I'm fairly new to the IT field, I just graduated las may. I have a serious problem! The company I work for purchased a Dell Poweredge 1800 with 2 dual core processors and 4gb of ram and a single 2tb hard drive. The wanted me to migrate the data off an older server running server 2000. I did that but the dell server is so slow I had t go back to the server running server 2000, which has half the processers, and half the ram. I also noticed when the new server is rebooted it says no logical drives found and no bios installed. The server recognizes the hard drive just fine. What can I do to get the max. performance out of this server. Thank you so much in advance!!

You don't say what version of Windows Server is slow. Please state the version. Also, what is the server being used for? Is it a Domain Controller, or maybe just a simple file server?If you found this post helpful, please give it a "Helpful" vote. If it answered your question, remember to mark it as an "Answer".

You can find several free benchmarking tools, such as IOMeter, to help you find the bottleneck of the system. Remember, the CPU and RAM aren't always the bottlenecks. Drivers, NICs and HDs often play a role as well. If you have a slow 2008 system, you can use Resource Monitor and Performance Monitor (Reports) to help locate the problem. Honestly, this is not an easy question to answer so don't expect a quick "here is how you fix that" from anyone. What you can expect is a bunch of us showing what tools can provide the information you are looking for. Good luck! C Shane Cribbs http://www.georgiatechnologies.com

I'm going to just jump in and agree with Bigteddy--others would need to know what NOS (Network Operating System) you're running in order to help answer your questions. The next thing that's important would be, who installed the server? What services did they configure on it? That kind of thing. If you installed it, you should be best able to answer those kinds of questions. If not, you need to find out from the person that did... Also, just noticing your hardware particulars, I would say that the company should really spend a little bit more money. If this is a "mission critical" sole server, you probably want more than a single 2TB hard drive--at least 2 drives in a mirrored configuration would be so much safer. Also, be sure that the server is on some kind of UPS in order to safeguard that nice Dell machine from odd electrical events and be sure to have some kind of a tested backup and restore plan in case of catastrophic failure. Finally, I'm wondering if something is amiss with your drive controller. Is it SATA or SCSI (or something else)? No BIOS installed may mean there's some sort of a secondary drive/"RAID" controller for which the drive isn't recognized and thus the controller BIOS isn't loading. It can't be the computer BIOS that's messed up, otherwise the machine wouldn't run at all. Maybe in this case the system does indeed recognize the drive, but only through some convoluted path and not directly through the proper controller. I hope this helps. Let us know what else you've got in the way of information... Cheers! Noel Stanford Oveson jeremyNLSO CNE, CLSE, MCSE, MCTS, MCITP Berlin, Germany

"No BIOS installed may mean there's some sort of a secondary drive/"RAID" controller for which the drive isn't recognized and thus the controller BIOS isn't loading. It can't be the computer BIOS that's messed up, otherwise the machine wouldn't run at all. Maybe in this case the system does indeed recognize the drive, but only through some convoluted path and not directly through the proper controller." Good thinking there, Jeremy.If you found this post helpful, please give it a "Helpful" vote. If it answered your question, remember to mark it as an "Answer".

Arthur_Li, I don't see how you can propose these as 'answers'. They are questions, asking for more information. Why not let the community help the OP resolve his issue, rather than just marking everything randomly as an answer. The threads would make more sense that way.If you found this post helpful, please give it a "Helpful" vote. If it answered your question, remember to mark it as an "Answer".

Im sorry, it running Server 2003. It is a secondary domain controller.

The drive is a sata drive. The server is configured as a secondary domain controller.

Just tossing this out, did you use the Dell Sysprep Disk that came with the server to install and configure the disks, then install the system utilites prior to the OS installation? Even with it being a secondary DC, I don't see how your performance evaporated, without some other cause impacting the system.-- :P Advice offered, If you need more help it is advised to seek the council and advice of paid professionals. The answer is always 42, or reboot.

Dell OpenManage says the controller is Connector 0 on CERC SATA 1.5/6ch

No. We purchased the server used with server 2003 already installed. Maybe I just need to wipe it and start from scratch. Is the Dell Sysprep Disk something I can download?

OK. Well I don't know Dell hardware that well, so I'm just going to say that, IF the machine gets through its POST (Power On Self Test) and continues running, and IF the "BIOS not installed" and "no logical drives found" is the next message you see on the screen (in that order; or is a message that occurs after POST but before the Windows Server starts loading), THEN it's probably some secondary drive/RAID contoller (as opposed to an onboard IDE for example) that's not getting loaded and causing at very least the error messages you describe, and at most the extreme slowness of the machine. If I were you, I'd give Dell a call. If the machine's under warranty, they'll certainly troubleshoot this for you. I've found Dell to be almost without equal in the customer support arena. They should be relatively easy to reach and you could troubleshoot this and be up and running in no time. Does anyone else know Dell machines well enough to take it from here? Good luck! Noel Stanford Oveson jeremyNLSO CNE, CLSE, MCSE, MCTS, MCITP Berlin, Germany

If you do wipe it, make sure you resolve the error messages you've mentioned first, right? Cheers, Noel Stanford Oveson jeremyNLSO CNE, CLSE, MCSE, MCTS, MCITP Berlin, Germany

I would suggest that you get ahold of Dell and ask for where to download the Open Manage? System boot disk, and start fresh after a good backup of the system, if it came used "as is" you have no real idea of how badly fragmented the drives are, what the previous guy partitioned the drives with etc... At least, once you have it up and running the Open manage tools will give you a real good look at the Dell server system components and isolate for you with good accuracy if you do in fact have a bad controller, or dying hard drives, or if the system itself is misconfigured.-- :P Advice offered, If you need more help it is advised to seek the council and advice of paid professionals. The answer is always 42, or reboot.

Jeremy, I see you are still concerned with the OP's statement: "I also noticed when the new server is rebooted it says no logical drives found and no bios installed. " I agree with you, that this must be resolved before attempting to re-install Server 2003. If it's a single SATA drive (barf) there should be no RAID controller errors. PrecopIT, seeing that you've got a CERC SATA RAID controller, why not buy another drive? If you found this post helpful, please give it a "Helpful" vote. If it answered your question, remember to mark it as an "Answer".