Geoff Thats awesome thanks. While I was waiting for a reply to the post I went back to engineers one o one. Complete strip down of the server and rebuild from motherboard up cleaning all connectors as I went and checking for dry joints.  Seemed to resolve the problem and the firmware patches are now applying ok. Thanks for your help Steve
Good afternoon guys I am having a Baseboard Management Controller communications error with my PE2950 and the fans are running at 100% I have tried (as suggested in previous posts) reseating all component especially the left hand side riser all with not success and the fault still exists. I have reflashed the BIOS to the latest version and that has made no difference and I have downloaded the BMC utility but I keep getting a message saying to cant be installed on my system I am running home server 2011and it has all the patches. Can someone please help the wife is complaining that i am air conditioning the house with my server :) If you need further info just ask Steve
BMC communications Failure on PowerEdge 2950