HP Gen8 Microserver error “Embedded media manager failed initialization” – how to get HPQLOCFG

During the process of installing VMWare on to my Gen8 Microserver, I had trouble writing data to the internal SD card – in fact, I couldn’t even see it. Looking in the ILO Event Logs I saw this:

Embedded Flash/SD-CARD: Embedded media manager failed initialization.

googling this didn’t get me much – just forum posts with people complaining about it, but then i found this HPE Customer Advisory, which lists out the steps needed to reset the error. Basically:

1. create an XML file with the following content:

   <!-- RIBCL Sample Script for HP Lights-Out Products --> 
   <!--Copyright (c) 2016 Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Development Company,L.P. --> 
   
   <!-- Description: This is a sample XML script to force format ll --> 
   <!-- the iLO partitions. --> 
   <!-- iLO resets automatically for this operation to take effect --> 
   
   <!-- Warning: This command erases all data on the partition(s) --> 
   <!-- External providers will need to be re-configured if --> 
   <!-- partition is formatted --> 
   
   <!-- Input: VALUE tag: all - format all available partitions --> 
   
   <!-- NOTE:You will need to replace the USER_LOGIN and PASSWORD values --> 
   <!-- with values that are appropriate for your environment --> 
   
   <!-- See "HP Integrated Lights-Out Management Processor Scripting --> 
   <!-- and Command Line Resource Guide" for more information on --> 
   <!-- scripting and the syntax of the RIBCL XML --> 
   
   <!-- Firmware support information for this script: --> 
   <!-- iLO 4 - Version 2.42 or later. --> 
   <!-- iLO 3 - None. --> 
   <!-- iLO 2 - None. -->
   
   <RIBCL VERSION="2.0"> 
   <LOGIN USER_LOGIN="Administrator" PASSWORD=""> 
   <RIB_INFO MODE="write"> 
   <FORCE_FORMAT VALUE="all" /> 
   </RIB_INFO> 
   </LOGIN> 
   </RIBCL>

2. run that file against the server using HPQLOCFG.exe:

   hpqlocfg -s <server IP> -l c:\hpqcfg.log -f c:\Force_Format.xml -v -t user=Administrator,password=<password>

3. some other steps to reinstall intelligent provisioning, if you use it.

All well and good – but where do you get HPQLOCFG from? If you follow the link in the article, it refuses to install because i don’t have the full PSP installed. So how can I apply the change?

Well, in my case, I installed VMWare to an internal USB stick and then ran the command from there – you could even do this with all of your other existing drives removed so that they don’t get erased. You could then restart the process. Problem solved!