Hi All,

Was excited to get home yesterday and set up my new EX485. Hooked everything up very quickly and started the process of installing the software on the first PC. That got hung at 14% complete for over an hour. While waiting for that to decide what it wanted to do, I noticed that the software had successfully installed on the PC (it showed in the Start/All Programs menu). I left the original software install window open. I started playing around & setting things up. Strange things happened, like I would enable the iTunes server, click OK, then go back to check it, and it would show disabled.

While setting up Remote Access (custom domain name), I suddenly lost connection, the software install decided to finish, and the MSS rebooted. When it came back to life, most settings were still as I had set them, and I was now able to successfully enable the iTunes server feature.

The Media Collector is setup to search for new music, photos, and videos every day (I didn't want it to kick off a search while I was going through config etc, and thought it would complete this task while I was at work today anyway). I manually copied 1 small folder of pics to the server, setup sharing, and played with that for a bit. Then I scheduled the PC for a backup starting at 11pm. Set the sleep time to midnight - 8am. Setup the TZO custom domain, tried to get it working, but could not (tested from laptop VPN'd into work). Added a 1TB WD Caviar Green drive (amazing simple process!). I manually kicked off a backup at around 10:30, watched it start, and went to bed.

Came to check on the backup around 6:15. The server was turned off. (!?!?!?!?) Turned it back on, and manually kicked off another backup (the 1 I started last night failed at 21% complete). Went to work. Tried remote access from work, no dice. Got home, checked the backup & it completed successfully. Checked the media folders to verify it had copied everything, and the folders are all empty except for the 1 folder I manually copied. I was expecting it to search my computer through the day & copy all of the music, photos, and videos (I set the options to "all folders"). Media Collector was now set to search every hour. (?) I'm unable to find a way to manually kick off this process too. I would have thought there would be a "scan now" button or something.

I've now started a server recovery which says it may take up to an hour. And it looks like it will too. My thinking is that the system may have gotten hosed up somehow when I got impatient & started playing with stuff when it seemed to be hung up last night. Has anyone else had any issues getting their new server up & running? Once I get the basics working correctly, I'll get back to trying to get remote access working. Thought I'd set up port forwarding correctly, Comcast shouldn't be blocking any ports (at least everyone else says they don't). Not sure what the issue is there, but I need to get the basics working correctly first.

Anyway, long post. Guess I'll go watch TV while it rebuilds itself.

Bugman30

_________________
Blair
EX485 + WD 1 TB & WD 2TB
HTPC: ASRock Ion 330, 4GB RAM, overclocked to 2.1GHz, Win7, WMC

Hey Bugman, sorry to hear about the issues. I think that configuring the system while it was still updating itself was likely not a good idea. Since you've got a brand new system with no important data on it yet, I'd recommend a full Factory Reset to wipe it totally clean and start from a known fresh state. Make sure you've got backups of anything you've copied to it, of course.

Try that, then lets address any issues one at a time. Screenshots of error messages are a big help, checking the Event Viewer on both client and server is a good idea, and make sure your router's firmware is up to date.

_________________
Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
Have you tried our Add-Ins?

Yeah, I should've known better. I've gotten kinda used to being the one whose mistakes others learn from.

From Despair.com:
Mistakes:
It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.

_________________
Blair
EX485 + WD 1 TB & WD 2TB
HTPC: ASRock Ion 330, 4GB RAM, overclocked to 2.1GHz, Win7, WMC

Here are the instructions for the factory reset in case needed:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&docname=c01213383

The process is straight forward; it just takes time... I've done it once already

Good luck!

Bugman,

I had to wipe the C: partition on my new 485 and then do a factory reset due to a number of issues I was having with the unit. With the reset, everything appears to be functioning now. I'm not sure if the error was a software glitch or something to do with the HDD (it's one of the Seagates with the suspect firmware), but at least it's working now.

Progress has been made.

The rebuilding process did take a looooong time. I agree that it was a pretty straight forward process. Kudos to HP on that. Then it started reinstalling the software. Again, it stopped at 14%.....for 1.5 hours. It was almost midnight by that time, so I went to bed. Checked it in the morning and there was an error. Restarted it. Error. Disabled the Norton Firewall. Restarted. Completed in about 15 minutes. (They should put that in the instructions. Actually, they should give us a Users Manual. All I got in the box was a Setup Poster, and a Warranty Guide.) I copied a few folders worth of pics in. Setup a backup for 8am, setup Media Collector to scan for new files every hour, and check every folder, and left for work.

