Major WHS Connection Issues

B

Briliu

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 19, 2006
Messages
269
Hi,

I recently purchased an ACER Aspire EasyStore. I'm having some major issues with it recently though, seemingly random, and I have no idea what to do.

I wrote a long winded post on the wegotserved forums here.

I'd like some help as I have no idea what is going on, and if possible, would like to avoid a server restore.

Thank you very much!

Here is the post as well, if you'd rather not navigate away.

Hi all,

Let me first apologize if this is in the wrong subform, but it spans quite a few topics so I figured I'd put it here.

I bought and received an ACER Aspire EasyStore last week and had it all set up (static IP was the most significant thing i did) and running on Wednesday the same week. All was well in the world, I had made user accounts for both my parents, my brother, and myself. After putting all my music (12GB) and several hundred GB of videos on the server everything was still ok. A few days of automatic backups on the 3 of the 4 connected computers didnt make any significant changes either. My brothers laptop was having issues backing up, it would lose connectivity after awhile (dont know how long) and the server would give a warning the next day saying it didnt work (this was with manual and automatic backups). He has windows 7, if that is of any concern, but im pretty sure the WHS is up to date.

Anyway, that issue was a minor one compared to what happened later. Pretty much ANY time my network wasnt healthy (whether it be yelling at me for not having AV activly running on my computer or a real issue like the provided McCaffee not turning on after a restart for some reason) I was unable to use the WHS console (from the icon in the system tray). It would go to the light blue screen of uselessness, I tried to do the console reset from the login, but that has never worked. My share's were still active at this point, so I wasnt terribly concerned about it, it fixed itself after a reset from Remote Desktop to the WHS.

So, Thursday of this week we had a pretty massive thunderstorm pass over after i left for work. When i got home from work I didnt notice anything wrong with the server, played music fine, let me connect just fine, ect. Then my mother told me that the house lost power for about 15 minutes, I was a little worried, but since i didnt notice any issues i didnt think any more about it.

Well, later that night i was listening to music and it started to get jerky and skip parts of the song... First thing i blamed was the network (1Gb between my computer and the server), so i paused the song to let it "catch up" or but that didnt help (i guess it doesnt buffer..). So I tried playing a video from the server, no problems for 5 minutes.

So the next thing i went on to was that the song had been corrupted or something when the power went out (maybe it was balanced as the power went out?) so i took the song off the server, played it locally, no issues. I took the backup i kept on my computer and put it back on the server, skippy and jerky at the same points in the song again (about 5 minutes in).

Baffled now, i tried to console into the WHS and it came up fine, cpu usage was ok, but there was one file that had an error, the help said that it was probably due to being open more than 24 hours, it was one of my music files, not the one that was giving me trouble though. I dont know how it could ahve been open so long though, my computer is the only one that monitors it for WMP11 library, and my computer is off more than on.

So i closed that and reset my computer, since it was acting wonky with the network and other things (slow windows navigation). When my computer came back on i could not get into console again (still had music problem). Remoting into the WHS let me reset it like before, when it came back on I was unable to console, remote, or even access shares on the WHS. Console and remote both bring me to a DIFFERENT blue screen, its darker blue and has the WHS logo on it, with the fancy background stuff, not the light blue one from before.

It's totally "dead" as far as normal means of communication go. I can ping the server name and the server IP it from command prompt on any computer.

I tried a "hard" reset once, pressed the power button one time, and waited. Nothing happened, i left it for 15 minutes. So i just held the power button down till it shut off (i know tahts not good, but i couldnt htink of anything else).

Still no connection. I tried it again, same result, i popped in my server restore cd, it told me that it was going to probably clear user accounts and stuff so I didnt do that right at that time, but if it would fix the issue i wouldnt be against it.

Anyway, at around midnight i got pissed and shut it off, and thats where I stand.


Does anyone have ANY idea what to do? My server is currently a useless box that "supposedly" is connected to my network.


Thank you for reading this if you did, I can be rather long winded.
Click to expand...
 
I am assuming you mean you can ping by IP address. In that case, are you able to access shared files simply by IP address instead of by server name? aka. Go to run and type in //192.168.xx.xx or whatever your IP address is.
 
I *CAN* ping the servers static IP that i assigned, and it quickly as if nothing was amiss.

I will try to view the shares via the ip address when I get home from work.

