Starting to panic now - OEM upgrade

All Replies

• Sunday, December 30, 2007 7:20 AM

  Moderator

   

   
  

  1

  Sign In to Vote

  Coma.fm wrote:

  Hi   Have just tried the oem re-install. I have been using RC1 for a while with no problems. Anyway I inserted the oem disk, selected reinstall and away it went. After a few minutes it came up with an error - couldnt copy a file to c drive - I cant rememember the name. It said do I want to retry or skip - I tried retry - no luck - then skip. This then happened for a few more files - so I cancelled the install. Tried the upgrade again and didnt get the reinstall option.   I then tried to reboot back to RC1 - no luck - looks like the upgrade had modified the rc1 image.   Then tried a reinstall using Rc1 - (as per another post's advice) - still dont get the reinstall option.   I have searched the site for useful info on what to do now and there is a lot of info. I cant seem to find what i need.   My system has 5 hardrives with about 2 tb of data - mostly movies etc which is not duplicated.   I have removed the c: drive and attached it to another computer and have tried to follow intsuctions on copying the DATA\DE\Shares data - but there doesnt seem to be any data there - the folders are there - but nothing underneath.   Can someone give me some advice on how to proceed - hopefully I have stopped before stuffing it up complety.   Coma.

   

  Unfortunately, once a Server Reinstallation fails, there seems to be no way to attempt it again.  I think you're only option at this point is to do a New Installation.  What you need to do is unplug all of your secondary drives (so the data will stay there).  Then, I would remove the primary drive (the one with the OS installed) and hook it up to another computer.  Browse to D:\DE\shares and copy all of the data that's in there that was not in a share with Folder Duplication to another computer (or, for extra protection, copy all data in that location regardless of Duplication).  Once you are 100% sure you have pulled everything from that location that you want/need, put the drive back in the server and do a New Installation on to that drive.  (Again, make sure it is the only drive hooked up at this point.)  Once the installation is complete, do the WHS Shuffle:

   

  1) Login to the server desktop

  2) Hook one of your other drives up to the server, but do not add it to the storage pool

  3) Move data from that drive (path is X:\DE\shares, where X is the drive letter of the drive you hooked up) to the network shares using the icon on the desktop (do not move the data to D:\shares)

  4) Once all of the data is off of that drive and on the server, add that drive to the storage pool and wait for balancing

  5) Continue to do steps 2-4 for each other secondary drive

   
• Sunday, December 30, 2007 8:35 AM

   

   
  

  0

  Sign In to Vote
  I seem to be in the same boat. I purchased the OEM DVDs and went to upgrade my Rc1 box but I don't get the "Server Reinstall" option in the drop down! Where the HELL is the Reinstall option! This is just stupid in a production product. This is suppose to be simple to use... the reason I went with WHS instead of Linux. Now I am begining to regreat my purchase.
  
  So I found this possible solution here...
  
  http://forums.microsoft.com/WindowsHomeServer/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2542101&SiteID=50
  
  But it is bull to have to go through all of that trouble. And I don't have Ghost, so this really isn't a solution for me. My Sys partition is there and showing up so I don't know why I'm not getting the reinstall option.
  
  Can anyone offer any advice? If not, I'm out the cost of the DVDs and will be going with a Linux solution since if this happens once, it is bound to happen again. It wouldn't be so bad if the fresh install didn't reformat all of the attached drives and imported them instead!
  
   
• Sunday, December 30, 2007 10:58 AM

   

   
  

  0

  Sign In to Vote

  Thanks for the help.

  One question - there does not seem to be any data in X:\DE\Shares - I can see the folders - but there arent any files. Is this normal ? ( i have set view hidden files option).

  Coma.

   

   
• Sunday, December 30, 2007 12:55 PM

   

   
  

  0

  Sign In to Vote

  @pdavis - have you changed the DVD drive or connecting using a USB DVD drive? Has the boot device changed in the BIOS? Are you rebooting with the DVD in the drive or running install while WHS is active?

   

  The reinstall option will normally be there unless there has been a change in drive configuration (I'm not referring to drives added to the pool) in which WHS will believe the hardware's changed and want to do a fresh install.

   
• Sunday, December 30, 2007 12:57 PM

   

   
  

  0

  Sign In to Vote
  @Coma - did you have any data in the shares in the first place?

   

   
• Sunday, December 30, 2007 5:13 PM

   

   
  

  0

  Sign In to Vote
  I had the same issue trying to upgrade RC1 to the 120 day Eval version. 
  
  I had already purchased the System Builder edition, but I don't want to activate it until I have my new box built.
  
  Fortunately, I didn't have any particularly important stuff stored on the WHS, so I did a new install.  before this, I tried swapping DVDs (had another eval version) and DVD drives (gah!)
  
  hopefully once I have my SB box up and running, this won't be an issue.
  
   
• Sunday, December 30, 2007 5:22 PM

  Moderator

   

   
  

  0

  Sign In to Vote

  Coma.fm wrote:

  Thanks for the help. One question - there does not seem to be any data in X:\DE\Shares - I can see the folders - but there arent any files. Is this normal ? ( i have set view hidden files option). Coma.

   

  If the free space on your server was greater than the size of your primary hard drive, yes.  The only data that may be in that location is A) data that was in a share with Folder Duplication turned on (in which case there is another copy of those files on another drive in your server) and B) data that could not be stored anywhere else (due to lack of free space on the other hard drives).

   

  But, just to be on the safe side, what are the names of the folders you see there?

   
• Sunday, December 30, 2007 6:29 PM

   

   
  

  0

  Sign In to Vote
  My system has a DVD drive connected to it via USB. It is the same drive I initially used to install with, it is plugged into a USB hub now though. The boot device has changed in the bios, it was set to boot from the harddrive, now it is set to boot from the DVD drive. I am booting with the DVD in the drive. I also changed the USB configuration in the bios so it would detect the USB device as 2.0 instead of 1.1.
  
  I will try removing the hub from the mix and changing the bios back to 1.1 and see if that makes any difference.
  
   
• Sunday, December 30, 2007 7:17 PM

   

   
  

  0

  Sign In to Vote
  This was a no go. I tried plugging the DVD drive directly into the USB port on the machine where it was when I initally installed WHS and reset the BIOS to 1.1 as it had initally been. Still no Reinstall option.
  
   
• Sunday, December 30, 2007 9:00 PM

   

   
  

  0

  Sign In to Vote

  kariya21 wrote:

  But, just to be on the safe side, what are the names of the folders you see there?

   

  Under DATA there are 7 or 8 folders. Three are longer alphanumeric names that look like update folders.

   

  Then there are DE, DEE, DEics, Folders & Shares. The 'Shares' has full listing of all files I have on my server - which I understand are simply pointers to the actual data - not the data itself.

   

  As per the previous post I have looked in DE which looks like this;

   

  DE

  Folders

  Shares

  Movies

  Blade (for example)

  Video_TS

  (empty)

  ... 25 other titles all the same