HI! New to the forum and the MSS, and hoping to get a bit of help with a recently acquired EX490 MSS.

I was looking into setting up a home server and my father in law had a EX490 that all he could recall had a hard drive failure. To his recollection it worked fine up to that point and pulled out the original drive(s), so I started with an empty machine. I had a good formatted drive and installed in hopes to set it up and running. I plugged it in and found I am only getting a solid aqua power indicator light and no other lights come on. The power button does not shut it off regardless of how long I hold it in, and the only way to restart it is by unplugging it entirely. I removed the hard drive and tried again with an empty enclosure with the exact same result. It does appear to be getting some power as I can hear the case fan come on but that's about as exciting as it gets.

I've gone back almost 4 years worth of posts here at MSS.Net with no mention at all of a solid blue/aqua problem like this, and am unsure where to go from here. I thought I had read about a similar issue on an earlier version the the MSS that may have been bricked, but it's far too early in the game for that assumption with my limited experience with this system. If anyone has any suggestions on what the solid aqua power light is trying to say and where to go next with this little project I would be very appreciative. I do have all 3 disks that came with the unit and no diagnostic cable to work with, although I am handy enough with a VOM.

Thanks for any input in advance!

Johhny

Okay first step.
For the system drive there would be no formatting involved.
You would put the server in recovery mode and use the system cd that came with it,while connected directly to the server from your client. It is in the manual.
In this case it would be selecting the reset option.
This will format the drive ,install the os and put the server in the same status it was when purchased.
When you add the first client, then the leds will start to respond correctly.

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Connect the server to the pc/laptop you are going to recover it with, use a direct connection Cat5 network cable.
If the PC/laptop you are going to recover it with has win7, boot it up in safemode with networking, make sure the server is off and you have a clean known good harddrive in the bottom bay. If you use a laptop you might need to turn off the wireless....
Run the server recovery cd and follow the instructions.

When the server is powered up you should see the blue/red/blue/red that is when you press and release the little reset button front lower (very little) size of a paperclip, then click away, give it plenty of time to do it's thing.
Fingers crossed you should be updated and running in a couple of hours.
Shout out if you have problems.
It may be bricked, but you won't know it ya try.
Goodluck

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Thanks so much for the input. I followed your suggestions to a "t" and tried to reset the server when the lights turned blue/red and the machine did not give me the opportunity.
When I plug the MSS in, it automatically turns the unit on and goes directly to the blue power status and there it stays. I can hear what sounds like normal boot noises (small ticks, and fans spooling up) but that's all she does. To power it down, the power button will not do it regardless of how long I hold it down and can only be shut down by unplugging from the power plug.
When I plug my laptop into it via network cable, I do get a notification that it has connected to a LAN and the connection light on the laptop blinks as well; but no further activity beyond the blue power light on the MSS. I went ahead to eliminate the possibility of a hard drive issue by installing a new out of the box unit and retried all with the same results.

Any suggestions from here?

I'm back after putting this on the shelf for a year and having time to mess with it again...

To further update from my last post, I've replaced the power supply per the wiki here, and did verify the new PS was good by checking with a voltage tester prior to re-pinning the 20 pin molex connector. Pins confirmed to be correct prior to start up. Tried booting, same issue as before. I pulled the CMOS battery to reset the BIOS and check the voltage of the battery since I have no idea how old this thing is, and found it was at 2.8v. Changed it with a new battery at 3.2v and tried again with a good HD in bay 1- same problem but now I am also getting a pinkish-white system light. I pulled the hard drive and rebooted and all of the drive bay lights illuminate- top 4 are red, bottom 1 - white light.

To summarize:

Unit powers on without use of the power switch (Plug it in and it boots automatically) All fans come on and hard drive spins up.
Will not power down by power button if held for 4 secs - must be unplugged to power down. Can not reboot into restore mode to install software.
Power Light - Aqua
Network Light - Not illuminated
Activity Light - Pinkish/White
PC detects it is connected to a network and NIC on PC shows activity lights as though it sees something but can not detect a connection via software.

Diagnostics I've done so far:

Replaced Power Supply - Tested prior to installing.
New CMOS battery installed - New on tested at 3.2v. - No change
Changed hard drives for different results with no change.
Left out all hard drives and tried to boot - Bay Light 1 = White Indicator Light flashes once; Bay Lights 2-4 = Red Indicator Lights flashes once. Front panel lights remain Aqua and Pink/White as before.
Removed and reinstalled memory - No change.
Left memory out and rebooted - No change.

Is there anything else I can try without a diagnostic link into the BIOS?

Any help would be appreciated!

Well I have never seen a color other than blue or pulsing blue on the drive led's.

