I am also facing the same problem as you because i have apple computer and there is internet security software and anti virus are already stalled but i can not able to find out my data recover.
so any one who know solution then please tell me suggestion.Thank you in advance.

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When you come to a roadblock, take a detour.

Finally got the usb trick to work. My server was down for 2 months. But it's back now. I used the files in the PDF as is, just added the Recovery Image from my DVD. This was a real pain. I can't believe HP messed this up so bad.

Do you know if it's possible to change OS image with a Windows Server 2008, so I can install using this method?

Thanks!

Today I copied the boot.wim file and a few folders from a Microsoft WHS install ISO and replaced the ones on the USB thumb drive. I have the VGA cable and I can see the new boot sequence. It starts the WHS install straight from the thumb drive which is quite interesting. But it fails to find the hard drive, it asks me if I want to install some drivers. Looks like I'm missing some files for the disk controller. I'm downloading xfiles 1.5.5 to see if that package contains the files I need.

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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.

edited
-nevermind, another stupid look before you ask thing.

P.S.

Doing this won't delete any of my old shared files right? I have another HDD installed should I need to remove that? And if I do will the data be readable once I plug it back in?

I just did this restore and it was not quite as difficult as I had expected. I found it very valuable to use Wireshark to run a sniff on the network card adapter of the laptop I was using to do the restore.

This is what I was able to determine;

1. Your PC network card must be set to DHCP.
2. Your PC network card must be connected to the WHS with a crossover ethernet cable unless your network adapter supports MDX auto switching.
3. When the HP restore disc utility is first run it will run a mini DHCP client and set the IP address of the NIC to a 169.37.37.37 address.
4. It will then kick off a TFTP server that will try to host the restore files for the MSS.
5. It will immediately start to beacon for169.37.37.38 which should be the IP of the MSS.
6. At this point you can do the paper clip trick on the MSS and you should see it pick up the correct address and TFTP file transfer should begin.

The MSS is then boot strapped with an image loaded via TFTP from the host PC (after it acquires a DHCP address from the host PC with the mini DHCP client). At this point it will reboot, which takes at least a few minutes. If everything is working then you should immediately start to see file transfer begin between the host computer and the MSS which is the contents of the CD image necessary for the restore to take place.

It is important that you not have virus scanners, firewalls, etc, interfering with these activities on your host PC as they will cause problems. Fortunately I have an older laptop that I use expressly for purposes such as this.

Wireshark is a free ethernet capture tool and can be invaluable for determining what is going wrong if your restores are not working. For example, I would press the reset button on the MSS when I was told to by the recovery utility but could see that it was taking too long to get into a ready state. I subsequently just hit the reset right away and then kicked off recovery on the host PC and everything went quite smoothly.

I have the same problems as other posters. Multiple hours on the phone with HP support, Tried 4 different PCS, Windows 7 and XP, cables, static ips etc. Most fail at step 2. I can sometimes get to step 3 buycreating a static IP address, DNS gateway etc. i see some files being transferred but others seems to fail with port/IP errors. I don't ever see a good address being assigned to the server (only 0.0.0.3 but never 169.37.37.xx)

HP support have been trying but not much help. they want me to return the item and get a replacement but i suspect like others that will not help. I'm trying to swap my system drive before i configure the unit for production

The USB flash drive approach has raised my hopes but it looks like I need ex470 boot files?? (which i don't have and haven't been able to find online)

Any other suggestions?

ouch this is getting over my head, i need to recover my ex490 and get fail on step 2 when using xp on fusion on my macbook pro, I have two xp netbooks but they have no dvd drive, my external reader wont read it (its old and cranky) Is there anything I can do to make this work with fusion? I had thought of using one of my flash drives on the netbooks to get around the external reader issue and the VM ( i was assuming that was my fail problem), so those posts were interesting, but again, over my head. Sorry to sound stupid

It took about 2 hours of non stop trial and error but I was finally able to get my EX495 to restore from the included recovery disk and thought I would pass on what worked for me.

The problem appears to be various IP address issues that arise as part of the braindead TFTP process. HP really messed this up, but hey, they saved about .53 cents on the motherboard not going with flash!

The problem is there will not be one approach for everyone to use to solve this. All the advice about disabling firewalls and anti-virus holds true. In addition, I disabled every network interface on my laptop (Lenovo T61P, running Win7 64bit) except for IPv4 and turned off the wireless completely.

The trick is some will need to leave their client PC in DHCP mode, some will need to use a static IP address. BUT DON't use either 169.37.37.37 or 169.37.37.38 for your static ip! In my case when I hard coded either of those the TFTP software tried to give the same address to the EX495! My recommendation is to look in the log to see what address the software is trying to give to the server and then pick some random number between 30 and 36 for the last octet to assign to your client PC. And that is if you find you need a static address. Try leaving the pc in DHCP mode first. I used 169.37.37.36 as my static address and it worked like a charm.

Other miscellaneous observations:
* After you push the reset button, the lights do not blink in the color many online resource describe (for ex. violet). For me it just alternated to white flashes. As to timing, I pushed the reset after booting when I saw the 3rd red blink.

* Pull up task manager and flip to the network tab. If you see a big spike in traffic and then nothing save some time and try again. One of the issues with the trial and error for this is waiting 10 minutes for the failure so this can be a big time saver. When this process worked for me, I saw steady traffic within a few seconds of pushing in the paper clip and it stayed that way throughout the process.

