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Several years ago I used a small Acer Windows Home Server. I have not used this device in years. Now I would like to access it again to see what data is still on it.

Beside some USB ports its offers only an Ethernet port. No display or other output.

So, accessing it via network is the only way to go. However, I have no idea how the server is configured. How can I find out which IP the home server uses?

  • The current network uses a AVM FritzBox as router and DHCP server. All connected devices are supplied with IP Addresses within 192.168.1.x
  • When connecting the Home Server to the router, it does not show up in the list of connected devices. So I suspect it does not use DHCP but a fixed IP address within different subnet, e.g. 192.168.2.x which the router does not see.

Within the 192.168.2.x network I can use Windows and macOS clients. Is there any command/tool I could use on these devices to find the Home Server IP?

I could also connect a Windows or macOS computer directly to the Home Server (without the router in between). Is there any command/tool which can be used in this setup to find the Home Server IP?

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  • In any solution that exists you need to know the IP address of the device, if you don’t know it, there really isn’t a solution to your problem. If it’s set to a static IP address, you could try scanning the network using an appropriate third party tool, but it will be random luck if you don’t have some idea of what the address is. You also need to be on the same subnet as the device. Best bet use a extremely cheap GPU to get a display and verify that it’s even booted into Windows
    – Ramhound
    Aug 16, 2022 at 12:17
  • Windows - try Advanced IP Scanner (Famatech) to see what you have.
    – John
    Aug 16, 2022 at 12:18
  • Alternately, mount the drive in a different machine if all you want to do is check the data on it
    – squillman
    Aug 16, 2022 at 12:26
  • Because its a server, it is also likely that it is a DHCP server. If you connect any computer to a switch and to that server, the computer should get an IP address from the server and an ipconfig on the computer will then tell you all you need to know. Alternatively you can choose to temporarily disable the DHCP server on the router and reboot a computer to see if it gets a new ip address.
    – LPChip
    Aug 16, 2022 at 13:05

1 Answer 1

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One way I sometimes use to find the IP address of unknown devices is to connect it to the network, and just start dumping all packets on the network. Most devices (especially Windows computers) send out a ton of unsolicited broadcast information (netbios, device discovery, mdns, etc.) and ARP requests. As long as the device is connected to the same physical network, you can identify the IP that way.

  1. Connect the device to the network
  2. Download and install Wireshark
  3. Filter for only ARP traffic (filter: arp) or filter all traffic not in the current subnet (filter: not (ip.src==192.168.1.0/24 or ip.dst==192.168.1.0/24))

After that:

  1. Set your local IP to something in that subnet
  2. Log in to the machine (RDP or whatever you set up)
  3. Change it's IP address or activate the DHCP client

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