HP MediaSmart EX485 Windows Home Server shares disappear from the network

2

1

Every couple of days our HP WHS box disappears from the network until I manually cycle its power. It's plugged into a gigabit switch, along with the rest of our computers. All it's lights are on, including the NIC light. It also responds to ping. I can't connect to it with RDC, the built-in software, and the shares are no longer available. It is running the latest 3.0 version of the software.

Has this happened to anyone else?

travis

Posted 2010-07-22T15:21:29.557

Reputation: 783

Answers

4

Has happened to me as well. In my case, if I waited long enough, the console would load and I could shut down a few things.

I permanently disabled a few different services related to HP's media streaming feature: twonkey.exe and firefly.exe (rdc to the server as administrator and with password you use to connect to the console. run Services.msc and stop then disable those two services.)

You may also notice that QSM and Demigrator are using a lot of CPU. Do not mess with them.

I'm not certain, but my problems (and possibly yours) could stem from an HDD going bad. A few different SMART tools tell me my bad sector count on my system drive is getting up there. You should check your drives as well.

To check SMART status on WHS, I use Home Server SMART: http://www.dojonorthsoftware.net/Freebies/HomeServerSMART.aspx plugin. SpeedFan: http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php provides more insight, but must be installed/run on the server itself (not as a plug-in.)

CCrawford

Posted 2010-07-22T15:21:29.557

Reputation: 306

So disabling those services helped? I'll give it a try. Can you recommend a SMART tool? – travis – 2011-01-19T04:28:02.017

Yes, disabling those services has helped, but I don't have a really good reason, aside from possible pending disk failure, why they should have started acting up. Added links to the SMART tools I use. – CCrawford – 2011-01-24T18:45:21.270

Same thing happened to me. I was recycling it every few days for a few months, then finally the HD died completely. I didn't know why it kept dropping the network, but I suspect the HD was on its way out. – mohlsen – 2012-01-19T12:44:12.010

2

I had exactly the same issue. very simple solution in the end. The network card was set to auto-negotiate and was netotiating half-duplex. Setting the network card to 100mbps full duplex has solved my problem and the server is now working better than ever.

jedihouse

Posted 2010-07-22T15:21:29.557

Reputation: 21

Interesting, I'll definitely have to try this one. – travis – 2011-04-01T05:06:11.943

Well so far, it's still disappearing after making the change in the driver properties. :-( Was there anything else that you changed? – travis – 2011-04-05T15:48:09.680

1

The solution I went with is a huge hack, but it works. I first tried adding a restart event into the scheduled tasks, which worked fine for a few days. Then I noticed that it still disappeared off of the network and stopped restarting. So I bought one of those outlet timers and just set it to cut the power from 6am - 6:15am. Probably not the best thing for the hardware, but it works.

travis

Posted 2010-07-22T15:21:29.557

Reputation: 783