Hi,

I was wondering if anyone can help.

My EX470 has developed a problem. when i Cold start the machine ( turned off at plug - then turn on the power plug ) the machine shows all the drive lights as red, and then the health light goes to purple and stays at purple. the fans are on and at full speed.

The drives spin up but nothing else happens.

1) Does anyone know what this might mean - i have read a few posts that suggest a hardware failure....
2) if it is a hardware failure, can I obtain a new motherboard?

Thanks for your help,

Ian.

Does this behavior occur only on cold boot or always? Is the behavior the same when you remove the drives from the server and then power it on? Be sure to label your drives so you can put the system drive back in the bottom slot.

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Alex Kuretz
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Hi,

If its a cold boot - i.e. power off at the wall, then on, then turn the MediaServer on - all the drive lights glow red, then the fans start then the health light goes purple.

if i turn it off at the back of the media server, then on again, its the same behavior except for the drive lights - they do not glow any colour.

Same with the drives in or out.

I did pop them in to another machine, and they were blank - not even with partitions on - i know it sounds dumb - but would this generate a purple light?

Can i rebuild / recover the server?

Update....

I decided to use a 500gb drive and perform a recovery. I really thought the machine was bricked but lo and behold the recovery Cd found the server and reinstalled everything.

so i now have the server up and running except.....

1) the fans are on fast
2) there is no server hardware information on the "Hardware" tab in the settings screen. There is no temp info, and no fan speeds either.

I searched and found a simular issue, where there was an ini file that was mentioned in C:\Program Files\Hewlett-Packard\HP MediaSmart Server but i could not find any ini file. Could this be the issue?????

Ian.

What changed prior to this behavior? Did you modify the BIOS?

Since you can't find the ini file, is the rest of the HP software working correctly? Any errors in the event viewer logs?

_________________
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?

Hey any one have solution of this?

I have the same issue. Made no changes or installs before issue occurred - came home one day and it was off.

Immediately when starting it goes into that state (solid purple health, solid red disk lights and fans on high). I believe under normal circumstances it goes through that state on boot, maybe half a second or so, and then moves on. But now it is stuck. I also removed system drive and ran chkdsk and found no issues.

It would seem like a hardware issue to me, and I am contemplating getting a new box to put the disks into, but a post in the thread above implies that it is not hardware.

Has anyone recovered from this?

humm
Since the servers are getting old, I wonder if possibly the battery has died.
Not really sure what the bios does during post with a dead battery.

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I am experiencing a similar issue that was brought on by a power supply failure.

I believe I had that PSU sorted out BUT I have all disk RED Lighs and the Solid Purple status.

Once powered on, I can no longer use the power button to shut things off. I have to pull the power.

I even tried to do Recovery but the Recovery App can't find the server.

Any further ideas?

FYI, the power supply in these servers are 'not" pinned the same as a normal power supply. If the replacement is not wired correctly that could cause problems...
Also, if the power supply is correct, then you may have had a bad drive "OS drive most likely" and didn't find it till it went down.

Performing a recovery until you know the power supply is good and all the drives are good would be a waste of time.

If you have a usb to sata dock you can pull one drive at a time, connect it to another pc and check the drives.
Be sure to mark the bottom drive in the server, it is the only one that 'has" to be in the same bay.
Bottom bay stays in the bottom bay

Good Luck

_________________
[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 was able to get the exact psu running again.
I am lucky in that I had backed up to the cloud a few months back so I can afford starting over.

Even looking into starting over with WHS 2011 or Win2012E R2. (EX470 with 2GB).

Glad to hear !
I have install win2011 on a ex-490 with cpu and ram upgrade. It was ok, but I didn't like the New Console so I purchased win2012E and installed that. It ran slow but ok.
On a ex-470 you may not like how they run, 2011 may be ok, but 2012E and R2 may not run to good.

I decided I didn't really like either one so went back to whs V1 and am still running it and will run it till it won't go anymore.
I did build a DIY and installed win2012E for down the road with (4) 4tb drives.

Four Tips:
1) I always have an extra power supply on hand from Ebay that is rewired just for these servers.
2) I always have a few extra 2 tb red drives on the shelf just in case.
3) Any of these servers needs to have the free SMART addin installed to keep an eye on the drives.
http://www.dojonorthsoftware.net/dl/InstallHomeServerSMARTClassic.zip
4) Backups, glad to hear you are one that has them, lots don't and that's bad, I keep two copies, 1 on a second server sync'ed and another with non-pooled server backup drives.
5) clean the dust bunnies out at least yearly to keep the temps down.

Good Luck and enjoy

_________________
[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 am afraid I am no closer of getting anything installed as I can't get past the solid purple light on the status indicator and red lights for the drives.

Recovery doesn't see the server either.

Oh boy, well, sound like you have a bad drive.
I have 2 usb to sata docks so I can pull one drive at a time and attach them to another pc and checkdisk them to see if I can find a bad one.
Chances are good if the Bottom OS drive is the seagate that came with it, that it will be the bad one.
But, any bad drive will cause a recovery to fail, even if it did see the server.
So you really need to check all the drives (Mark the one in the bottom bay, it has to stay in that bottom bay) and make sure you don't have any bad drives.
Unless you just want to start over with all new drives and then use your backups.

Once you have checked all the drives and they are all good ?? Then we can talk about a recovery and what can make it work.
Let us know what you fine on drive inspection.... Might be a great time to buy and upgrade to a new 2tb WD black/blue/red drive for the bottom bay OS drive.

Good Luck

_________________
[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 3 drives, the system drive and 2 x 2tb data ones.
I upgraded the system drive to an SSD a while back.
Still have the original one.

I pulled both data drives and tested them and they are good.
The SSD was toast but can be reused if formatted.

I attempted to boot from the original drive only but no joy. Redlights still.