What will that indicate if i am able to see the shares that way?
 
If you can access the server by IP but not by name, then I am thinking the issue Ive previously had with my WHS might be similar to yours (although probably not caused by lightning). With my WHS, I one day suddenly could not access the server by name (eg. //SERVER), and I could only access it by IP (eg. 192.168.xxx.xxx). My WHS connector would not work, or anything that relied on accessing the server by name.

I had to manually edit the hosts file on all the client side to make it work again. A bandaid to the problem...not really a complete fix, but atleast it works.
 
How many drives are in the system?

It almost sounds like an issue I had with the datamover background process maxing the CPU due to a faulty drive.
 
What are you using for DNS?

It's a DNS issue, if you can ping by IP but when you ping by name it doesn't resolve, then you are having an issue with you Domain Naming System or more specifically, whatever you're using for your DNS server(s) doesn't have an A record for your WHS box.
 
ND40oz said:
What are you using for DNS?
Click to expand...

As far as i know, not what youre thinking of :D I am not consciously using OpenDNS.

It's the default DNS IP addresses that my router generates when it connects to time warner. I dont know what they use though.

I do know i have never changed them from what the router picks up from the WAN.

From my research it does sound VERY similar to what theyre describing =/ I wish it were the case!


-------

So you were never able to get it to resolve the server name again? Hrm, How would I edit the host file if this works? I know where its at in XP (no idea in vista, but i could find it easy enough). I assume just 192.168.1.220 servernamehere?
 
He means what are you using for "local" DNS? Run "ipconfig /all" at a command prompt.
 
Go where you set your static IP address and give us a SS.
This is definately a DNS issue.

Lightning didnt cause your WHS to eff up.
Although it might have effd up your router, so you might be buying one of those.

Also the backup issue with your win7 notebook may just be because there are outstanding issue with backing up win7 clients still.....PP3 is suppose to fix them, it is currently in beta right now and can be obtained from connect.microsoft.com/windowshomeserver.aspx
If that still doesnt work then that just tuff shit because neither PP3 or Win7 are Gold yet.
 
Not to hijack the thread, but I think this issue may be more serious than initially thought. One of my computers today had a dead hard drive, so I thought I would try to use WHS's restore function. NO LUCK, because the WHS restore tool could not find the server. Typing in the IP address did not work either. Basically the WHS restore functionality is useless with the messed up DNS issue.

Does anyone have a definitive answer on how to fix the DNS issue (which is what I believe the OP is also experiencing)? I believe it may have something to do with the router, since Ive done a WHS server reinstall a while back and that did not fix the issue.
 
Last edited:
Couple of ways to fix it.

1. Use the host files on all the clients with an entry for the WHS.

2. If you're using your router for local DNS, it can be a little tricky, first try doing a ipconfig /registerdns from the WHS box, that may reregister the box in DNS for you. Since you're giving it a static IP address, make sure you have the static IP configured in the router with the correct name. If that doesn't work, we'll have to dig deeper into what router you're using and what functions/limitations it has.

3. Install DNS on the WHS box. In your DHCP settings on your router, list the WHS IP as your primary DNS server, with your ISPs as the secondary and tertiary. On the WHS box, make sure you have a DNS forwarder pointed to either your ISPs DNS servers or an OpenDNS server so it properly forwards requests.
 
ND40oz: Thanks alot! Especially for putting it in very simple terms that are easy to understand.

I followed your suggestions and the ipconfig /registerdns worked for me. Apparently, this WHS connection issue is very common. I dont recommend the hosts fix because that is just a bandaid to the problem. When you decide to do a client restore over the network, it will not work because the WHS cannot be found. There is also a "WHS connector troubleshooter" document you can download from Microsoft. I would recommend people to read that if they may have any problems.

Anyways, I hope these instructions can be of use to the OP as well.
 
Hi again everyone, let me apologize for being MIA for the weekend. I had some traveling to do and wasnt able to do any work till sunday afternoon.

After coming home on sunday and having the server off for the whole weekend, i turned it on, getting ready for the same old crap. Well, it seemed to have fixed itself. I could console in just fine, browse shares (i just realized this, but ALL of the shares i was browsing were NOT duplicated...), and all remote in just fine as well. I moved on to some trouble shooting after that.

