For the past month or so, my home server has been playing up. The network icon has been showing red on numerous occasions & when trying to access via the console, each rig attached to the server keeps stating no connection.

On accessing the server directly, find that the screen has frozen. After secs & sometimes a few minutes, it unfreezes & any attempt to carry out any action refreezes the screen. I've been finding this really annoying & had shutdown the server for the past week as it's just a waste of time & power.

Completely stripped it down this morning with a thorough spring clean, rebooted & uninstalled the display driver thinking that could be the fault (NVidia 9500GT with 260.99 driver). That seemed to speed things up somewhat but screen froze again.

While it was not in a frozen state, did notice that various menus on the console were taking a considerable amount of time to show on screen, so started thinking that it may be a ram problem, so shutdown & installed 2 new sticks, that improved things slightly but screen still freezing.

PSU ok, all drives checked & ok, cpu & cooler ok.... this has me stumped.

On shutting it down again to recheck that all devices are seated/installed correctly, on rebooting, now get "no signal" & can't even access the bios.

Anyone have any idea as to what to do next?

In my experience most screen freezes are over-heating related (could be CPU, Video card, Power Supply, even motherboard). My system was freezing quite a bit a little while ago (and recovering - eventually...) and video card overheating seems to be the source (I fit a large fan drawing heat from the video card heat sink and the issue has gone away now). I've seen this countless times in server environments with failing power supplies (can't supply enough power to the fans), failed CPU and case fans, and even improperly installed CPU heat sinks...

Thanks User312, that's what I was thinking. Have rechecked everything & made sure that all components are seated properly. Removed the gpu & using the onboard graphics.

Pulled the psu from my Win7 64 ultimate rig (same model) but it makes no difference. Server still freezing this morning.

With all the components checked on another system & all ok, it just leaves the motherboard (Asus M3A78 Pro).

Going to swap out the Win 7 board (Asus M3N78 Pro) & see if that helps.

After close to 48 hrs checking out all components, swapping things over - it's beginning to look like a bios problem. Probably bios chip failing.

With WHS v2 due, will wait until it's release & rebuild with new motherboard.

After a lot of hair pulling for a week or so, finally tracked down the problem. Unusual for both to go like that....

CMOS battery dead & bios corrupted. Replaced battery & reflashed drive with the next bios down

Restarted server this morning & so far, so good......

Well that didn't last long as same symptoms came back.

Finally got CMOS/Bios running ok with no defaulting, just stays steady with the current settings.

However, I kept getting "improper boot device" - "please select boot device & restart"

With all the drives on the server (mainly all Hitachi, with several Samsung spinpoints, the O/S is on a WD drive, which makes it easy to detect which drive is which).

Also, that came up with all drives selected (did one at a time). No disk eror messages shown, i.e., the normal ones when this crops up - bootmgr missing or ntlkrl missing.

Made sure that all drives disconnected & reformatted system drive. Tried reinstalling & it worked. Added all drives back & it's seeing them except for the sata 1 & 4 slots (think that could be a cable problem).

Should the problem crop up again, I'll just leave it shutdown as will be getting a replacement board & waiting for v2's release which shouldn't be to long as MSConnect just e-mailed me stating that the RC version is now available.

Have had many CMOS/Bios problems in the past with most being solvable but never come across one like this before. Still unaware as to what type of disk problem that caused it. SMART states all drives good.

... you are a model of perseverence ... I'd have reformatted the operating drive as soon as I saw the message "improper boot device" - "please select boot device & restart" -- figured Windows had crapped out again!!!
Good luck Sirius.

Damn!
I would have thought the same thing.
I just went through a hard to find problem with my latest P4.
The system fan was running at 12,000 rpm and it wouldn't boot and no vid.
Drove me crazy so I unplugged every connection on the MB (jumpers and all) and then cleaned all the were cleanable then reassembled it.
Not sure what I did but it worked fine after that. This was after a lot of surfing looking for an answer.
I ain't saying to rip it all apart but you just never know what could be causing the problem and could be something simple and easy to overlook. I've had a bad jumper on a hard drive too. The Master / Slave jumper.
Keep looking Sirius.

Unfortunately THD, with WHS, if you reformat the O/S you lose all the tombstones for the data on the storage pool of drives, making them useless.

Backed up all the data anyway & did a reformat. That worked ok but WHS still wouldn't boot up, giving a black screen with flashing cursor after the initial gpu bios header....

Did what Zappdog did & left out the the extra drives/devices etc & she booted up fine. Added them back one by one & found the major problem (asides from dead CMOS & corrupted bios). A JMicron Sata controller card died. Been having problems with JMicron anyway as can be seen by surfing them....

Managed to source a replacement of an original I used to use...Silicon Image SiL3132 - everything back to normal...

Saying that though, while restoring the server MS mails me.....v2 Release Candidate has just been released & been playing around with it - looking a lot better than the 2 previous beta's.

SUPERB -- I have been going about it all wrong - next time that happens with one of my crunchers (soon I think - my old AMD is acting weirder than normal) - I am going to try what you two have done.
I don't mind the reformat and reinstall 'cuz I always have at least one extra little drive on board to capture all my "stuff"
but this way tickles my curiousity!

lol THD. Zappdog's tip with jumpers is a good one & one that I forgot all about when installing HD Caddies on my SBS. I had 4 ide drives spare 2x 250gb 1x 320gb & 1x 400gb.

Installed them in caddies & added to system. It only saw 2, the others....zilch, spent days trying to figure out why & it was only when the drives were on my workbench I noticed the jumpers....

I'll be glad when all my ide drives eventually fail & new mobo's only have sata connections.....