I've recently run into an issue with my EX475 dropping it connection. Looking at the server itself, all lights indicate operation is fine (drive lights are blue, all lights along bottom are blue, including health check indicator, no lights are flashing). But on my computers (I have 3 PCs & an xbox that connect to the server) the WHS icon is greyed out and I am unable to access any of the folders/shares on the server. If I manually type in the IP address of the server or try access the home server software setup (http://servername:55000) I cannot connect either.

The only way I've been able to successfully reconnect is by doing a reboot of the server (holding power button down for 5 sec to force reboot).

The server is running with Power Pack 3 & I have it setup for automatic updates. Software version is still 2.0. I have ordered the 3.0 upgrade disks from HP, but have not recieved them yet. The server also has 2GB of RAM.

The server has been very stable for the past year and a half. Over the past four months I have been upgrading my PCs to Win7 (64-bit). I upgraded 2 of the PCs a few months ago & everything was fine. About a week ago I upgraded the 3rd PC and that's when I ran into trouble. The other thing that I did when I upgraded the 3rd PC is I also moved the physical location of the server, so it is connected to a different switch. I did these two things 1 - Installed Win7 on 3rd PC (so I no longer have any Vista computers connected) and 2 - moved location of the server, at the same time so I'm not sure if there is a correlation between the two or not.

Troubleshooting that I've tried, to no avail -
1. Moved the physical location of the server back to its original location & original switch
2. Connected into the router, instead of a switch
3. Completed a Server Recovery
4. Re-booted the router - which reassigned a different IP address to the server
5. Assigned DHCP reservation to the server IP address on the router

I thought I had resolved the problem by doing the DHCP reservation as this allowed the server to stay 'green' on the PCs for about 36 hours, but this evening I went onto a computer & the icon was once again grey, so problem still exists.

My gut instinct is the issue has something to do with 'port access' through the router or firewall settings on the Win7 computers, but I have limited knowledge with problem solving when it comes to network issues.

Any thoughts or advice?

Hi blbarge welcome to the forums.

There are so many ways to approach this and it would of probably been simpler to troubleshoot before you peformed a server recovery only because the recovery just adds another piece to the puzzle.

First let me point out that when you want to shut your server off do not hold the power button in just press on it and release it and your server should shut itself down properly for you. Your performing a forced shut down so if your server was busy writing to one of your drives then you run the risk of drive corruption and if its the system drive then its not good so protect your drives by just pressing in the power button for a moment and see if the server shuts itself down.

Since your server is now connected directly to your router I would like to start there and just start off by trying simple things based on what we do know. First you indicate that your server will run for a period of time then the connection is lost to all your clients. When you reboot your server the connection comes back if this is correct then lets try a couple things that are painless.
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Next time this happends do not reboot your server. Try changing the network cable and see if connectivity is restored. If not then power off the router then reapply power to the router. Lets see if the problem lies there first and if not then reboot your server by pressing the power button in for a brief moment.

Let me know how you make out. This could very well be quite a few message exchanges but the goal is to get you back working as before without having to cost you to much money under the assumption of trial and error.

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Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

I have had something similar to this happen to me. For me it seemed to be either a failing drive or corruption of the shares. A server restore/replacing the OS disk appeared to resolve the issue. Although your mileage may vary.

Since my original post I have tried a few more minor things & so far things have been fine for about 3 - 4 days now. The many thing I changed as a modification to my firewall. During installation of the MSS software I believe a popup did show up asking if I wanted to allow communication as 'trusted' & I would have said yes, but when I looked through the trusted software list I didn't see anything obvious related to the server. I found a document on HPs website about updating anti-virus/firewall software to include MSS software on the trusted list. The programs which I manually included on the list are -
C:\Program Files\Hewlett-Packard\HP MediaSmart Server
This directory will hold the following programs that need to be added:
DoTask.exe
HPHSConnector.exe
MediaAggregator.exe
C:\Program Files\Windows Home Server
This directory will hold the following programs that need to be added:
MountBackup.exe
RestoreOffProc.exe
WHSTrayApp.exe
WHSConsoleClient.exe
WHSConnector.exe

After doing this the server has not dropped connection yet. I'm still not 100% convinced that this has solved the problem - reason being when the connection is dropped nothing can access the server, even if I reboot the computers with the firewall/antivirus programs disabled, plus I also access my audio collection located on the server via a sonos audio system which connects direct with the server, not via a computer. When the icon is grey on the computers the sonos system cannot access files directly either so a firewall block doesn't seem to be the problem - router issue more likely. At any rate things are up & running now, so until the problem starts again I'll just keep my fingers crossed.

AcidReflux - are there any issues or potential risks with replacing the OS drive. My system originally came with 2 x 500GB drives. Once I out grew those 2 drives I did add a 2TB drive & removed the non-OS 500GB (the process of uninstalling the 500GB drive did transfer data to the new drive without issue) & have since added another 2TB drive. Before long I will need to add more HD space so I am contimplating 'upgrading' the 500GB drive to a 2TB but I thought I read somewhere that the OS drives should be left alone. Is this true or can I safely put the OS onto a new drive & get whatever other files are on that original drive to the new one?

blbarge - I have performed a replacement of the OS drive, but unfortunately it is not a simple thing as the main drive is partitioned into a C and D drive. Part of the D drive is used for your PC backups and folder shares. Straight replacing the drive may mean losing this information. I performed a backup of all my share data so I did not losing anything there, but I did have to start some of my PC backups from scratch.

I have the same problem as the original poster, blbarge, with dropping the connection. My setup is a Windows Home Server V1 PP3, LX195 server, I have a Vista and Windows XP connected to it with the WHS connector. Just like with BLBARGE, all the lights are blue nothing flashing or blinking. On both computers, the WHS connector is "greyed out" which I cannot RDP, access it through the browser, remote into it, nothing. The only way to restablish connection is to manually shut off the power to the LX195.

Nobody has said what causes the problem. From what I read, it is only suggestions. I am not about to format the drive and reinstall WHS to correct the problem.

On the WinXP computer, I don't have the Firewall enabled. Any other suggestions besides replacing the HD?

Check the router to see if the server is showing up on the DHCP Listing if not then try a process of ellimination with the network cables, and changing the port the cables are connected to see if the connection is restored. Its not unusual to have a port on a network switch or router to cause issues. Also try rebooting the router to see if connectivity is restored as it would not be the first time a router caused connectivity issues with a server.

If you also have another router you can try swapping the router out to see if the router is at issue here as well. You can also try direct connecting a client to the server to see if the server and client can connect. You can use any CAT 5 or 6 Cable to make the connection the server will adjust to the cable automatically.

While firewalls will come into play they either block or allow the connection. I would not be in a hurry to perform a server recovery at this point as its much quicker to rule out the simple things first.

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

I had a similar problem this weekend. I lost connection to my server from all clients and remote. After a fresh reboot I would have 15-20 minutes of connection, on my server, then it would drop. After searching forum post after forum post I decided to run a complete check/scan disk(which took hours) but it "repaired" some bad sectors on my OS drive. I'm assuming my issue was a failing drive, my EX490 has not lost connection but I am making arrangements to replace the OS drive

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EX490 (E5200) 10TB and Growing
Burly 5 Bay Enclosure
WD TV Live Hub
WD TV Live Plus

"If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?" ~John Wooden