to support modern operating systems and hardware architectures.
Dell has been shipping UEFI support in the BIOS since the 11th generation of PowerEdge servers through a
UEFI-over-Legacy model, where it is the legacy BIOS that initializes the whole system and loads the UEFI
layer at the end of Power-On Self-Test (POST) if needed. The Dell Lifecycle Controller technology is built
upon UEFI as well.
The BIOS on the 13th generation of Dell PowerEdge servers is now a native UEFI implementation, with a
Compatibility Support Module (CSM) to provide legacy BIOS interfaces to support operating systems that
are not UEFI-aware. The look and feel of the boot process is dramatically different from the previous
generations.
This guide provides troubleshooting solution for possible issues that may arise during POST and pre-boot
environment on the 13th generation of PowerEdge servers.
Initializing iDRAC
Troubleshooting Guide for BIOS POST on Dell 13th Generation of PowerEdge Servers
Troubleshooting Guide for BIOS POST on Dell 13th Generation of PowerEdge Servers
Troubleshooting Guide for BIOS POST on Dell 13th Generation of PowerEdge Servers
The first error message (UEFI0072) displays that the UEFI driver from the Integrated NIC 1 Port 1
Partition 1 was not loaded because it failed the Secure Boot authentication. You may address this issue
by updating the NIC firmware to a version that supports the UEFI driver signing.
Troubleshooting Guide for BIOS POST on Dell 13th Generation of PowerEdge Servers
The second error message (UEFI0071) displays that the previously configured UEFI network boot
interface is no longer available. This is a result of the corresponding UEFI driver not being loaded.
The third warning message (UEFI0074) displays that the Secure Boot policy has been modified since
the last time the system was booted. In this particular example, the user enabled Secure Boot on
purpose, so no action needs to be taken.
Corresponding logs for the error and warning messages will be recorded in the Lifecycle Log (Fig. 4).
Troubleshooting Guide for BIOS POST on Dell 13th Generation of PowerEdge Servers
Troubleshooting Guide for BIOS POST on Dell 13th Generation of PowerEdge Servers
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Troubleshooting Guide for BIOS POST on Dell 13th Generation of PowerEdge Servers
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Troubleshooting Guide for BIOS POST on Dell 13th Generation of PowerEdge Servers
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Troubleshooting Guide for BIOS POST on Dell 13th Generation of PowerEdge Servers
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Troubleshooting Guide for BIOS POST on Dell 13th Generation of PowerEdge Servers
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Troubleshooting Guide for BIOS POST on Dell 13th Generation of PowerEdge Servers
The exception type, such as Page Fault, General Protection Fault, Divide by Zero,
Breakpoint, and so on.
A Dell-defined error value, pre-fixed with UEFIxxxx. Note a corresponding error will be
logged to the LC log as well.
Partial register set (x86 64bit).
Last-Branch records and associated module names if available.
Current RIP and Faulting driver module name
Stack trace back from faulted module.
Additional information is available from the serial port dump. To retrieve the serial dump, you can connect
the server to a client system with a null modem cable and use any terminal program (for example, Putty or
HyperTerminal) with the baud rate set to 115200 bps, then press <ENTER>. The serial dump can be
retrieved from Serial over LAN (SOL) method as well.
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Troubleshooting Guide for BIOS POST on Dell 13th Generation of PowerEdge Servers
Note: The RSOD serial dump can be obtained at the point of failure. The serial session does not have to
be started prior to the RSOD.
RSOD are usually caused by software issues, and may be resolved by updating the BIOS, Lifecycle
Controller, or the UEFI firmware for PCIe cards. You may send the screen shot and serial dump to Dell
support for further analysis, should you encounter a RSOD even after all the firmware updates.
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Troubleshooting Guide for BIOS POST on Dell 13th Generation of PowerEdge Servers
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Troubleshooting Guide for BIOS POST on Dell 13th Generation of PowerEdge Servers