Hi AdamBC - by sheer coincidence I only just unwrapped my ancient 4TB MBWE II from storage yesterday.
It followed me in an international move and hasn’t seen light of day or a power cord for 9+yrs so I really wasn’t sure what to expect (tho I knew it was in a ‘ran when parked’ condition all those years ago).
Anyway, for the most part my experience started out similarly to yours… it ‘seemed’ to power up OK (not that I could remember what the normal boot up sequence and lights were meant to be like) but I could not access it on my regular LAN.
Luckily tho, I noticed that one of my reliable network devices kept disappearing off the network whenever I plugged in the MBWE which led me to suspect an IP conflict.
I took it off the LAN and connected directly to it from my laptop with manually configured IP’s and confirmed that all those years ago I’d set it up with a static IP and it was indeed conflicting on my regular network.
That finally provided me with access to the webUI where I was insanely surprised that my second guess at the (decently complex) admin password was correct!
I switched it back to a DHCP assigned config and it is now living happily on my regular network.
In the process tho, I had noted that there was absolutely no access to the network shares and there was no obvious reason why (the webUI suggested everything was in order).
A quick search revealed that the issue was indeed what Joey Smyth called out in his post - Windows 10 will not establish a connection with old SMB1 shares by default.
This is easily remedied by enabling it via the “Turn Windows Features on or off” control panel option (Google if you need more detail here).
TLDR:
-
If you’re seeing the device obtain an IP from your DHCP server via ethernet, try to connect to the webUI using both http:// and https:// and direct IP rather than the hostname.
-
If device is not seen on your network or webUI can’t be accessed, connect 1:1 with a PC and manually configured network (this is probably only useful if you have idea of the original LAN it was used on - in my case I’ve only ever used 10.1.1.* networks for home use so I had some idea it would be there somewhere). It might not hurt to disable any firewall/security software you’re running and try a couple different browsers if you’re still having issues at this point.
I use Kaspersky Total Security and find it to be a nuisance for local addresses (even with exclusions in play) and it interacts differently with different browsers.
You might also want to play with some of the ‘finder’ apps from WD if you’re really stuck here - tho I can’t speak to how useful they are.
-
If you have no access to the network shares, verify via the webUI that they still exist and the various services are running. If there are no obvious issues there, verify SMB1 capability is enabled on the PC you’re using (for Win10, this is 100% disabled by default so will need enabled).
The 3 steps above restored my MBWE back to its full functionality after sitting in storage for 9yrs… the caveat to “full” functionality being that it is still as unremarkable, disappointing and frustrating as it was from new.
In a moment of sheer hilarity, I ran into some other issues yesterday that I started Googling for and found myself on these forums reading through someone else’s experience that were identical to what I was seeing. Turns out that “someone else” was actually me from 2010 complaining about the same issue that still exists with the device lol…
I even promised that I would move onto Netgear and Synology as a result of the horrendous experience with the MBWE and WD support… 10yrs later and I exclusively have Netgear and QNAP products (Netgear was decent but the last 8yrs have been with QNAP where the products and support have been terrific).
I’ve never purchased another WD product outside of HGST HDD’s…
Good luck with reviving the unit and getting a look into the time capsule 
I’ll try and keep tabs on this thread if you keep posting - I understand not wanting to get beaten so I’ll happily try and help your cause where I can!
