I've found bad sectors on some hard drives which seem to be causing the server to freeze when it does its daily ChkDsk after Midnight. Shut the server down and put one of the hard drives into a workstation (I suppose an external enclosure would work too) and either run ChkDsk /f /r (double check those switches before proceeding). If you're not familiar with the Command Prompt, download Data Lifeguard Tools from Western Digital (works regardless of your drive manufacturer) and run the Extended Test. It will give you the option to attempt Repair on the bad sectors but you may loose the data in those blocks if you don't have a good backup.

Hope it works for you and let us know if you have any luck. Mine is also locking up every few days and I have tried a bunch of swaps with no luck. Just reset my router to original configuration to see if that helps. What really kills me is this server ran great for about 3 months and just started locking up like this for no reason.

I'm also experiencing exact same issue as you guys. My server would become inaccessible every 1-3 days and require reboot. All services such as file sharing, bittorent and media streaming would be dead. Without video output it's very hard to diagnose what's going on. Logs show no software failure, LED lights looks normal, the only thing I can do is ping it. And hard reboot solves the issue. Sometimes the reboot is very fast, other times it takes a very long time.

I've already upgrade my ex485's CPU to the latest Celeron E3300. The power supply theory sounds plausible. I've had self-built desktops with problem that I couldn't diagnose end up fixed by changing power supply.

I found a wiki page on how to change power supply yourself. http://www.mediasmartserver.net/wiki/index.php/Replacing_the_Power_Supply

my 470 was shutting down after 10 to 15 min, when i replaced the power supply all better

i read this on newegg, might want to order a new fan for it



Cons: VERY noisy under casual 3d gaming or high cpu load like video encoding. If your upgrading the psu in your small form factor home theater PC because you want to run a nice graphics card or faster processor this will do it but expect ALOT of noise. The fan in this powersupply sounds like a cordless vacuum once you put a load on it. The fan is also unbalanced and creates excessive vibration causing the chassis to vibrate creating even more noise as it did in mine.

I am having the same problem as everyone else. I shutdown my server today until I here otherwise. It's beating up my network by sending 100's and 100's of million in packets to all the machines.

@Titleistman I have my DHCP disabled on the mediasmart server so I'm pretty sure I have a different issue. Plus you really should have the server on a static ip either through DHCP reservation on the router or manually set the ip in the first place anyways, how else are you going to do proper port forwarding?

I purchased new hard-drive that will arrive today, I'll try to change my system drive. I read the Seagate drive that came with the server is known to be problematic.

The holiday kinda messed up my shipping so my hard drive wont be here sometime next week...still having the same problem 20 min of connection at a time. doing that hard boot cant be easy on the server so untill my new hard drive gets here my server is off too...

found a 1 tb on ebay for $69 bucks with free shipping. I think after christmas the 2-3 tb hdd will come down in price till then a 1tb should tell me weather or not the hard drive is the problem. I dont think it could be anything else I have already gotten a new chassis from HP, reinstalled the OS. and the connector software, thats the only thing I havent replaced... Still keeping my fingers crossed.

I like this little server I would hate to have to send it back to HP but if this doesnt fix the problem I will have to look elsewhere for my network attached storage needs...So far HP has offered little in the way of TECH support when I tell them what the problem is they just tell me its my network.

I am not exactly a newbie when it comes to computers I have a BA in computer science, my MCSE, and A+ certs. I have also worked in the tech support field for years. So I have some idea whats going on with my network. If I am struggling this bad with this small of a problem what does HP expect people with no computer training to do???

I will keep you guys posted on what happens when the new drive gets here...