At this point it really looks more and more like HA issue. I would advise to reinstall HA as your next step.
The router could still technically be the culprit, but what makes this less likely is that you can access the observer page. You can still access it, right?
Two things to double check.
Go into your phone settings and double check your IP. Fing is awesome, but it sometimes holds onto things from old leases.
Can you reset HA companion app, or delete it and redownload it. You shouldn’t need to enter a URL, it should find it if you are on the same network automatically. So I am curious if it can do that.
You forgot the /4 to get the IPV4 address.
ping homeassistant.local /4
This is probably as useless as the service tech asking if it’s plugged in but humor me. On the PC command line, enter “ip”:
C:\Users\steve>ip
Windows IP Configuration
Ethernet adapter Ethernet:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : mynetworksettings.com
IPv6 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 2600:4040:52af:db00:700a:f973:fe5e:9a43
Temporary IPv6 Address. . . . . . : 2600:4040:52af:db00:a1ed:8890:37c6:f8aa
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::cf04:ea0f:1dcd:2faf%7
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.160
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : fe80::7a67:eff:feae:37f2%7
192.168.1.1
Then post the result for the Ethernet adapter. (You did say your PC and the Home Assistant machine are both on Ethernet? If so, you can completely ignore all suggestions regarding WiFi).
Thank you for the suggestions:
"ipconfig" yielded:
Ethernet adapter Ethernet:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : hsd1.tx.comcast.net
IPv6 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 2601:2c1:8b00:4030::9a31
IPv6 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 2601:2c1:8b00:4030:d11f:49fa:329:de03
Temporary IPv6 Address. . . . . . : 2601:2c1:8b00:4030:15ac:4f58:be0f:b5ea
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::ae57:2814:6374:180f%12
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 10.0.0.50
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : fe80::8e6a:8dff:fe53:f376%12
10.0.0.1
"ping homeassistant.local /4" yielded:
Pinging homeassistant.local [10.0.0.82] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 10.0.0.82: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 10.0.0.82: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 10.0.0.82: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 10.0.0.82: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Ping statistics for 10.0.0.82:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms
Does this suggest any new actions?
Also -
I took the m.2 (sata) drive out of the x86 and hooked it up by USB to my WIN11 computer to check and possibly re-etch the program. The drive did not show up on Explorer. In Disk Management, I could see the individual partitions in the listing, but not an entry for the whole drive [like “(D:)”]. Can’t see it in the etcher to re-etch. Not sure how to reformat if I want to re-etch. Works just like before in the X86. I can see Observer, but not HA.
And is port 8123 open?
telnet homeassistant.local 8123
Not sure i know how to use telnet. At the “command” prompt from my WIN11 computer:
“telnet homeassistant.local 8123” yields:
‘telnet’ is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
Telnet is not enabled in Windows by default. To turn it on, go to the Control Panel, select “Programs and Features”, then click on the “Turn Windows features on or off” link on the left side of the window. From here find “Telnet” and turn it on. While you’re at it, enable Windows Subsystem for Linux as well. (Press OK).
From a command line you run: telnet homeassistant.local 8123. And, you will get a blank screen. This is a WTF response that you connected to the server over port 8123. To see what would happen if it does not connect, enter: telnet homeassistant.local 8888 and you will get a “connection failed” error.
If you have enabled “Windows Subsystem for Linux” on your PC, (highly recommended), (or if you have another PC running Linux) you can connect to port 8123 like this. Note, you have to use the server IP because WSL doesn’t do MDNS.
steve@River:~$ telnet 192.168.1.57 8123
Trying 192.168.1.57...
Connected to 192.168.1.57.
Escape character is '^]'.
Connection closed by foreign host.
steve@River:~$
You can see that this connected OK.
From the ha> command line, type
network info
once again. Do not obfuscate the results.
What X86 PC are you installing Home Assistant on? Did you remove the SSD and flash the binary to it using Etcher?
Here’s an exercise just for educational purposes… Download the Ubuntu Install binary (because that’s what I use), and use Etcher to flash it to a USB drive. Your X86 box should boot into Linux. Don’t install, just select “Test Ubuntu”. If the X86 PC will run Ubuntu, it will run Home Assistant. Exercise done.
Thank you for all the advice. I will try the telnet and linux suggestions.
The X86 is a Geekom MiniAir 11 11th Gen Intel Celeron, 256 GB M.2 SSD (website description says PCIe NVMe, but I am almost certain it is SATA. 2 key gaps and runs at about 550 MB/s). I removed the SSD and flashed it with Balena Etcher. I had previously updated WIN 11, just to make certain everything was working. I realized it would be overwritten.
