Hello Trush63 I would suggest trying another 2008 R2 DVD, or burn this one again at a lower speed. You should have no problems with booting to the 2K8R2 DVD and installing directly from it. I suspect there is file corruption on the DVD causing the machine checks. The other possibility is that you may have a device that is not compatible with 2008 added to the system. Double check for anything connected in a PCI or USB slot. Remove any add on cards you have with the system. Thanks
I have been unsuccessful at Installing “MS server 2008 r2 standard”  on a power edge 2970. I have 2 days invested in this upgrade.  The server was running 2003, I need to upgrade it to MS 2008. I have upgraded the bios from 1.2.2 to 4.2.1 and the PERC 5i from 5.1.1 to 5.2.2. I have tried to do a direct install by booting off of the 2008-R2 DVD, and every time the installation tries to do the second reboot I get a system failure during the Boot phase.    Warning: a fatal error has caused system reset! Please check the system event log. The event log recorded the error as CPU machine Chk: Processor Sensor, transaction to non-recoverable was asserted. I can reinstall ms2003 using the  “Open Manage Server Assistant”  CD with no issues. ( I currently have “Open Manage Server Assistant” version 8.10.0-5.2.0-17776). What do I do from here 1) do I still have a hardware bios issue that needs to be addressed? 2) Do I  need a new ISO for “Open Manage Server Assistant” that will include MS 2008 R2 in the list of operating systems to install which download is the correct one.  I have checked the Dell driver down load section with the service tag and selected “MS server 2008 r2” which results in 57 selections in the “system management” section. 3) or is the power edge 2970 not capable to run MS 2008 R2?  
unsuccessful at Installing “MS server 2008 r2 standard” on a power edge 2970