6 replies to this topic

[petroniusnz]

Hopefully someone out there can assist me with the following problem.

Per the topic title, I have an Acer easyStore H340 (was WHS with PP3) which is approx 18 months old and naturally out of warranty. In addition to the original 1TB drive, I have added 3x2TB drives to the system. No problems for the first 18 months. Then I see a flashing yellow triangle exclamation mark icon on the server system tray (logged in via remote desktop). The message is that the system drive is (Seagate) reporting a SMART error and is about to fail, which it promptly does and the server will not restart.

Phone support from ACER led to the purchase of a new 1TB Seagate drive and an attempt to restore the server using the Acer server restore disk (having removed the 3x2TB data drives). The restore process works all the way through to "Finished" press next to reboot server.

And this is where things go pear shaped - the Server "reboots" but does not come up & just recycles (and still is as I type) - blue "i" flashing, drive is accessed (blue drive light flickers) and then the blue USB light goes on and process loops around again. Eventually the server recovery software which is trying to reinstall the connector software comes back with cannot find the WHS message. I have tried this serveral times always with the same result.

The above happens irrespective of whether I do a settings only or factory restore.

Luckily I have a second WHS server with a full copy of everything (as far as I can remember). However would like to get the older one back up & running again. I have read other "similar" posts in this forum and elsewhere (google searches, etc.). Any thoughts, suggestions, etc welcome.

[habsfan1993]

I have the exact same problem. It seems to connect to the network fine when I run the initial recovery, but then it never opens a network connection after the first reboot. I've tried several times now. The blinking blue "i" and the hard drive light are all I see. The network indicator light never comes on, nor the lights on the LAN port itself. I've tried direct-linking to a PC LAN port too. Did you solve this or anyone have any ideas?

[switch128]

I discovered something... I'm going to try it when I get home.

Try running the restore software from a Windows XP 32-bit computer. Apparently, running it from Windows 7, Vista 32-bit or 64-bit and WinXP 64-bit won't work.

Found it here:
http://social.micros...8e-f340c238d8a4

Hopefully someone out there can assist me with the following problem.

Per the topic title, I have an Acer easyStore H340 (was WHS with PP3) which is approx 18 months old and naturally out of warranty. In addition to the original 1TB drive, I have added 3x2TB drives to the system. No problems for the first 18 months. Then I see a flashing yellow triangle exclamation mark icon on the server system tray (logged in via remote desktop). The message is that the system drive is (Seagate) reporting a SMART error and is about to fail, which it promptly does and the server will not restart.

Phone support from ACER led to the purchase of a new 1TB Seagate drive and an attempt to restore the server using the Acer server restore disk (having removed the 3x2TB data drives). The restore process works all the way through to "Finished" press next to reboot server.

And this is where things go pear shaped - the Server "reboots" but does not come up & just recycles (and still is as I type) - blue "i" flashing, drive is accessed (blue drive light flickers) and then the blue USB light goes on and process loops around again. Eventually the server recovery software which is trying to reinstall the connector software comes back with cannot find the WHS message. I have tried this serveral times always with the same result.

The above happens irrespective of whether I do a settings only or factory restore.

Luckily I have a second WHS server with a full copy of everything (as far as I can remember). However would like to get the older one back up & running again. I have read other "similar" posts in this forum and elsewhere (google searches, etc.). Any thoughts, suggestions, etc welcome.

[switch128]

OK, So I had success restoring it from Windows XP 32-bit. The first time in Windows XP, the restore didn't work. So on the second try, I tried the recovery option, but what did the trick is when you select "next" to reboot the server, at that point don't touch anything. The Home Server Connector software pops up and you can press "next" to start the install, but don't. Just wait and after a few minutes, I was prompted whether I wanted the computer to be woken up from sleep to be backed up. After I selected the option, the wizard to customize the server came up and I wasn't prompted to enter a password to join.

[bigfire]

I currently have it restoring from Virtual XP on Win7 64. It's going to be quite a while (longer than the 60 minutes predicted), which is a definite change from my previous <20M recovers which clearly weren't working. I suspect (hope) the longer period is due to the server checking all the disks and correctly handling all of my data, which is about 10TB worth.

I do have one question about your suggested method of doing this. If you're not prompted to enter a password to join, when do you have a chance to specify (or learn about) the password?

[switch128]

I currently have it restoring from Virtual XP on Win7 64. It's going to be quite a while (longer than the 60 minutes predicted), which is a definite change from my previous <20M recovers which clearly weren't working. I suspect (hope) the longer period is due to the server checking all the disks and correctly handling all of my data, which is about 10TB worth.

I do have one question about your suggested method of doing this. If you're not prompted to enter a password to join, when do you have a chance to specify (or learn about) the password?

The out of the box wizard (the setup process that runs after the restore, and is supposed to run before the connector software pops up to let you set the password and name the server) seems to lag a bit when starting. If you give it some time after the server has finished rebooting, and don't click "next" right away on the WHS connector install, it does eventually start on its own. One of the moderators in the forum has also pointed out that you can run the wizard manually (which would have helped me quite a bit), by running it from here:

"C:\Program Files\Windows Home Server\WHSOOBE.exe"

[Drashna Jaelre (WGS)]

Just FYI, that exe is both on the client *and* the server. You can run the OOBE on the server and have it all set, if you need to.

Also, there is a registry hack to disable needing a password, which you could apply offline by mounting the system registry hive. (Little more advanced, but hey, if you're willing to try it...)