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Forum Discussion
Why can't I get support? Ticket 16849963
here are the facts:
1) June 14 2011 bought new NV+ and 4 Barracuda 2TB HD from Fry's, checked compatibility list they should work.
2) Spent a week setting it up and some other equipment. Mixed Windows 7 and XP so it took a while to get all the computers to play nicely. The NV+ was on and off the network. I attributed it to my Windows issues, especially the failed homegroup vs XP issues. Eventually I gave up and went all Win7.
3) July 4 weekend began moving my movie collection to the NV+, only transferred for 4 hours and the NV+ went off the network.
4) Multiple tries with Windows configurations (again figuring that was the problem) but the NV+ was unhappy, never more than a handful of movies would transfer. Once on the NV+ they sorted, played and were happy.
5) Tech friend that has an NV+ said that many files may need more RAM - back to Fry's and in four more trips I got RAM that passed testing. Tested all next night and it passed.
6) Slowly transferred the rest of the movies. I have Gigabit network and it was going slow Ethernet speeds. 1.8 TB in three shots got most of them on the NV+.
7) August 7 NV+ off line, reboot restored the NV+to the network.
9) August 12 NV+ off line, reboot restored it and I started looking for reasons here in the forums. Most common reason seemed to be DHCP server not available at the end of the NV+ lease. I increased the DHCP lease time.
10) August 14 NV+ off line. Interesting, the lease was not up so DHCP was not looking like a problem.
11) August 16 NV+ off line again. One more time to be sure.
12) August 20 NV+ off line. Might have been earlier, but I had to travel for work. Still just under the 96 hour DHCP lease time.
13) August 26 NV+ off line. Again might have been earlier. Called tech support and gave up after half an hour trying to get through.
14) Sept 10 NV+ off line. No idea when as I was away from home working.
15) Sept 15 got through to Tech support tier one and they said "although the warranty is five years that is only on hardware, if you have a configuration or software problem we cannot help you after 90 days". Tech suggested reading more of these forums.
16) Now pretty fed up so I am not dedicating a lot of time to this, tried a bunch of ideas I read here, none worked.
17) Oct 5 day off work so I called Tech support, same litany "we cannot help you ... software". Name calling worked to get me a case number and tier 2 support, unfortunately 10 minutes on hold and voice mail asking my case number. No call back in 3 hours of waiting.
18) posting this in hopes NETGEAR or a user actually wants to help.
$1,000 in hardware that I need to boot up every time I want to use it is not much of an NAS.
1) June 14 2011 bought new NV+ and 4 Barracuda 2TB HD from Fry's, checked compatibility list they should work.
2) Spent a week setting it up and some other equipment. Mixed Windows 7 and XP so it took a while to get all the computers to play nicely. The NV+ was on and off the network. I attributed it to my Windows issues, especially the failed homegroup vs XP issues. Eventually I gave up and went all Win7.
3) July 4 weekend began moving my movie collection to the NV+, only transferred for 4 hours and the NV+ went off the network.
4) Multiple tries with Windows configurations (again figuring that was the problem) but the NV+ was unhappy, never more than a handful of movies would transfer. Once on the NV+ they sorted, played and were happy.
5) Tech friend that has an NV+ said that many files may need more RAM - back to Fry's and in four more trips I got RAM that passed testing. Tested all next night and it passed.
6) Slowly transferred the rest of the movies. I have Gigabit network and it was going slow Ethernet speeds. 1.8 TB in three shots got most of them on the NV+.
7) August 7 NV+ off line, reboot restored the NV+to the network.
9) August 12 NV+ off line, reboot restored it and I started looking for reasons here in the forums. Most common reason seemed to be DHCP server not available at the end of the NV+ lease. I increased the DHCP lease time.
10) August 14 NV+ off line. Interesting, the lease was not up so DHCP was not looking like a problem.
11) August 16 NV+ off line again. One more time to be sure.
12) August 20 NV+ off line. Might have been earlier, but I had to travel for work. Still just under the 96 hour DHCP lease time.
13) August 26 NV+ off line. Again might have been earlier. Called tech support and gave up after half an hour trying to get through.
14) Sept 10 NV+ off line. No idea when as I was away from home working.
15) Sept 15 got through to Tech support tier one and they said "although the warranty is five years that is only on hardware, if you have a configuration or software problem we cannot help you after 90 days". Tech suggested reading more of these forums.
16) Now pretty fed up so I am not dedicating a lot of time to this, tried a bunch of ideas I read here, none worked.
