Server Installation Error message: (NO HDD FOUND)

Dear Reader, 

Having setup and installed Servers for most of our clients all over Liberia such as, Water Aid- Liberia, Populations Services International-Liberia, Tetra-Tech ARD, Equatorial Palm Oil etc. on numerous occasions without any headache, last month January 20, Saturday morning was an experience a System Administrator wouldn’t want to miss or get to the bottom of.

An order arrived in our office by DHL that morning for a customer named Master Trading dealer in auto mechanic and spare parts located on the same street we are located.  An instruction was given to us from our Head of Operations to unpack and set up the server for installation at the client site.

As techies, my colleague and I removed the item out of the box (HP ProLiant 360 dl 360 Server G8, 1x4 TB HDD, 16GB RAM, Intel/Dual Processor and a RAID Array System already installed.

The power cord of the server was plug into the electrical outlet and to the power port of the Server. It booted up smoothly showing no operating system installed. I quickly arranged my Windows Server 2008 R2 software disc and inserted it into the CD ROM of the server, and booted from CD in the boot setting. It started up well where I could select the edition of Windows (Server 2008 64bits Standard Edition). In the process of installing, the software should detect each of the 1TB in total of 4 drives in other to select which one the OS is to be installed on, but in the process, it displayed the error message on the screen shown below:

I tried several times of installing the OS using different CDs and bootable USB drive, but the problem persisted. I did many online research on the error message but couldn’t find a suitable solution. All I could see from other websites was to download and update some device drivers which I did download but that didn’t work as well.

This drew my colleague, Farman Elahi attention after verifying that all the hard drives installed were brand new and reading from our HDD tester. He entered into the BIOS and System setting from one option to another until he found ‘’Enable RAID ARRAY’’ and then he hit enter. The option was enabled, and the system prompted a restart. Because the Server was running a RAID security, all HDD would show invisible until they were enabled.

 During this restart all the 4TB hard drives read and an option to select which drive to install the OS was shown. Many thanks to Mr. Farman my colleague who came in during the middle of my server installation nightmare. As a team, together everyone accomplishes a mission. The software installed successfully enabling me to complete the below necessary configurations.

1.    Connect to mains and network switch – allow for a network cable.

2.    Install Windows Server 2008 R2Standard Edition and Server name Administrator

3.    Configure server with static IP address.

4.    Run DCPromo.exe and install basic domain

5.    Configure DNS on the server – set it up with forwarder details of local ISP’s DNS or Google 8.8.8.8

6.   I set the local DNS of the Server to point to its own IP address and not the ISP or Google’s.

7.   Add all workstations to the domain and create usernames and password for users,

8.   Copy existing profiles into the new domain profile.

9.   Users are set to local administrators for their workstations.

10.   Set up network share for HP and Dell printer and, a folder. (username: admin PW: *****)

11.   Test connectivity of all workstations to share.

12.   Set up router to allow connection to the server via the internet for support purposes – Port  redirection (3389) to the server IP address.

       13.   Installed TeamViewer Host 10 on the server for outside support or remote login

A week later, the customer requested a remote desktop connection configured on the server. In the server manager, I installed the remote desktop feature. Got back to the user’s laptop, entered username and password an error message pop up! “cannot connect remote desktop, you must add the user in the group manually or use terminal service” In resolving this I click on “Start”, right click on Computer and click ‘’Properties”. Click on add users. Like for the client I created a login credential in the Active Directory called ‘Admin’ so when I click on ‘Add’ I selected Admin, click Apply and Ok. Restarted the server and all was okay with the end-user. Thanks to my colleague Farman who helped me cross the first level of all these configurations.

by Daniel Collins

October blog post 📝

Hello everyone,

As an IT technician, there’s a lot of amazing small and complex issues I encounter on a daily basis and I embrace them with interest as technology is improving every passing day.

On Friday evening we got call from one of our clients in Buchanan which we have a 3-day monthly ICT maintenance contract with.

They informed us that their network had been down for a day. We advised the client to informing the Internet Service Provider (ISP) as they have no IT person on site to be sure before taking an action. The ISP than confirmed that they could ping the network from their server so there was no problem from their end.

