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I picked up a Dell T300 server with an E5345 CPU and BIOS gives me a "Warning! No microcode update loaded for processor 0"

I have to hit F1 to continue or F2 to enter setup.

Upon continuing everything works fine but it pauses at that point which is a dealbreaker.

According to cpuinfo:

processor       : 0
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 15
model name      : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5345  @ 2.33GHz
stepping        : 7
microcode       : 0x6b

I've updated the BIOS to the latest Dell offers 1.5.2

My system reports:

Libsmbios version:      2.2.28
Product Name:           PowerEdge T300
Vendor:                 Dell Inc.
BIOS Version:           1.5.2
System ID:              0x0210
Service Tag:            540G5G1
Express Service Code:   11126529937

Dell's bios patch notes specifically list: B3 and G0 step Clovertown http://downloads.dell.com/FOLDER68068M/1/PET300-010502ABIOS.TXT

According to Intel (click ORDERING AND SPEC INFORMATION) they list B3 or G0 for all models of this CPU: http://ark.intel.com/products/28032/

Also on Dell's server page if you click on tech specs they list: Single Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processor 5400 series at up to 3.33GHz http://www.dell.com/us/dfb/p/poweredge-t300/pd

Mine is a 5300 series so maybe it isn't included.

Is there anything I can do other than swap CPUs?

Thanks!

Matt
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3 Answers3

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So, asciiphil's suggestion is good and you should definitely do that. It might allow you to get rid of the "Warning! No microcode update loaded for processor 0" problem (and if it doesn't, I don't think it's possible to do so).

HOWEVER, the "Strike F1 to continue" is likely a different problem, at least it was on my T300. In my case, I had to enter the BIOS and turn off all the SATA ports I wasn't using. They were on auto-detect previously.

Why Dell thinks this is a halt-the-boot issue I don't know, but on my T300 I still get the "No microcode update loaded" warning but it merrily continues to boot past that.

joshlitherland
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I know this isn't much of an answer, but what I would try would be to set up Dell's firmware repositories from http://linux.dell.com/wiki/index.php/Repository/firmware . That page has instructions for updating all of the firmware on your system; do that and see if it addresses the problem with your CPU. (It might not, but it's probably worth a shot.) Note that update_firmware will only list the updates available unless you pass --yes to it as well, so you can run it with no parameters to see if it says anything at all about your CPU.

asciiphil
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Took me a while to figure this out but I finally isolated the problem.

The F1 prompt only hangs the system if you have SATA ports turned to auto detect with nothing connected. If you only turn on the ports with devices connected it will skip right past the F1 prompt.

Matt
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