Okay, let’s review the situation.
You see two ‘MyCloud’ entries in your Windows ‘My Network Places’ (this is normal; one is the user file system, one is the control interface).
You can access the user file system on the MC via your PCs.
You cannot access the control interface, even if you disable your antivirus and firewall.
You can successfully ping the device’s IP address.
You get a blue light on the front panel.
Since you can access the data and ping the device, the device is accessible via your local network.
This pretty much rules out router or cabling problems.
It also demonstrates that the MC hasn’t simply ‘bricked’; it is basically functional.
You cannot access the Dashboard using the URL http:///UI
This suggests that the webserver on the MC is not running properly, for some reason. I’m assuming that the MC uses the apache webserver to provide the Dashboard interface; others may be able to confirm/deny that assumption.
When you run one setup program, it appears as a MyBook Live, but you do not have a MyBook Live on your system.
This is very confusing…
When you run another MyCloud setup program, you cannot connect to the device.
You have tried a 4 second reset.
You have tried a 40 second ‘system restore’:
“held in the pin reset switch , waited 40 seconds and powered up”
Your wording here is a little unclear. The sequence needs to be:
-
press and hold the reset button
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apply power
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continue holding the reset button for 40 seconds
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release the reset button
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allow the MyCloud to boot
This ought to do a system restore, which ought to restart the web server, assuming it has failed.
If this doesn’t work, there may still be options.
I think SSH is enabled by default, so you ought to be able to use PuTTY to SSH into the MC on port 22 (user ‘root’, password ‘welc0me’; yes that’s a zero), and access the linux OS. If you can get in via SSH, there are probably a whole raft of options, such as checking to see if the webserver is running, restarting it, etc. I’m not that familiar with those operations, but others may be able to help. It would probably be something along the lines of ‘service apache status’ and ‘service apache restart’. You might even be able to reboot the device from the command line, using ‘reboot’. Again, I’m not too experienced with this, so others may be able to provide more detail.
I recall seeing a thread on updating the firmware via SSH. If you can upgrade firmware and reboot, this really ought to force a clean system boot. You could use this method to install the latest firmware, rather than downgrading.
http://community.wd.com/t5/WD-My-Cloud/Tutorial-SSH-Method-Downgrade-v4-firmware-to-v3/td-p/812311
Finally, if you cannot get the device working, and you have an email exchange with WD to show that you had problems from the outset, the UK Sale of Goods Act may come to your rescue. SoGA has precedence over warranties, and gives you rights to return items that were faulty from the outset (an ‘inherent fault’). But the contract is with your supplier, not with WD. If you bought the device with a credit or debit card, your bank statement should be adequate proof of purchase. Before you do this, I’d still suggest you try WD Support again.
As for WD’s support, yes, my experience is that they fail to read emails you send them, even in email exchanges. But I understand that there are levels of support, and I suspect I’ve never got past level 1… I have also never tried ringing their support line. And, to be fair, it’s not their fault that your spam filter put their emails in your spam folder…