Well I finally have access to the elusive Dashboard.
I turned the problem over to a friend who went over all my systems network settings with me, my router configuration & tested all my ethernet leads and tried his hand at helping me solve it.
The result was that we tried the pin reset one more time and it WORKED at last, no idea why, we did nothing differently apart from leaving the device unpowered for 15 minutes with all its leads out before resetting it.
Its excruciatingly slow but at least its working now. Nothing was changed with my actual PC
s configuration.
It does seem very hit and miss with its media serving though. On my ipad it`s not TOO bad though still very slow,(about 14 seconds to seek and play each track),but on either android, even on the same wifi network even, its MOLASSES slow. (Approx a MINUTE to display the directorys with a further 30 seconds to a minute to poll any further navigation and then a MASSIVE, (unmeasured as I got bored waiting), gap as it trys to open the track, I THINK it took about 5 minutes.
Is this normal?
BTW I received an Email from WD support (and NOT in my spam folder wonder of wonders lol), it seems somebody has seen this thread.
I`ve two final questions.
Now I have access I have the option of updating the devices firmware but I`ve seen a few threads here for people to roll back or update either the devices firmware or the twonky beam media server firmware.
- Is it worth doing and will it gain me any better performance?
(I`m reticent about messing with it now its working to some degree).
- is there anything I can do to improve the response of both the device in explorer, and on my phones/ipads?
Im really not bothered about its timemachine backup function or anything else that it does. (It simply doesn
t have enough space for my data anyway).
The original purpose of the purchase was to keep a copy of my media and primarily my music library as both backup and to make the media accessible on my mobile devices, both in my home and when I`m out and about.
(I actually went out to buy a simple usb external drive, saw it and it was roughly the same price, so I bought it for the functionality. - I originally intended using Tonido with a USB drive).
- And its failing to do this on account of its dismal response time… as a media cloud server it`s, err… Pants. Waiting 5 minutes for a track to load is just not something I will put up with.
I`d like to thank you all again for your help, you guys are a light in the fog for struggling users on this board.
lastly…
PJPfeiffer.
I was curious about your remark:-
“I’m really sorry that you’re having such a good time with your installation.”
are you a masochist? lol
Thanks for the support number, Ive filed it way for reference.
oh and something else I do want to mention.
earlier in the thread it was suggested that using SSH to access the Operating system would be one method of resetting the server.
People should be aware that doing this may void the devices warranty.
From WD`s own FAQ pages:-
http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/10435
Critical: The use of SSH (Secure Shell) can potentially harm the hard drive and could result in the drive and the data within it becoming inaccessible or lost. The use of SSH to tamper with the drive in order to modify or attempt to modify the device outside of the normal operation of the product will void the drive’s warranty.