17) Oct 5 day off work so I called Tech support, same litany "we cannot help you ... software". Name calling worked to get me a case number and tier 2 support, unfortunately 10 minutes on hold and voice mail asking my case number. No call back in 3 hours of waiting.
18) posting this in hopes NETGEAR or a user actually wants to help.
$1,000 in hardware that I need to boot up every time I want to use it is not much of an NAS.
24 Replies
Replies have been turned off for this discussion
- Did you try assigning a static IP address?
- Yes, set it to 192.168.1.69 and even changed the network to 10.10.1.xx to no avail. I also set a persistent IP for the NV+ MAC on the DHCP server, still not more than 2 days up time.
Tech support call 3 today got me through to tier 2. He suggested a direct connect, no network except the computer and the NV+. I have not seen that suggestion before and will give it a try. - If you have the problem with a static address, then it seems to me that it cannot be related to DHCP lease time.
i - I did not see any post about an issue with the NV+ dropping off the network prior to this. I learned over a year ago thanks to posts by several senior members on this forum that any time you have any potential network issue that the only way to resolve it is to do a direct connect. It most certainly is not normal for a NV+ (or any other ReadyNAS) to drop off the network at any time. I have a 4+ year old NV+ and it went years without a reboot or any network problem while running mixed XP and Vista and then XP and Win 7 machines. Your issue may take a little longer to resolve than mine (instantly obvious once I did a direct connect) for you will have to wait until days pass.
If you have a ticket number, please edit your first post in this thread and append the case # to the subject line.
As to the tech support refusing support because of "software", which software - RAIDiator? They should support that. Windows 7 - nonsense. My NV+ has never dropped off line and I connect with three Win 7 HP 64bit machines.
I would ask what anti-virus/anti-software applications you are running? For reference on all my machines I am running Avast! anti-virus and SuperAntiSpyware anti-spyware in the active mode on all my machines.
Keep us appraised of the responses. - Like PapaBear said, this is not common. Typically, a drop can be due to a bad cable (try replacing it and see if that helps) or a flaky router (try connecting to another port on the router or try resetting the router). Direct-connect testing allows you to narrow the problem to whether any switch or router may be causing the problem, but it looks like it takes several days before you hit it, so I'm not sure if you're willing to be direct-connect mode for that long.
- Thanks Yoh-dah.
I figure if I cannot tolerate a few days direct connect I am not doing my part to find out what is wrong.
Also, I am running Win7 so hooking the NV+ to a laptop means I can wireless to the homenetwork and direct to the NV+ then bridge for no loss in functionality.
Running Avast! free version on all machines. - Almost a week now with direct connect to the laptop with bridge to my home network. I am using the same cable I used when the NV+ was connected to the switch. No problems other than SSLLOOWW file access.
What should I try next?
I am off to post on the iTunes forums - 28 hours to scan 1600 tunes sound a bit much to you? They are on the NV+ and I lost all my music with the upgrade to iOS 5. DOA wrote: Almost a week now with direct connect to the laptop with bridge to my home network. I am using the same cable I used when the NV+ was connected to the switch. No problems other than SSLLOOWW file access.
What should I try next?
Take a look at the network errors in FrontView's Network page. See if the counts keep growing even with direct-connect, or whether the counts remain pretty stable. Then compare this when you've connected the ReadyNAS to your switch/router. The best way to diagnose the problem is to introduce each new device to the network one at a time and see which one causes the problem.- Network page has:
Interfaces (incorrectly labled matching tab is Ethernet)
Global Settings
WINS
DHCP
Found the button to display the page "Network errors" under the Network page, Ethernet tab at the top.
Auto-negotiation 2
Bad packets 5
Disconnect 0
False carrier 1
Idle errors 255
Link failures 0
Receive errors 9679
Symbol errors 0
VLAN tags 0
TCP Retransmits 94398
Unrecovered TCP Retransmits 473
they don't seem to be mounting up too fast considering the traffic.
BTW, no problems with the bridged set up. When I have time I will try other configurations. - I have to eat those last words, Wifey bought me a new iPhone. I set it up and iTunes seems to have issues with the NV+ or the bridge.
Auto-negotiation 0
Bad packets 0
Disconnect 0
False carrier 0
Idle errors 0
Link failures 0
Receive errors 0
Symbol errors 0
VLAN tags 0
TCP Retransmits 5979
Unrecovered TCP Retransmits 188
Errors do not look out of line for 5 hours of copying, but for some reason iTunes spends 3 minutes out of every 5 just sitting there. I am thinking it cannot reliably find the NV+ to get the music.
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