Connect to your systems Com2 however you can

Using Putty in Windows I connected the COM2 at 115200 Baud, this is the iDrac being redirected.

The “firmimg.d6” file needs to be placed on a TFTP server that the iDrac can hit.

The readme has no useful information in it, it just tells you to search for the user guide.

After downloading, running this file will extract “firmimg.d6” and a readme file.

There are several versions, for my system I got “iDRAC6_1.97_A00_FW_IMG.exe (50 MB)”.

At this point you need to go to, lookup downloads for your system, then under “Embedded Server Management” there is “iDRAC6 Monolithic Release 1.97” (or whatever version is newest).

I got Windows to start by manually hitting F1

For the 11G servers this is the default baud rate.

This could be Remote Access Device, but that gave me problems (I may have had a bad serial cable).

External Serial Connector : Serial Device 1.Serial Port Address : Serial Device 1=COM1, Serial Device2=COM2.Serial Communication : On With Console Redirection via COM2.Hit down until you select “Serial Communication”, enter that menu.Reboot the system, and after the system resets itself for not being able to reach iDrac go into “System Setup”, the F2 key.We need to get to the iDrac’s serial recovery mode, and then we can recover the system. This is a Dell PowerEdge R510, I attempted to upgrade the iDrac from 1.3.* to 1.6.5. Thus the server would not boot without physical intervention at the machine. After restarting, it would allow a full boot, but would give that same “Press F1 to continue, or F2 for System Setup” message. Then the system would go through normal boot sequence, but when it tried to communicate with the iDrac it would fail then restart the server. Press F1 to continue, or F2 for System Setup.” In restarting the server I found that “System Services” were disabled. When I physically went to the server, it was at the BIOS start screen stating “Error Communicating with iDrac. I then, remotely, told the system to reboot it shut down and never came back up. The system used the Windows iDrac Updater, which stated the update had competed successfully. After upgrading everything, iDrac still was not working, after a few days of messing with it, I found out through piecing together several sites how to force the iDrac in recovery mode to do a TFTP repair, writing a new image to it.

I thought it might have been because I upgrade the iDrac from an old version to the latest, without components like the BIOS or NIC, that the iDrac communicates with, being upgraded as well. This week I had a Dell PowerEdge R510’s iDrac completely die on me I attempted repairs with several utilities that Dell gives out on their site and all of them ended with failure.

Dell idrac license levels