We're here to help

Search

System hangs at controller BIOS POST with message "Booting the Controller Kernel"

Answer ID 6504   |    Published 03/24/2003 01:49 AM   |    Updated 09/19/2022 12:03 PM
When using a motherboard/system with a number of onboard devices, the controller cannot go beyond BIOS POST message of "Booting the Controller Kernel", due to system hanging. Updating controller BIOS and trying all PCI/PCIe slots does not resolve the problem.


This information applies to the following Operating System(s):
- This information is not Operating System specific
 
 
 
This issue can be caused by I/O conflicts with onboard I/O devices on the motherboard, including NIC’s, USB, Secondary Serial, etc.

Enter the system BIOS of the computer and disable all onboard I/O devices to the bare necessities. Disable LAN cards, USB Ports, USB Legacy Support, OnChip IDE, onboard RAID, serial ports, and other built-in I/O devices except the onboard video card. Then try the following:
 
  1. Turn the computer on with the Adaptec or ICP Card installed. The message "Booting the Controller Kernel" should appear and continue through the boot process.
  2. Reboot the system and go back to the system BIOS.
  3. Enable one of the onboard I/O devices on the system motherboard.
  4. Turn the computer on (or reboot) and let it pass the Adaptec BIOS message. The message "Booting the Controller Kernel" should appear and continue through the boot process.

Continue to return to Step #2 and enable each of the I/O devices on the system one by one. Make sure to reboot each time after an I/O device is enabled to ensure the controller kernel continues to POST successfully.

Once everything is enabled, continue with the array creation process as normal.

This problem is caused by the PnP (Plug-n-Play) function of the system BIOS that defines resources for all I/O devices and PCI/PCIe controllers. The process of disabling all and then re-enabling I/O devices one at a time forces the motherboard to reassign resources to each device.
 

If the above does not help and the card was previously working in this motherboard, please try removing all cables connected to the RAID controller in order to ascertain if the problem is the controller hanging while scanning the attached devices (i.e. backplane, enclosure, disk drives, etc.). Please note that removing any of these devices does not destroy data contained on RAID array(s).

Try installing the disk drives one at a time and boot the system upon the controller BIOS post. If the controller BIOS displays the message "Controller detected configuration change" don't accept at that point, just power off the system and add the next disk drive (or the backplane/enclosure).

If the problem only occurs when a specific backplane or device is connected, please contact technical support for further assistance.

Note: Please make sure the BIOS of the system/motherboard is up to date, and also make sure that the RAID controller has the latest BIOS/firmware version installed.
Print

Is this answer helpful?