I tried pinging my server again, but this time using the actual server name in the command prompt, ie ping servernamehere. It worked just fine. I was unable to get my computer to go to a share by doing //servernamhere in explorer, it goes to the internet webpage for the server automatically (servernamehere.homeserver.com), however, typing in the IP address does the same thing, which doesnt make sense (//192.168.1.220).

I will get you all the screenshots you requested tonight after work, but in the mean time, I dont think that it's a DNS issue. Atleast at the root, some of it (the old blue screen) might be, but someone at WGS thought that it may be a disk error causing the logon to hang and not work.

Since i was able to get into the server yesterday, i ran event viewer and found a TON of NTFS errors. I also found a few winlogon errors. Will get screenshots up for them tonight so you can see what im talking about.

------

geiger

How many drives are in the system?

It almost sounds like an issue I had with the datamover background process maxing the CPU due to a faulty drive.
Click to expand...

I think you may be right, or close, on this one. I have two drives, the second (1TB WD Caviar green) shipped with my switch from newegg, the first came in the server (1TB Hitachi somethingorother). As i mentioned above, the shares that were not duplicated worked fine, the ones that were didnt. Although, on that same token, i had ripped 3 movies to a nonduped folder and they are now unreadable, so, im lost :p

-------

Since i thought it was the drive(s) i ran a check disk on the DATA volume in WHS. It said it fixed a couple things in the event viewer entry for dskchk (i can get the logs for you also. It also said that i had 0 bad sectors, im not sure if that was before or after the disk check fixed stuff though.)

After a bit, the popup for the file error (same exact file as before, and just that file). I decided to try just shutting off duplication on the music folder and turning it back on. Which worked for a few minutes then it popped up again.

Basically, the server is now back to where it was on thursday. I am unable to remote in and all that.

------

After getting all the screens and logs and trying a couple of the things you all suggested, I will try to remove the second harddrive from the server (through console) then maybe i can or find out if that is the root cause. If i were to throw that drive into my computer, could i test on it specifically? or would that break things? Also, when i first added that drive, i dont think WHS formatted it... I plugged it in and whs didnt say anything about formatting, it just immediatly went to the storage pool. Im probably just missing something there though lol

Thank you all for your help so far, i hope you continue to offer your advice!
 
\\servername will take you to the shares, you're using the wrong slash.
 
This is going to be amusing :)

First off the IP/DNS stuff.

IPconfig /all from my computer
http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g82/Briliu/ClientIPconfig.jpg

The screen where i set up my servers IP address.
http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g82/Briliu/ServerIPSetup.jpg



Next up, the terrible terrible ntfs errors~

http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g82/Briliu/NTFSErrors.jpg
Yeah, and roughly half of those 2000 errors are ntfs.

http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g82/Bril...FSErrorText.jpg
Thats what it says~


There's also the winlogon error this is the text on it. It's what shows the chkdsk info. There's 3 days worth of it there, i only ran one of them, i guess the other ones were automatic.
Code: 
Event Type:	Information
Event Source:	Winlogon
Event Category:	None
Event ID:	1001
Date:		7/20/2009
Time:		5:59:46 PM
User:		N/A
Computer:	MYSERVERHERE
Description:
Checking file system on \\?\Volume{6cc63814-6da4-11de-a2aa-000ae48bda1c}
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is DATA.


One of your disks needs to be checked for consistency. You
may cancel the disk check, but it is strongly recommended
that you continue.
Windows will now check the disk.						 
Cleaning up minor inconsistencies on the drive.
Repairing the security file record segment.
Deleting an index entry with Id 342 from index $SII of file 9.
Deleting an index entry with Id 342 from index $SDH of file 9.
Cleaning up 1 unused index entries from index $SII of file 9.
Cleaning up 1 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 9.
Cleaning up 1 unused security descriptors.
Mirror security descriptor block different from that of
master security descriptor at offset 0x0.
Fixing mirror copy of the security descriptors data stream.
CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the volume bitmap.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.

 976751968 KB total disk space.
 402727100 KB in 13325 files.
	  6004 KB in 828 indexes.
		 0 KB in bad sectors.
	110192 KB in use by the system.
	 65536 KB occupied by the log file.
 573908672 KB available on disk.

	  4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
 244187992 total allocation units on disk.
 143477168 allocation units available on disk.

