When I tried to create a boot-CD-ROM (for disaster recovery) with Bart PE for the latest Poweredge 2950 servers from Dell I found that it did not recognize the Perc 5/i RAID controller as well as the network card. After some hours of work I found this solution.
- Download and install the latest BartPE version (I used V 3110a)
- Inject the network card drivers into the BartPE environment
- Download driver for Broadcomm NetXtreme II Family from the DELL website
- Unzip the driver files and copy only the folder “/broadcom/ris_drivers” folder to the “\pebuilder3110a\drivers\Net folder” (so the two files are stored in “\pebuilder3110a\drivers\Net\RIS_Drivers”)
- In this folder rename “b06nd.inf” into “b06nd51x.inf” (yes, the .inf file must have the same name as the .sys file in order for BartPE to work)
- Inject the driver for the Perc 5/I Raid controller
- Download the driver file “R120960.EXE” from the DELL website
- Unpack the file and copy the folder “\DELL\drivers\R120960” into your BartPE installation at “\pebuilder3110a\drivers\SCSIAdapter”, so the 11 files are stored in the folder “C:\pebuilder3110a\drivers\SCSIAdapter\R120960”
- Run PE Builder (Note: for the Windows files I used disk 1 of Windows 2003 Server R2)
- Burn the ISO file to a CD and walk to your server to test it
That’s it. I finally added the Acronis TrueImage plugin and now I can do a bare-metal recovery for our 2950 servers from a diskimage created by Trueimage…
Hotware: Dirk Paessler's Software Blog 
October 12, 2006 at 17:11
Hi,
I came across your weblog by using google because I’m
having problems building a BartPE CD for a DELL 2950.
I’ve followed your hints but I’m still having problems
with loading the driver for the PERC5 – I get a message
saying “percsas.sys not found” when booting with BartPE.
Checking the CD shows them to be present though.
Do you have any suggestions ?
Many Thanks,
October 12, 2006 at 18:57
Hi Jeff,
this is the list of files that I have in my disk driver folder:
Verzeichnis von C:\pebuilder3110a\drivers\SCSIAdapter\Perc 5i DELL Server R12096021.09.2006 14:49 .
21.09.2006 14:49 ..
24.02.2006 16:03 4.967 120166.txt
15.03.2006 01:50 454 DriverLanguageMap.xml
17.02.2006 13:42 330.752 megasas.pdb
17.02.2006 13:42 17.280 megasas.sys
17.02.2006 13:42 1.285 nodev.inf
17.02.2006 13:42 7.530 oemsetup.inf
15.03.2006 01:35 9.064 percsas.cat
17.02.2006 13:42 289.792 percsas.pdb
17.02.2006 13:42 18.432 percsas.sys
08.09.2005 15:30 4.435 txtsetup.oem
27.03.2006 16:42 684 Version.txt
11 Datei(en) 684.675 Bytes
October 12, 2006 at 21:07
Hi Dirk,
You are awesome! It’s good to have someone like save our lives!!! Thanks so much for the information and I am able to using BartPE with Ghost on my new DELL 2950.
Thanks again.
Chee, Canada
October 14, 2006 at 8:19
I was not able to get the NIC to work. I get failure to load the n/l.
November 7, 2006 at 22:07
I followed your instructions but am still getting “The file percsas.sys could not be found.” The pile of bad CD-Rs is overflowing in my trash can at this point.
November 10, 2006 at 22:56
Hi Jeff,
I got the message “percsas.sys not found” too when using windows XP as source for my Bart PE build. After changing the source to a copy of Server 2003 it worked fine for me.
November 10, 2006 at 23:05
I also used Win2k3 Server R2 to build my images which worked fine.
January 25, 2007 at 5:21
Hey Dirk, I looked everywhere for this solution! Thanks so much… I had the same issue with a DELL PE 1950.
I am curious as to what you meant by the Acronis plugin?
February 7, 2007 at 17:18
[…] Go here for bootable server admin goodness. […]
May 29, 2007 at 13:06
Hi,
wanderfulllllllllllllllllll
thanks for this topic
Ulrick
June 10, 2007 at 5:13
Thank you for sharing this….
Pete
June 14, 2007 at 14:37
I have started with clean bart PE with only these two drivers. I have build PartPE with win 2003. During the boot I get Win XP and the drivers do not work . is that normal? what am I doing wrong?
Paul
June 14, 2007 at 17:07
[…] Go here for bootable server admin goodness. […]
October 30, 2007 at 0:36
Lifesaver… This worked like a charm.
Aces ! ! !
April 10, 2008 at 23:03
diskpart doesn’t work when using the the w2k3 i386 folder to create the iso. does anyone have this resolved???
May 14, 2008 at 2:33
OMG thanks, been working on it all day and now it works great!
August 11, 2008 at 18:11
Thanks man, you made my day. new server up and running in no time!
August 31, 2008 at 1:59
Awesome, everytime I do a complete restore of backups, my Windows 2000 advanced server will not start up (Poweredge 2900) as I have to go and edit the boot.ini file to point to my right partition. In the past I ahve always had 2 partions so i could install another copy of win2kas (on partition 2) so I could edit this boot.ini (what a pain in the arse).
Now I should be able to edit that boot.ini with a live CD that will read my SAS (serial attached SCSI) hard drives and save me an hour or more!
THANKS!!!!!!!!!
September 19, 2008 at 18:59
I tried to use the Perc 5/I Raid driver for my Dell PE 2950III, but when I start the windows 2000 installer I press F6 I found the driver and the windows start to copy the files but next it says that windows cannot find any hard disk.
I have 2 hard disk of 1 tera each one, they are in mirror 1
anyone have the same problem?
March 28, 2009 at 8:35
Worked great for our PowerEdge 2900 PERC 5/i…. thanks. Saved a rebuild.
August 11, 2009 at 3:43
I am not able to get the network started. any idea? It says cannot install network adapters.
January 12, 2010 at 4:44
[…] the “percsas.sys not found” error when booting with BartPE. Searching for that error led me to https://hotware.wordpress.com/2006/09/27/creating-a-bart-pe-boot-cd-fur-dell-poweredge-2950-servers-w… where someone mentioned using Windows Server 2003 to build the disc. I didn’t even know that […]