i was finishing tidying up the closet and one cable pulled out of the nvr, the little tab on the RJ45 broke off. i waited a few minutes before i plugged it back in and that's when the sh!t hit the fan. cam3 is a success. instead of rebooting , i clicked shutdown, waited a minute, turned off the switch on the back of the nvr, unplugged all cameras, turned it on, waited about 3 minutes, and added a cam into port1, waited 3 minutes, added cam2, etc... so far this is the only method of adding cameras, i'll wait a few more mins and add cam5 as long as cam4 is a success. then i'll have to babysit it for a few to make sure they stay online. if they stay, then i'll disconnect the lan and plug it direct into my laptoop and then goto live view, edit the IVS, etc and see if i get a live view.