I quickly arranged the next morning with all necessary equipment (RB 951 MikroTik router, RJ 45 connectors, Crimper and pitched network cable in case there was any power failure of the core router.

I got to the customer’s Head Office at about 9:30 am. They quickly arranged a vehicle to take me to the effected site, about 1-hr drive.

They were quite happy when I arrived and welcomed me by saying ‘’NATC’’ is here.   Well, this is how most of our client/staff called me even though they know my full name but some prefer calling me that way.

I opened the server rack and found the main Juniper router on with all status led(s) linking green. That was good enough to know that internet was reaching the device but not being distributed. I started by pinging the switches IP addresses and surprisingly the main Cisco switch could not be reached, but the power adaptor led of the switch was blinking. Immediately I replaced the adaptor with a new one, I could ping the switch, desktops and laptops were connected, and network printers automatically started printing out stored job and so on. All the departments I checked were working okay accept for the Field Department. The switch was on but there were no sign of signal.

By using my cable tester found out that one of the RJ 45 connecters was damaged. I replaced both ends using my crimping tool to restore network for that department.

I informed the Site Manager and Head Office on progress made.

When heading to have my lunch, an accountant staff complained that any Microsoft Excel email attachment received in her inbox opens blank and really don’t know what could be the issue. I told her, me take a look. She turned on her computer and displayed the problem to me.

I have seen this issue several times before. So, I knew exactly how to figure it out in less than a minute. The lady insisted that I show her how to resolve this issue in case it happen and I’m not around. Though we have an ICT contract with them and wouldn’t be an issue even if she complains hundreds times. As a technician, I’m there to resolve problem. For me, she sounded very smart. I told her yes we can do it together.

Here are the few steps to go on resolving issue like this for any Microsoft version. Now, open the Excel again that opens blank.

Open Microsoft Excel.

Click the File tab and select Options from the drop-down menu.

Click Advanced, then locate the ‘’General’’ section.

Uncheck the box next to Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE).

Click OK and restart the Excel.

In a joking and friendly manner I asked her. ‘’Now everything works fine. Anything else I could help you with? Can I get back at the canteen and have lunch now’’?

After a heavy lunch, I drove back to Monrovia the same day and resumed work at my office the next day.

Reach out for NATC, the one stop IT Solution Company!

Prepared by: Daniel W. Collins (Senior IT Technician) New Africa Technology Company (NATC)

MIKROTIK BANDWIDTH CONTROL

Dear readers,

In this topic, I will be showing you a step by step instruction on managing your bandwidth in MikroTik RB951, CR S124 etc. routers as network administrator on a small or medium office network. As you may know, MikroTik is becoming more popular because of its user friendly advantage as compare to Cisco. You may not need to purchase a license to remotely control your network.

Let’s get started!

There are multiple ways of connecting to a RouterBOARD. (Winbox, webfig, telnet, ssh ...), but this guide will show how to configure the device using Winbox utility. Winbox utility can be downloaded from the MikroTik webpage (Winbox) or from the RouterBOARDs webpage.

First collect all users IP addresses manually to identify them in the DHCP server queues to perform this task.

Launch winbox as displayed below and click refresh to scan for device. As an administrator, you may need to assign a login name and password to secure your network. Now click connect.

Now you can see I have log into my RB951 office router after clicking ‘’connect’’ and click on IP, to get into my Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server.

In the DHCP server below, I have identified all of the IP addresses collected in ‘’leases’’ and these are the number of users on my network including unauthorized users. I am going to allocate an amount of bandwidth to each user now.

In during this, you will need to double click on the user’s IP, highlight and copy the IP address as displayed below and click OK.

After copying the IP address from the pop up menu, click on ‘’Queues’’ as displayed below.

When open, a new pops up. Click on the (+) and past the IP address you copy into the ‘’target’’ space and assign a name into the ‘’name’’ as shown below. You can follow these steps to create and manage many users as they get connected to you network.

You can now see how I created all my users in one queue.

Prepared by Daniel Collins