After trying every possible option (direct connect, different browsers, accessing from different systems like Windows and Linux) I decided to take an older version of the software, which had already proven to work in the past and installed that from CD.
Now I can access the WebGUI again and manage the NAS, but I'm back to version 4.21.NE00000000.2745
Still baffeled about the cause of all the problems. Hopefully a solution will come in a future update.
I originally had version 5.0 and that was the cause of all my problems (and this thread). I've also reflashed the DOM with ver 5.0, which didn't work.
Now back to ver 4.21 it does work. So I'm not going to install ver 5.0. A newer version would be a possibility, but definately not the current 5.0
Updated to 5.0 - same problem as the original post.
Seems to be an SSL certificate issue on the Open-E box. Looked everywhere in the console for something that might help - closest I could find is when I update the time it asks if I want to update the "certificate" (SSL certificate? who knows...). But doing so doesn't help in any way.
Using the 4.x ISO download, burn to CD, boot, install - didn't solve the problem. I still can't access the HTTPS interface (SSL certificate has invalid signature - immediately fails on Firefox, times out on IE7 but the page title does come up in the browser window) and the SMB service isn't responding, locking me out of the shares.