Unfortunately, swapping the i-button, and the hard drive did not work for me. After waiting 15 minutes, there was no activity on the RS232, and I couldn't even ping the IP address despite having activity on the LAN port. There was red alarm on the front panel.
As soon as we installed the original i-button, and the hard drive, we were able to get ESM access, and RS232 activity.
Did I need to do an extra step?