* Not sure if this matters or not, but after clicking on the TFTP app in the tray to do preliminary investigation of the logs and seeing what IP addresses are being handed out I would leave it alone. In other words, once you get an idea of what IP addresses are being used and feel comfortable it "should" be working don't mess with that app or have it in the foreground. When I got lucky and it restore worked, that app was running only in the task tray. Probably doesn't matter but as much pain as this was I will leave steps EXACTLY the same if I ever have to do this again.

Hope this helps.

Brannon

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HP EX 495 right out of the box

Thanks for all the hints about he system recovery. I did also twice on a row in two days and here is what I would like to share.

I did checked the TFTP logs and also the Ethreal capture and they are both very help. As a professional in the network product development, I think the solution that HP has is the only way of recovery a system which requires a full windows OS being transferred over during the recovery. An onboard flash of a couple of hundred of MB will not help. on the other hand, they are expensive as it will increase the BOM cost by $10 every 32MB. Anyway the SW that HP has a way too buggy and it did not give out a very clear step by step instruction and error indication. Here is what I have observed.

1. All the network port on the PC that performs the recovery task should be disabled except the port that is connected to the MSS. The port should be set to DHCP.
2. If the port on the PC supports 1GB, then a straight through ethernet cable is sufficient. Other for 10MB/100MB port, a cross over cable is needed.
3. Try to open the TFTP process in the windows task bar and click the log viewer.
4. Disable the firewall. However on the Windows 7, you should also chenged the default firewall setting by allow all then inbound traffic which is by defaut blocked even the firewall is disabled. It is under the property in the firewall settings.
3. The recovery does not seems to work on Win 7 64 bits, I constantly get a socket creation error based on the TFTP logs.
4. be very patient since each step takes a long time. In step 2, after the initial TFTP transfer, the server will take a long time before it starts the real recovery. Wait until the PC shows the next step, success or fail. DO NOT POWER DOWN THE SERVER.
5. Even after the recovery shows finished on the PC, wait until the health light turns white on the server.
6. After the recevery, the subsequent windows update will also takes a long time to perform. The best is to remote desktop to the server after the password is set and do it from there. You will get a much clearer picture as compared to do it via console connector. Also alway wait unti the server finishes the upgrade and the health light is steady. DO NOT POWER OFF the unit while it performs the update, i.e. the health light is flashing.
7. If you get a failure in either step 2 or step 3, try a couple of time.
8. When you encountered failure in performing te server update while installing the windows connector, press the back button and try again. The reason is simply the SW on the PC does not wait long enough.

Hope this will help.

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HP EX490 with E8400 and 4GB RAM.
Intel 240GB SSD System Drive
2x2T WD Green EADS.

Thank you people, saved me some really long hours. Works like a charm

Wow! I feel really lucky.. I pulled mine out of the box, pulled the system drive, plugged in a new un-touched 2TB drive. Directly connected a cat5 cable to the server and my NetBook with win xp ( no virus scanner) and used a usb external dvd to run the software.
Took about an hour to complete and their were times when I thought it was hung but I just let it do it's thing and all went well.
I did the Reset of course since it was untouched. Got all the updates, a few reboots and powered it down and put it back in the box.
It is a backup for when my 470 dies.

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[X510 CPU/RAM/All 2 TB Red's] [X510 CPU/Sync'ed Backup/All 2 TB Hitachi's]
[X510 /2 in box]
[X710 LIAN LI DIY W2016E] Stablebit Drivepool [EX-503 LIAN LI 5-bay USB3 External]
Fear the Cloud

I have just gotten my new EX490 today and have also got 4 x 2TB harddrives with this.
I have read a lot about the recovery and connected the WHS directly to my machine and disabled firewall/AV.
Although it does seem to find the server, it fails at step 3.

I have attached a screenshot with the logs

any help would be appreciated!

Managed to get it working on windows 7 by using a static IP of 169.37.37.33 with antivirus, windows defender and windows firewall off. I did format my new harddrive on a different PC before the restore and used the network cable provided with the EX490. Hope this helps some people in the future!

Another person in the mess here. My server became unresponsive this Sunday. I attempted to reboot and nothing happened. I tried a server recovery, which is completely different than my EX470 and it kept failing. I called Hewlett Packard tech support and spent over three hours before the tech support representative agreed to replace the unit. I didn't ask for that, but I think he ran out of options. We tried three different computers, multiple ways of attempting from DHCP to static IP. He even tried to see if the unit would enter the restore mode without a drive and nothing worked. We were both cool headed, but I don't think I have ever spent three hours with any support line... He was up in Canada, nice to have a native English speaker working this through with me.

I found this thread last night (had just gone to the wiki and troubleshooting section, not the EX49X section) and we had attempted everything in tthis thread AND he sent me an updated TFTP program over email - so they might be adapting what they are doing on HP's end too... The replacement unit is scheduled for delivery tomorrow. Crossing my fingers it is the unit, but reading the whole eight page thread through today I am concerned this is not the case. Copying my data off of the drives to another computer using a SATA dock. This was the most frustrating experience I have had with a WHS product, and I have owned a 470 and built my own (copy of Andromeda). Nothing compares to this situation and the unit is only 6 months old.