This is a strange issue.  I was testing hard drives for a friend on my personal server, and after testing and reformatting on of the drives the shutdown process took abnormally long, windows had already shut down but the computer still took several minutes to accually shut down.  After that, the system fails to boot from any device.

I've gotten various errors and they seem to cycle between different ones only after clearing the cmos.  The most annoying one is it will boot, get threw the POST test, recognizing HARDWARE and as it is supposed to start booting, it resets, and repeats this process.

Another error i get is that it will just go to a black screen after the post.  Does not attempt to access any drive, and my award bios gives me one of two error codes, d2, and 67.  In my book those are supposed to mean "Bios Boot Block" and "Initialize multi-processior APIC" (respectfully). This will remain as such even after several hours.

I've checked the boot sequence, during every reboot, verified that my boot sequence goes, floppy drive, CD/DVD-Rom Drive, HDD (SATA drive), but to no avail... system still refuses to boot anything. I even have a bootable medium in each drive, a windows XP dos startup disk, Windows Server 2008 pre-install CD (load command prompt), and my HDD with Windows Server 2008 installed on it.

Here is my computer hardware:
Bios: PhoenixBIOS version S4985 2.02
Motherboard: Tyan Thunder n4250QE (S4985)
CPU: 2 AMD Opteron 2.0GHz Quad core processors
RAM: 4x 4 Gig Kingston Server ECC registered fully buffered DDR2 SDRam
HDD: Western Digital 160 gig, 7200 RPM SATA drive
DVD: Philips SATA DVD-RAM/Burner

As stated before, i'm unable to boot in any way, so flashing the bios in my current situation is impossible unless i can somehow get past the boot block and actually boot the floppy so i can flash.  Also i've tried swapping processiors with spares i have, and even tried swapping out ram chips.  I highly doubt any hardware is at fault as the system ran perfectly for 2 weeks prior to this (newly constructed server).  Does anyone happen to have any idea on how to bypass this error or how to somehow fix this?CMOS battery is weak or dead.  Do you have a voltmeter to check it?  Shut down & remove power from the the computer before removing the battery.  CR2032 should be 3.0V, nominal.

FLASH NOTHING!!!!I shall dig up this device and run out and replace the battery like right now, if this is the only thing bothering my computer i'm going to be amazed and incredibly grateful.  Thank you vary much for your suggestion.I took a voltmeter to the battery, i' getting a resulting voltage of 2.5 DC volts off of it, witch is lower then what you say nominal should be, so i should replace the battery then? i assume i can replace it at most stores as it appears to be a standard watch battery.Yes, 2.5V is too low, could be OK on some motherboards & not others.  You can get that battery at any drug store in North America.NINJA AWAY! off to get my battery >.> i want my server back, i'll let you know how it turns out.The computer I'm on now did the same kind of weird stuff a week ago.  Took a long time to start up, etc.  My battery voltage was 0.2V, no load.  When your old battery is installed, the voltage probably goes way below 2.0V.  Once they drop below 2.8V, they die fast.No Dice on the battery.  Tested it when i got home, 3.4 volts, put it in the machine, reset the cmos, and attempted to boot.  Still stuck in the d2 error (bios boot block).  I wonder if there is a keyboard command to bypass this and just boot the system.  Near as i can understand from the way the computer is reacting and the bios message is the bios is deliberately preventing the system from booting for some reason or another.Remove the battery & reset the CMOS by shorting the appropriate pins on the jumper block.  Some motherboards are very stubborn about clearing the CMOS.  If you can't get past the BIOS (CMOS) boot block error, you will have to attempt a BIOS reflash.  If that doesn't work, you're out of luck (the motherboard is damaged).  The fact that the battery didn't last long could indicate a hardware problem.
How to Clear the Hardware CMOS & Reset Password on Tyan Motherboard
J20-Clear CMOS jumper
Pin 2-3 closed: Normal (Default)
Pin 1-2 closed: Clear

This is your BIOS:  http://www.tyan.com/support_download_bios.aspx?model=S.S4985
At the top is says:  "...The recommended BIOS replacement vendor is BIOSman . The vendor offer great product support and timely responses to your BIOS inquiries..."
This is the manual:  http://www.tyan.com/manuals/m_s4985_100.pdf

Given all the updates & issues, flash it.  You're at 2.02, the latest is 2.07

Disconnect all hard drives & optical drives except for one bootable drive,  FDD would be best.
Build a bootable floppy disk with the flash files on it.  If the computer cannot boot a floppy disk, it's in BIG trouble.
Did all that, no dice again. Still stuck on the d2 error, using a external USB floopie drive (bios does recognize it in the configuration).  I've been trying for 2 days now.  Would you guess that the bios somehow got corrupted or maybe its a board error?  It really baffles me as the system worked fine untill i tested and removed those hard disk drives.

Cause i get get into the bios settings no problem, that all works, and it appears to make it all the way threw the POST, and it worked litterally 2 days ago... board replacement... is going to be an issue, i can do it, its just expensive, i was wondering if replacing the bios would be a viable option as i cannot flash them cause i cant boot to anything.Phoenix error code:
67   Initialize Multi Processor APIC
D2   Unknown interrupt error

None are "Boot Block" errors & now I don't believe it's the CMOS.  Unknown interrupt error at the BIOS level indicates a serious failure of hardware.

http://www.bioscentral.com/postcodes/phoenixbios.htm

Remove one of the cpu's & all MEMORY modules but one.the d2 error appears as a "bios boot block" in my motherboard manual under the codes table.  It is handy that the board comes with a LED readout for POST tests.  I'll try pulling the processor again however, i'm fairly SURE the board requires me to have 2 channels of memory per CPU, i'll give it a shot anyhow. Quote from: Zephyrous on October 24, 2010, 06:00:42 PM

the d2 error appears as a "bios boot block" in my motherboard manual under the codes table.  It is handy that the board comes with a LED readout for POST tests.  I'll try pulling the processor again however, i'm fairly sure the board requires me to have 2 channels of memory per CPU, i'll give it a shot anyhow.