Network Light - Not illuminated
tells me the internal nic card is bad, or not loading the driver.
If you have a usb nic you could try that.

Also the power down issue could be a boot issue.
Since you replaced the battery. it may be expecting you to load the default bios.
Which you would need the debug board to do so.

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Great, thanks for the feedback. I'll probably go the debugging board route first to get a grasp on the boot issue since the pc iappears to be getting a power signal on the NIC... it see something just not everything.

Any idea what the chances are of this thing being bricked beyond repair? I'm good with doing whatever since this has become a side priject but would hate to throw good money at a bad project. And are there any good guides in the Wiki/Forum you can recommend to straighten out the bios?

Thanks again for your input!

If the case lights are red when you boot, chances are you have a EX470. Check the label under the server and use Google to check the model number.

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Microsoft MVP - Windows Home Server.

When you press the power button, do you hear a low click sound ? Could be that the switch on the motherboard is not aligned with the case plastic button or is forced on.

_________________
HP MediaSmart EX495 E8600 3.2Ghz CPU, 4GB ram, 8TB storage including 3TB drives in pool. WHS with Active Directory, WDS, Media Center Master, Logitech server. Office 2010 server with client add-ins.
Microsoft MVP - Windows Home Server.

Good points, thanks.

I did reconfirm it is an EX490. I do hear the click on the power button and have also activated it outside of the chassis when I pulled the memory.

I also eyeballed all of the capacitors for bulging and the pcbs for toasty spots... nothing that stands out at all.

You said that you installed a new hard drive and OS. So does that mean that the PC using the OS install disk saw the server an the Server Recovery process started ? You saw a progress bar ? Then when it finished, the server rebooted ?

_________________
HP MediaSmart EX495 E8600 3.2Ghz CPU, 4GB ram, 8TB storage including 3TB drives in pool. WHS with Active Directory, WDS, Media Center Master, Logitech server. Office 2010 server with client add-ins.
Microsoft MVP - Windows Home Server.

Negative. I have been unable to reboot the server to put it into the recovery mode (original issue).

I installed a new hard drive to eliminate the boot issue was caused by a failed hard drive and I am unable to communicate with the server to install the OS.

I'm ordering the cable this week and give it a go. I was hoping a forum member came across what appears to be an obscure problem with this in the past, but it may just be too obscure for a discontinued product. Challenging project regardless and since it has a space taken up on my workbench I'm compelled to figure out the problem. Besides, I cant let something smaller than a breadbox beat me like this

VGA cable came in last week and hooked everything up and booted. Same scenario as before before with the lights and not booting. I found that the vga display was not receiving a signal. Rechecked connections- all are good. PS2 mouse is getting power (laser on the bottom glowing upon movement). All this with the mb and components out of the chassis so no pinched wires etc. I pulled the memory and HD and still no display and of course no POST either. Seems to be narrowing down to a MB or CPU.

So I got to digging a bit... I pull the heat sink to check the CPU for bent/damaged pins/etc and I find it's has Pentium D 925 - a 95w processor. (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819116254)
I checked the forums and Google pretty good and no where could I find that this was a compatible upgrade that has been done before but did catch that all other upgrades were spec'd at 65w max.

I have an e5200 incoming from ebay and will see if this does the trick on the cheap, but has anyone here seen this CPU used as a valid upgrade for a 490?

Thanks!

The VGA cable came in last week and I got everything hooked up and booted. Same scenario as before before with the lights and not booting. I found that the vga display was not receiving a signal. Rechecked connections and pins - all are good. PS2 mouse is getting power (laser on the bottom glowing upon movement), so I know it's at least receiving a power signal. All this with the mb and components out of the chassis so no pinched wires etc. I pulled the memory and HD and still no display and of course no POST either. Seems to be narrowing down to a MB or CPU.

So I pull the heat sink to check the CPU for bent/damaged pins/etc and I find it has a Pentium D 925 processor. (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819116254)
I checked the forums and Google pretty good and no where could I find that this was a compatible upgrade that has been done before but did catch that all other upgrades were spec'd at 65w max.

I have an e5200 incoming from ebay and will see if this does the trick on the cheap, but has anyone here seen this CPU used as a valid upgrade for a 490?

Thanks!

As far as the vga goes.
Did you set the jumper pin on the motherboard?
That is what changes it from a headless system.

_________________
VGA/PS2 Keyboard/PS2 Mouse/Serial debug board
Popcorn C-200
Popcorn A-200
Dune HD Connect
Rasberry PI OSMC(KODI)
ReadyNAS RN316
Amazon FireStick
Amazon ECHO
AnyDvD
MyMovies