My HP EX495 boot drive has failed. I have followed many of the steps I found in this forum but cannot get past the "step 2 of 4" in the restore process. I also have the VOV board so I can see the video display. I tried with both the new drive with a primary partition (and it says unable to find ntldr) and without any partition. The only way I can get it into the restore mode is to hold in the paperclip hole item when I first boot up - so that it flashes between blue and red - then I have uninstalled the home server software on the xp computer I am trying to use to run the restore cd from and have tried from regular with firewall turned off and antivirus turned off and safe mode with networking and also tried static or dynamic ip. I am SO frustrated and called HP and they said it is an end of life product and I cannot get support. Does anyone have any advice? If I can just get it up and going I can copy files from it and I should be fine.

Really at this point I just want to get all the files off of it and move them to my wd my cloud server which has RAID instead of this funny proprietary DE stuff. I have some Mac files that have ADS stream data and resource fork files on it. I have managed to copy many of the windows files - but I cannot figure out how to copy the Mac files to my Mac.

Okay it appears you have tried all the steps since you did get into recovery mode.
I have had this happen myself.
First pull the drive and connect it to your pc.
Delete all volumes/partitions on the drive.
Depending on what method you use make sure if needed that the drive is initialized as mbr.

Don't format the drive.
Place it back in the server.
Try again.
But this time connect the server directly to the pc bypassing any router switch or hub.

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thanks for trying to help me. i have not got it working yet.

i was connecting it directly with a regular network cable already between the hp server and my desktop (no router or switch connected at all). and my computer says HPMSSRECOVERY with an ip address of 169.37.37.37 with a subnet of 255.255.0.0

my replacement system drive is a 1.35GB formatted (1.5GB) hard drive so can only format it as NTFS - and since it has an empty partition and has no os on it not sure how to add the mbr to the drive. I removed all partitions on this ntfs formatted drive.
if it helps I am using a wd drive that is NOT advanced format WD15EADS 1.5TB

i have a vov adaptor so i can see the monitor feedback and use mouse and keyboard
i put in the formatted but with all partitions removed hard drive in the bottom boot drive slot
if I just turn it on it will just flash blue and white forever while the computer on the vov video adaptor display says cannot find hard drive to boot from - to set the boot up volume (and there is only one of them_
so instead I turn off the device and turn it on with paperclip pressed in for awhile and then out and back in and then it flashes between blue and red - assuming that's how i have to get into system restore mode
but it stops on step 2 of 4
when it does that the health light is flashing blue, blue, red, red, red and repeating that pattern - not sure what that means - actually found out in the manual that it means "2 aqua white, 3 red = BIOS recovery source not present." pg 262 of users guide for hp ex495
-------
now i changed the boot order to do network on the hp before hard drive - seem to get further based on info I'm following at
http://www.mediasmartserver.net/wiki/in ... leshooting
but now it gets to a point where it says on the hp video
"windows boot manager server ip 16.037.037.038
windows failed to start. a recent hardware or software change might be the cause. to fix the problem
1. insert your windows installation disc and restart your computer
2. choose your language settings and then click "next"
3. click "repair your computer"
if you don't have this disc, contact your system administrator or computer manufacturer for assistance
status: 0xc0000001
info: the boot selection failed because a required deice is inaccessible

what do I do now?

i pressed enter and it restarted to go through the whole process
i went to setup and changed hard drive to boot instead of network and get the same
ntldr is missing
press atrl+alt+del to restart

back on the xp computer running the system restore cd it says failed on step 3 of 4 - so I'm further than beore

I'm stuck - does anyone have any ideas?

basically pressing and depressing the pinhole button with a paperclip once after booting up does not put me into system restore mode - keeping paperclip in when turning on seems to put me into bios restore mode which is NOT what i want - so to put into manual system restore mode i change the boot order to have the network first and that gets me at least doing the process somewhat but not really getting through the process

But before you start all over again.
Format the disk as one drive and run chkdsk to see if it has any errors.
WHS can be very fickle with drives that are not perfect.

First don't worry about mbr.
If you wiped the disk using say diskpart.
The disk would need to be initialized for gpt or mbr prior to formatting.
Just to be clear the drive should have 0 partitions and not formatted.
That way it will look like a net new unused drive.
Another trick to try is boot without the drive inserted after the heath flashes a few times push in the disk.
That is just another way to force recovery mode.

Anyway try all the tricks simultaneously .
Including safemode with networking.
If it fails again you will need to wipe the disk again it may or may not have both partitions.

_________________
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

thanks for your help

i was able to get it to work using this process:
using vov adaptor go to bios and change boot to network first
turn firewall off on client win xp
uninstall hp software on client win xp for home server
run installer a couple of times - watching the status of tftp to see what it's doing
finally it got the boot software loaded and said it was connected and ready for restore
let it continue
after it's done it reboots server
server is trying to do network boot
reboot server with vov video adaptor and change bios to boot from hard drive first
reboot and watch the magic