I recently had several issues when attempting to upgrade a Windows 2008 server from Powerpath v5.3 to v5.5 SP1. I uninstalled 5.3 using the windows utility, rebooted, then reinstalled v5.5 SP1. After the reboot, the server did not come back up. In order to get it to boot, the “last known good configuration” option had to be chosen. I opened an SR with EMC, and they determined that the uninstall process was not completing correctly.
To resolve the problem, you need to run the executable from the command line and add a few parameters. The name of the Powerpath install file will vary depending on the version you are installing, but the command looks like this:
EMCPower.Net32.signed.5.3.b310.exe /v”/L*v C:\logs\PPremove.log NO_REBOOT=1 PPREMOVE=ALL”
In this example, the c:\logs directory must exist before you run it. After running that command to uninstall powerpath and then reinstalling the new version, I no longer had the problem of the server not booting correctly.
After properly installing it, I continued to have a problem with Powerpath administrator not properly recognizing the devices. All of the devices showed up as “DEV ??”. I also saw “harddisk ??” when running powermt display dev=all. To resolve the problem I ran through the following steps:
1. Open Device Manager under Disks, and right-click the device drive that had a yellow ‘!’.
2. Choose “Update Driver Software”.
3. Click on “Browse my comptuer for driver software”.
4. Click on “Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer”.
5. In the next screen make sure the “Show compatible hardware” box is checked.
6. Under the Model list you should see the ‘PowerPath Devices’ driver. Highlight it and click next. This will install the PowerPath Driver. When it is done it will require a reboot. Once the server has come back online run another: ‘powermt display dev=all’ to see that the harddisk?? will have changed to harddisk## as expected.
