I have an NEC Electra Elite 192.

Our VMS 4 voicemail locks up every day. Our solution has been to reset the phone system (power on/off).

What is wrong with the voicmail. What should we do?

The hard drive is failing on your VMS. Exiting to DOS & running some disc utilities will sometimes buy a little time. This happens after the unit is 3-5 years old. Contact your vender for a replacement. If you would like to check my prices email me.

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Bound to cover,
Just a little more ground.

there is also some issues with some versions of the software.

nec has an upgrade (if it's not already) supposedly to fix the lockups

but the doc is right! i've been on 3 vms lockup service calls this week alone! 2 the drives were dead (damn ibm drives!).........

what about the FMS 4 Voicemail. Do you recommend we switch to one of those?

there was a time in the fms world where the batch of compact flash drives nec was using was a bad lot. then they switched back to sandisk cf drives and all was better.

there are several updates to the fms as well to help with various things. all in all they are pretty good as long as you know it will NEVER handle over 40 mailboxes.

the next step was the cms vm's. kinda a stripped down fms. no softkeys and no live record were a couple of things they didn't have i think. also cf based


the vmp line (the latest thing) are pretty reliable. they are also cf based unless you pay the big bucks to get the hd based one.

Have you connected with Cosessions to see what may be going on?

DOC IS RIGHT, IF HD FINALLY FAILS PUR SW SWITCHS 2 AND 4 ON THEN REST VM WHEN VM HD STOPS DO A LOCAL CONNECT, SCAN DISK AND REPAIR DATA BASE ERROR UTILITIES ARE IN ORDER.I DID THIS TO AN FMS AND IT HAS WORKED FINE FOR OVER 21YEAR NOW, IF VM IS UNDER WARRENTY HAVE YOUR SUPPLIER REPLACE.

You run a scandisk on an FMS?

Also, any idea if I can a new HDD for the VMS-4? Is it easily replaced?

I am assuming it is the HDD that is bad?

sure you can run scandisk on a fms!

nec (or a nec dealer) can send you a new drive for your vms. it's just a plug-n-play replacement for the one that's in there.

i've replaced the VMS with an FMS and it still locked up after 2 days.

What do I need to do?

what's your 1-8-11 set for?

i wish I knew what that was! Can you explain, email me offline if you wish.

do you think that there could be a problem with the FMS, the cabinet or the slot.

currently the fms is in slot 3 on the second cabinet. this is where the old VMS was located.

nah...the fms & vms can reside in any slot except for the isa slot.

1-8-11 is the system refresh timer. by default it is set for 4 hours. every 4 hours the cpu will do a reset if the system is idle. this in turn will reset all cards in the system. not too bad right?! it will reset all phones volume to the default and their ringer settings too if i remember right. BUT it resets the vm card WITHOUT shutting it down 1st. nec likes their vm's to be shut down in order to avoid data corruption.

1>go to station 100
2>feature
3>hold
4>#0*
5>hit the 1st clear button
6>hit the 8th clear button
7>type 11 on the keypad
8>display should show:
11:refresh ???
9>speaker to get out

what's the ???
if it's 4hr i'd turn it off unless you had a acd+ card in your system.

do steps 1-8
9>hit 1st clear button
10>display should show:
11:refresh non
11>transfer to write
12>speaker to get out

since it happens every day, see if it happens after that. if not, then the reset every 4 hours was the problem.
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side note....if you have to reset your system, turn off the vm 1st.

on the vm card is a little black slide switch. flip it down to turn off. reset system. then turn it back on.

the system never reset itself when we had the VMS so I don't think that was the problem.

Can the error log or the usage log reports be of any use to us to determine why the system locked up?

FYI

NEC WILL HAVE A TIM ON THIS SOON:

ALL VMS/FMS/CMS/VMP software should program the following block in memory (It's not documented)...

The block pertains to enhanced AAInfo - Set it to yes or no.

The value should be set to 0 = NEW AAINFO

The only NEC Inskin boards that should have the KSU programmed up with a value set to 1 = OLD AAINFO are the ECTI boards.

HOW TO CHECK AAINFO VALUE

1) Enter Program mode and press LK 8 then LK 7

2) Go to memory location C3F88E by pressing [redial], 3,3, [redial], 6,8,8, [redial], 5, [transfer]

3) Values for this memory area:
a. 0 = New AA-info
b. 1 = Old AA-info

4) Press [transfer] to write new value

When it's programed correctly:

C3F88E 00 = should be on the display once it's set.

C3F88E FF = is old AA Info

Chris,

Just thought I'd follow up on this statement because it was alarming ... Have you actually seen the board reboot as if you reset the BCLR switch?

From what I understand by discussing your observations with the development team, upon receiving the signal from the refresh timer, it does NOT shut down voicemail abrutly. Upon receiving this refresh timer and the system is idle the ONLY thing it should be doing on the Inskin boards is having the BICOM voice port driver resynch to the KSU.

i've never actually seen it (never sure when that 4hr time is up) but from what it does to the phones (reset the volume etc) it's just like hitting the reset button

Hittin the reset button on the CPU card?

I was connected via CoSession and hit the reset button on my CPU card and Voicemail stayed up but I did see some of the LEDs for the 2 channel card I have as a test machine turn on, then off ... Would be my guess the BICOM drivers detect the reset of the CPU card and then reset (resynch?) the drivers on the Inswitch board.

Do let me know if you see otherwise in the field. Thanks




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NEC Unified Solutions / Voice Mail and Unified Messaging | Active Voice, LLC

as a follow up to the beginning posts, what happens if all 4 ports of your FMS are busy, will the outside caller hear a busy signal or a ring no answer?

customer still complains the system locks up. I really doubt it, though.

ring no answer

can I make an overflow point for this vm hunt group?

you can add onto the hunt sequence.

in 4-15 you build the hunt.
the 1st port of the vm forwards to the 2nd.
the 2nd to the 3d. and so on...how long depends on how many ports of vm you have. usually the end vm port forwards back to the 1st.

so instead of this, you can point it somewhere else.

this way if all 4 ports are busy it will roll to the operator say or whatever.

duh! thanks chris.

no problem.........anytime!

I have had problems with VMS's if you forget to set the message callback option to off in the class of service for the voice mail ports.. What happens is that the caller in someone's voice mail dials # thinking they are by passing their greeting, if I remember right ## I think is the feature code for message callback. Anyway it locks up the port. I removed this option from all of my VMS's and I have not had a lockup since.. Just my 2 cents..