When I got home, I verified that the backup had occurred as scheduled - YEAH!!!!!
Then I checked the shared folders tab, and the Videos, and Music, folders are still empty, and the size of the Photos folder is the same size as this morning.

Am I waiting for something that is never going to happen? Won't the server scan my PC and copy all of the music, pics, and vids? Or do I have to copy everything in first, then it will monitor and copy anything new? Is there something in the firewall that I need to change? (Really, this should be in a Users Manual or something.)

Is my server working correctly? Should I copy everything in, then rip a new CD to see if the server picks it up? I want to get this working correctly before I look at Remote Access again. I don't want to waste time copying everything in only to find I need to send it back or something.

Thanks,
Bugman

_________________
Blair
EX485 + WD 1 TB & WD 2TB
HTPC: ASRock Ion 330, 4GB RAM, overclocked to 2.1GHz, Win7, WMC

Just to answer your first question... It DOES say somewhere (I think on the setup poster) to turn off your firewall and/or anti-virus or at least "teach" them to give the setup program access. When I setup mine, I cut the internet connection from the cable modem and shut down both ZoneAlarm and TrendMicro. Everything was up and running in 15 minutes.

Mine did the exact same thing today as far as the stopping at 14%. Only thing wrong when it finally finished was the event viewer was corrupted. That was a simple fix but I am going to do a full restore because I got two 485s at the same time and the one with the 14% issue is considerably slower than the one that had no issues during setup.

OK, the backup for the PC has consistently worked for a few days now. Copied all of the music and videos over to the appropriate folders on the MSS. Copied all but 1 folder of photos over. Was hoping that Media Collector would pickup the 1 folder I didn't copy & do that for me, but is hasn't done that yet.

Trying to install the software on my work laptop & getting the error: The files were not downloaded from your home server. Please verify that your network connection is active and that your Windows Home Server is powered on. Then restart this Wizard." Things should be working as I'm able to connect through the PC. I have disabled the firewall software. I am able to enter the IP address into Firefox & pull up the home page.

Have tried a bunch of things to get remote access working, but no success so far. I've been testing from my laptop VPN'd in to work. Here are some of the details:
I removed the Vonage box from between the cable modem & the router, but that hasn't helped. Rebooted both cable modem and router after.
URL: http://carneymediaserver.com
Router: Linksys WRT54G Firmware: 1.52.5
ISP: Comcast (chatted with them yesterday, they do not block any ports but 25)

_________________
Blair
EX485 + WD 1 TB & WD 2TB
HTPC: ASRock Ion 330, 4GB RAM, overclocked to 2.1GHz, Win7, WMC

Not sure why you would put it on a DMZ as well as forward the ports? DMZ would make all ports open, which is not really a good thing I would think.

I believe that you are correct that DMZ would open all ports, but since I can't get it to work, I'm trying everything I can think of while hoping for some advice from the knowledgable people on this board.

_________________
Blair
EX485 + WD 1 TB & WD 2TB
HTPC: ASRock Ion 330, 4GB RAM, overclocked to 2.1GHz, Win7, WMC

bugman, PM me your external IP address, please. The URL is correctly resolving to TZO, but I don't see them redirecting me to your IP.

Make sure you aren't connected to work via the VPN while trying to install the Client software.

If the Collector hasn't copied your content up to the server, it's not going to magically start. Post a screenshot of your config, and look for errors in the log on your client:
C:\temp\HP MediaSmart Server\log

_________________
Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
Have you tried our Add-Ins?

bugman, I don't know about your work, but ours block just about every port not needed. I know that 4125 is blocked so I cannot do remote access from my office. But everything else works. Trying to figure out if there is a way to change the listening port to something else that is allowed.

Found some strangeness when I got to work today. If I go to www.carneymediaserver.com, I can reach my MSS, but it does not do https. If I do http://carneymediaserver.com, it does do https, but does not reach the MSS. Also, once I reach the MSS, Photo Viewer is the only thing that works, even though I used Media Streamer last night within the home network.

Yakuza, I sent you a PM, but it seems stuck in my Outbox, rather than being in my Sent folder.

Thanks,
bugman

_________________
Blair
EX485 + WD 1 TB & WD 2TB
HTPC: ASRock Ion 330, 4GB RAM, overclocked to 2.1GHz, Win7, WMC

Not sure if I'm much help here.

I had a lot of issues with remote access working until last night

I solved remote access not working by setting my DSL modem to bridged mode and then setting my router to PPPoE mode. So in effect, my modem was just accepting the signal, but my router was logging me in.

As soon as I did this, everything suddenly worked.

Hope this helps you a bit.