Win2003 freezes at acpitabl.dat solution

Symptoms:
system starts with black screen and white progress bars build across the screen then nothing.

When I got it up and running:
Checked harddrive for errors in GUI and DOS command prompt, All Good.
Looked for the acpitabl.dat file in the system32 directory and it's not there so don't worry about it.

Current problem I have with system:
CMOS battery is dying.

The following is trial and error I performed about 30 times and still no boot:
Reset time in CMOS
Tried booting in Safe Mode
Tried EVERY option after hitting F8 and still no go.

I recreated the Symptom 10 time and each time this solution worked:
Goto CMOS setup, scroll to POWER MANAGEMENT SETUP, hit Enter, look at it, Hit ESC to exit, Anwser Y to save.

And that's it!!! It should start Why I still don't know but it worked everytime for me. If it does not work for you keep trying different options cause there may be NOTHING wrong with your OS and you will be reloading and lose DATA for nothing and may have the same problem.

My BIOS is AMIBIOS with AMD Athlon Chip

If the above works for you please let me know.

Good Luck

Ernie

I think a pre-installation of Windows is maybe the only way to solve the problem...The problem is software related. Since booting from the SS and running diagnostic didn't broke, the problem is OS related. You can try to Clear NVRAM to reset the server to defaults if there is any config that causes this...but I still think that you have to re-deplaoy and restore backup.

You could try and boot the new machine with your Windows 2003 CD and perform a repair installation.

If you're prepared to spend the money then you could use Acronis True Image (Server) with Universal Restore. You will have to install it on the old server to take a snapshot with the "universal restore" option. You will still need a CD with the various drivers for your new server.

Transferring user data, shares and permissions is the easy bit that comes right at the end.Using an installation that was meant for a different hardware platform does not really give you this reliability - if you can get Active Directory to work at all.