My Windows Home Server is driving me crazy

About a year ago after a catastrophic data loss from my wife’s computer (which I’ll admit was largely my fault for not having a recent backup) I bought a Windows Home Server.  I have the HP EX490 and when I first set it up, did everything it was advertised to do flawless.  The setup was simple, setting up backups of all of our computers (6 of them) just worked, I had a ton of storage where I could put photos and videos – life was good from a home IT perspective.

I am not exactly sure when but several months ago I realized I was no longer able to connect to my WHS using the Windows Home Server Connector client.  This was annoying but not a complete show stopper as I was able to login via Remote Desktop Connection and everything looks pretty good.  Backups were still running, I was still able to access the shared drives normally, etc.  Just the WHS Connector wasn’t working.

Earlier this week my wife was telling the “backup disaster” story to an acquaintance and I decided to check and make sure everything is a-ok.  Much to my chagrin, it isn’t a-ok.  About two weeks ago backups stopped running! My WHS can’t seem to see all of the clients even though they are all on the same sub-net.  Every computer on the backup list is greyed out like it is offline.

I am having a real hard time finding any information online to help me sort this out and it is driving me crazy.  As best I can tell the first problem started when I switched from Time-Warner Cable Internet to AT&T Uverse.  I am not sure why this would matter since all of the PCs are still behind a router but I can’t think of anything else.  I also installed the McAfee anti-virus that comes on the HP WHS – maybe that has something to do with it as I had not installed it originally when I set it up.

I am running out of ideas – I really don’t want to reinitialize the whole thing again as I have a lot of data on the shared drives that I’d have to “park” somewhere until it was set up again.