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November 21st, 2024 10:18
PowerEdge R330 black screen on BIOS update
Hi all,
Let me begin by saying that I'm well aware this model is out of support (expired 2019), rest assured it's not being used in production.
I've been updating iDRAC and BIOS to the latest versions I could find by filling out the model on https://www.dell.com/support and while upgrading the iDRAC worked fine, albeit with a lot of extra work since very small version steps seemed to be required to avoid errors, the most recent BIOS upgrade isn't looking too optimistic.
I grabbed BIOS_PFJXF_WN64_2.20.0.EXE from the support site and uploaded this via the iDRAC web interface, then selected "install and reboot". Watching the virtual console I could see it booting into the lifecycle controller where the update started, but it then stopped at around 10% followed by the console going black.
It's been going for about 45 minutes now, the console is still all black, and the job queue hasn't updated.
Is this a known issue, and should I expect this to take much longer? If it's actually hung (I'll probably give it 24hrs or so), what do I do?
audunaygr
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November 21st, 2024 14:11
I waited about three hours, then did a "Power Cycle System (cold boot)" in the iDRAC GUI. The new BIOS version was then showing during POST, and after two or three sweaty resets, it finally booted with the newest BIOS. To spare your blood pressure, I'd probably recommend also updating the BIOS in smaller steps -- my mistake was thinking major/minor versions could be trusted here, but in terms of time passed 2.3.x and 2.20.x they are very far apart despite belonging to the same major release.
minnixtx
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June 11th, 2025 16:34
@audunaygr To anyone else reading this, I did the same thing as you. After the power cycle through idrac, I got about 3 resets and then it booted with the new BIOS. Same black screen in the beginning just like you. So I can confirm it will work.
bp-ops
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August 19th, 2025 19:46
Hi guys,
adding my 2 cents for the case. This is something that happens when you update R330 BIOS, quite regularly for us. When you see that black screen - just double-check in the iDRAC Web Console Overview - Logs - Lifecycle Log. Most likely you will see a message "BIOS has been successfully updated blah-blah...". If that is the case - just Power Cycle the server (cold boot) and it will come up booting. For some reason R330s don't want to reboot after the BIOS update. That doesn't happen for R340 though (and iDRAC 9 ver). Tested for the latest 2.20.0 BIOS and 2.86.86.86 iDRAC FW.