Epic fail putting TrueNas on QNAP TS-h973AX

Hardware Enterprise Gear
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I tried following ideas from the video “QNAP H686 – Let’s Install TrueNAS!” on my new NAS. I got a low-power passive-cooled GPU Asus GT-710, opened my NAS (it only has one PCI-e 4x port for HDD PCI board, I disconnected it to try the GPU).

When I connected the gpu and keyboard and turned on, nothing goes up (not sure has something to do with power supply being 120W 12V. I just gave up and assembled everything again without gpu, but then the mother board does not turn on anymore (it lights up an LED and the ethernet port though). It does not do the initial beep or any sound or spin up the disks.

I have tested the power supply and it seems to be working fine with constant output. Any ideas what to do?

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Aw man, that looks like a pretty darn good unit.

Presumably you have tried to clear any CMOS that might be available?
If it even has the battery/jumpers to clear it.
The worst bit, I guess, is it is a headless system? So no feedback apart from a lack of beep

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@Trooper_ish, thanks for the feedback, I will try to remove the BIOS battery. And yes, this unit is pretty much headless… it does not come with any video output and not even serial port.

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I’m afraid I don’t have any useful advice, but hope more traffic on the thread brings more eyeballs, as that unit looks really sweet, and a shame it can’t go back.

In the mean time, how does it store it’s O/S? Is the an Emmc chip? And did you flash that, or were you trying to boot off a live USB.

Or even not getting that far, was it literally at just plugging in the GPU, and a test fire to see if any output before progressing?

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OS is in an external DOM 16gb I suppose. But I was trying to boot on a pendrive with TrueNas Scale installer.

I saw no output, no even the lights of the keyboard lighted up.

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Meaning it’s dead, won’t boot, and no online access?

Do in reverse order to what you originally did. Reverse all steps.

Try to restart the bios by removing the battery. Or a button if this model has one.

https://www.qnap.com/en/how-to/faq/article/the-different-ways-of-resetting-your-nas-explained

https://www.qnap.com/en/how-to/faq/article/my-nas-cant-be-powered-on-or-it-does-not-boot-how-to-fix-it

https://wiki.qnap.com/wiki/Firmware_Recovery

At worst, you could have damaged your motherboard…

Problem #1: The NAS does not power on.

Possible cause: Faulty power adapter or power supply

Check if the LEDs on the front panel turn on after pressing the power button.If none of the LEDs turn on, the power adapter or power supply of your NAS may be faulty. You can try plugging in the NAS to another power outlet to double-check.

Solution: Contact our Service Portal or your QNAP reseller for warranty repair service. For out-of-warranty units, a replacement power adapter/power supply can be purchased from the QNAP accessories store.

Problem #2: The NAS does not pass the POST (Power-On Self-Test).

Does the NAS produce a short beep about 5 to 10 seconds after being powered on? If not, the system has failed to pass the POST. The most common causes of this are a faulty motherboard or faulty RAM.

Solution: Contact our Service Portal or your QNAP reseller for warranty repair service.

Problem #3: Corrupted firmware image

Within five minutes after powering on your NAS, you should hear a long beep (about 1.5 seconds long). This indicates that the QTS operating system has finished booting.

The absence of a long beep may indicate that your NAS has corrupted firmware. This results in the NAS being unable to boot QTS.

This could be caused by the NAS being abruptly powered off during a firmware update.

Solution: Follow the firmware recovery procedure that is documented step-by-step in this guide. If recovering the firmware does not solve the issue, contact our Service Portal for assistance.

Boot up the NAS without drives installed.
If NAS is not able to boot up without drives installed, and no long beep sound after 2-4 minutes, this means the firmware on the DOM has failed. You may try the firmware recovery from the link below (note that not all NAS models have the recovery process available): Firmware Recovery Guide

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Looks like it doesn’t even initialize the boot process (fan does not turn on, there is not beep, no sign at all).

I tried soft and hard reset with the button, I also tried removing the battery from the BIOS.

Power supply looks good, delivering 12.27V steady. I think I have the problem #2, or even it does not even start POST.

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Unplug everything again. Every cable, every card, take out even the ram. Then connect everything, being 100% sure that everything is as it should be.

Then connect only the power supply and the network cable, nothing more and check. If it’s still dead then you might have hurt the motherboard somehow…

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Done. Nothing.

I measured the tension on BIOS chip, looks ok with 3.3V, primary seems good. Maybe BIOS got corrupted somehow…

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I doubt it. Sooner something fried the motherboard / ram, cpu, power supply than specifically the bios …

Any signs of life on the motherboard side? LEDs on? What do disks do?

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LED is on, this is the only thing, also when I connect the power supply, the fan turns on for some 1-2 seconds.

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I bought this NAS and I wanted to do the same but this topic made me sceptical.
Maybe the “PCI-e slot” on this NAS isn’t actually a PCI-e slot.

Knowing this I went with another route. Since it seems that the NAS always boots off USB I did:

  • Disconnected the USB DOM.
  • Installed Fedora Server inside a VM on an USB (boot) and SATA drive (OS).
  • Transplanted the drives to the NAS.

All working fine.

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