Internal Info:
40 38 00 00 54 37 00 00 79 5d 00 00 00 00 00 00  @8..T7..y]......
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 2c 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ........,.......
1c a8 70 02 00 00 00 00 4c a3 84 09 00 00 00 00  ..p.....L.......
9a da 7f 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 fa b1 9d 15 00 00 00 00  ................
e0 32 60 5f 00 00 00 00 ff ff ff ff e8 00 00 00  .2`_............
0d 34 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 f0 82 04 60 00 00 00  .4..........`...


For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.


I forgot, but the first day i had the server i did all the updates and there was one that wouldnt install, so i tried again and, well it didnt install again. Here it is:
http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g82/Briliu/updateerror.jpg


So im going to pull the 2nd harddrive out and reset and see if i can do all the normal stuff. If i can, well. Damn, i guess i get to RMA it to newegg. :(
 
Why aren't you using your home router as your primary DNS server?

Seems to me that would solve all your connection issues.
 
2 things

1) Set your primary DNS server to 192.168.1.1
2) Get a new HDD.
 
I didnt know how to (or that i should) do that. Even if i have a crappy WRT54GS router i can use it as a DNS for the LAN? I assume i keep those other two ip's as the 2nd and 3rd choices? Also, does that go for any other computers i have that are static? Also, why wouldnt the dynamic ip assignment choose the router for the main DNS? lol Lots of questions.

I have a new issue. I cant remove the harddrive. It says file conflicts have prevented removal of this harddrive >< Somethingsomethingsomething corrupt.

This is getting even more upsetting!

Thanks again for the help :)
 
Yes you can use your Router for DNS.
You can keep the others if you wish but it been my best luck not to, and force it to use the DNS on the router.
Why it dynamic didnt choose it....i dunno

First Reboot Server
Then dont access it for now.
Do you have duplication turned on for all your shares?
Do you have any extra HDD's laying around the house?
 
Of course you use your home router as your primary DNS server. It keeps a database of your computers IP's and hostnames so that when you try to connect to your server via its name you can. Those public internet DNS servers have no idea whats going on on your home network.

I have all my computers pointing to router, and the router points to the public DNS servers (OpenDNS). So when you enter say "www.google.com", my computer looks to my router first and the router sees that www.google.com is not in its database so it passes it along to OpenDNS's nameservers.
 
nitrobass24 said:
Yes you can use your Router for DNS.
You can keep the others if you wish but it been my best luck not to, and force it to use the DNS on the router.
Why it dynamic didnt choose it....i dunno

First Reboot Server
Then dont access it for now.
Do you have duplication turned on for all your shares?
Do you have any extra HDD's laying around the house?
Click to expand...


I turned off duplication last night in an attempt to remove the second harddrive without whs yelling at me about duplicaiton.

I dont have any laying around :( I was thinking about hopping to best buy or walmart (lulz) to grab another disk while i RMA mine. Not like im anywhere near filling them up, but I'd still like to have 2 while i wait for the bad one.


--------

I was curious, can i tell some way from event viewer which hard drive is the issue? If it's the original drive that came in the EasyStore, I'd have to send that whole thing back which is a giant pain. Any thoughts?
 
Briliu said:
I turned off duplication last night in an attempt to remove the second harddrive without whs yelling at me about duplicaiton.

I dont have any laying around :( I was thinking about hopping to best buy or walmart (lulz) to grab another disk while i RMA mine. Not like im anywhere near filling them up, but I'd still like to have 2 while i wait for the bad one.


--------

I was curious, can i tell some way from event viewer which hard drive is the issue? If it's the original drive that came in the EasyStore, I'd have to send that whole thing back which is a giant pain. Any thoughts?
Click to expand...

Well turn duplicaiton back on d00d
Your one drive is effed up, you definately want it duplicated
 
I only have the two drives though. So if i turn duplication back on it copies it to the dieing drive and pretty much freezes/breaks the server.

Or are you saying get a 3rd drive and turn duplication on?
 
No what I am saying is you need to make sure all your data is on a good drive.

Your dying drive may contain data that is not duplicated to the other drive.
 
O btw

Dont buy drives from newegg.
Directron, ZZF, Frys. or get them from a store in retail packaging.
 
Dell does great with shipping drives as well. They ship them in individual boxes with the plastic end caps that suspends them just like the retail drives are.
 
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