As for “network info”, here is the result. I noticed that when I give the HA computer a command and press ENTER, it repeats on the command line (see “netwonetwork info” on command line when I typed only “network info”). Is that normal?
On any more or less recent Windows ( read: anything Windows 10 or newer) better open Powershell and enter
Test-NetConnection -ComputerName HostnameOrIP -Port 8123 -InformationLevel "Detailed"
No, this is not “normal” (probably a bug in the HA CLI container), but it probably is not related to your problem.
I am currently in exact the same phase as you: I installed a fresh copy of HAOS (haos_generic-x86-64-10.4.img) on a new x86 (Intel NUC), and I see exactly the same scrambled text: “netwonetwork info” when I type “network info”, but I can normally connect to the HA instance via a browser.
The ha command line is the Home Assistant Supervisor CLI.
When you type “–h” you will get an overview of the available commands you can use.
One of the commands for the CLI is host, and when you type “host –h” you will see that to shut down the computer you can type “host shutdown”.
Just to be sure: you were referring to being able to reboot the computer, but did you already do this once?
This because I found one case in the forums with a very similar problem, and the solution appeared to be to reboot the computer.
Thanks for the info. Could you provide an example of the actual command? I’ve looked at the help for that command, but I can’t seem to figure out the exact information and syntax. I’ve been trying things like:
tnc -10.0.0.82 - http://10.0.0.82:8123 -detailed
try
tnc -ComputerName 10.0.0.82 -Port 8123 -InformationLevel "Detailed"
Computername is the name of the parameter, followed by the name the computer you want to check
Armin
Thank you for the shutdown command. I have been shutting down by unplugging. Yes, I have shutdown and rebooted a number of times.
I tried to re-etch the HA program, but could not get the SSD to show up in Windows File Explorer (so also not in Balena Etcher). In Disk Management, I could see the partitions, but not a “whole disk” entry. Did not figure out how to re-format or initialize so I could re-etch. Suggestions? Otherwise, I think I drop about $20 and get a new SSD and etch the program on it to verify it isn’t a program problem.
Thank you. Here is the result:
PS C:\Users\louis> tnc -ComputerName 10.0.0.82 -Port 8123 -InformationLevel “Detailed” WARNING: TCP connect to (10.0.0.82 : 8123) failed
ComputerName : 10.0.0.82
RemoteAddress : 10.0.0.82
RemotePort : 8123
NameResolutionResults : 10.0.0.82
homeassistant
MatchingIPsecRules :
NetworkIsolationContext : Internet
IsAdmin : False
InterfaceAlias : Ethernet
SourceAddress : 10.0.0.50
NetRoute (NextHop) : 0.0.0.0
PingSucceeded : True
PingReplyDetails (RTT) : 0 ms
TcpTestSucceeded : False
Initially I just answered because of the recommendation to install and use “telnet” and a standard Windows meanwhile has better builtin methods 
this Windows computer was not able to connect to your home assistant on 10.0.0.82 Port 8123, but there is something at this IP-Address because the ping worked. And the connection is via Ethernet Cable
Two things are bit unusual in your setup:
the NetworkIsolationContext is “Internet”, usually this would be “Private Network”. In this case builtin Windows Firewall applies a different set of rules for inbound and outbound connections
you might want to switch off the windows firewall to check, but if the result is the same immediately switch it on again.
Do you have any other security software installed? Such software is usually labeled “Anti Virus”, but some of these packages install additional filters for inbound and outbound network traffic
The other is the IP-Address range provided by your router, via DHCP it provides IP-Adresses in the 10.0.0.0/24 network ( 10.0.0.1 to 10.0.0.254 are considered to be within the same network and can be reached with a router), typical routers for home us are more likely to use 192.168.x.y/24. But this is really just unusual, it is configured correctly. Might be a Comcast thing…
Next step would to verify that Homeassistant itself was started correctly, that would of course a reason why you can’t connect on 8123
But here I can’t really help with the commands to check, I’m using a different installation method for HA ( Standard Linux on Raspberry with HA Core in a Python Venv)
$20 for an M.2 2280 PCIe/SATA SSD? Wow, prices have dropped since I last ordered any.
In Windows use Partition Manager to delete all partitions on the old SSD then create one NTFS partition. Etcher will then see the whole partition.
Unlikely to be a firewall issue since he gets the same results from two different PCs and browsers.
I was also thrown by the IP range since I am in the US. Most home routers here use the 192.168.1.xxx range while Europe routers use 10.0.xxx.xxx.
I am ready to tell him to start over and flash the binary again. He only has time to lose at this point.
