'Detecting' or 'user name password' error on reconnecting cameras

[leyton01]

I have recently dusted off a DS-7608NI-I2/8P which was in storage for a year. I upgraded the firmware from 4.1.50 to 4.61.010.
I reconnected 7 x DS-2CD2385FWD (with firmware 5.5.82) cameras to it which had been working fine when it was put into storage. All cameras are connected directly to the NVR.
4 of the cameras worked straight away but 3 showed a "Offline (user name or password error)".
I hard reset one of the cameras and reconnected - it then showed "Offline (Detecting...)" and would just sit there. I hooked the reset camera to POE and SADP showed it as "Inactive" - which is correct after the reset. When "Inactive" and connected to the NVR it was just stuck on "detecting". I activated it using the current password of the NVR, and when reconnected it showed the "user name and password" error. I hooked it back up to switch and upgraded the firmware to 5.6.6. Left it as "Inactive" and connected back to NVR - remained as "Offline (Detecting). I activated using the password from the NVR and it went back to "User name or password error".

Not sure where to go from here - I have reset this camera a few times. I have tried manual settings and it shows "network abnormal". I am able to access the camera directly when hooked to the switch but I cannot get it connected to the NVR directly. Any suggestions?

 

[Dan]

Hi @leyton01

So it sounds like when you updated the NVR firmware it has introduced the new strong password feature explained in the below forum post, this feature stops cameras from being activated with a weak password and also stops already activated cameras with weak passwords from being added.

Security Update for Hikvision Systems - Strong Passwords

You may have noticed with recent camera & NVR firmware updates that Hikvision has introduced some new security measures, the most obvious is the addition of security questions (mothers maiden name/first pet/favourite colour/etc..) to help with password recovery, but as well as these more obvious...

forum.use-ip.co.uk

You will need to change the NVR/activation password to a stronger password and then try reconnecting the inactive cameras to the NVR.

 

[leyton01]

I am pretty sure the password I used originally for all cameras and NVR is strong (it showed as such when I tried activating the camera with the same password). As all the cameras were set up originally with the same password it is odd that 4 work and 3 do not. I would have thought it would be all or none. I am going to try setting some static IPs and failing that reset everything and start from scratch (which I was hoping to avoid).

Any traps to watch out for when resetting the NVR to default. Do I need to unlink it first?

 

[Dan]

Hi @leyton01

One other thing to try before resetting the NVR would be to update the cameras, there might be compatibility issues because you are trying to add cameras running 2018 firmware to an NVR running the latest firmware.

The latest firmware for the 2385FWD cameras is v5.6.6 (we would recommend updating each camera to v5.6.1 first and then updating to v5.6.6 because there are some big updates going up to v5.6 and doing it in steps will avoid any glitches)

 

[leyton01]

My first post was quite long but somewhere in that essay I tried to include that step I had taken but probably didn't explain it well - I hooked up all the cameras (they had 5.5.82) and 4 worked. I used the virtual host to upgrade those. One of the ones that didn't work I tried hard reset first ('detecting' the result) and then I hooked up to poe switch and upgraded to 5.6.6 in the web gui directly on the camera. Then reset to default (back to inactive in SADP) and then plugged back into NVR. Still the username and password error. Back to the poe switch, activated with SADP (same strong password as the NVR) and when I plug back into NVR it just says 'detecting'.

 

[Dan]

Have you made sure the channels that are flashing up those error messages are set to Plug & Play when connecting the inactive cameras?

If channels are all Plug & Play then I really stumped why these cameras would not be connecting and I think resetting the NVR will be the only option.

 

[leyton01]

Full reset did the trick - only one hiccup along the way activating Hik-Connect but now all cameras are back up and running and upgraded to the latest firmware. Thank you for all the suggestions - and the useful guides in this forums.

I note that on the new set up it has a different IP address subnet allocation - I am wondering if this is an issue which prevented some of the cameras from connecting.