MS Windows Home Server

Beta 2 of BitDefender Total Security 2009 has just been released  and includes an enhanced feature set:

• Online Backup: BitDefender 2009 offers users the ability to backup sensitive data online to ensure it is secure if something goes wrong – like your computer is stolen or a hard drive failure. Unlike competitive offerings, BitDefender Online Backup offers incremental, versioned and differentiated backup modes to better meet customer’s specific needs.
• Increased Privacy Protection through Instant Messaging Encryption: Supporting Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger, BitDefender 2009 ensures that no one can eavesdrop on instant messaging traffic between two PCs with BitDefender installed
• Increased Storage Protection with File Vault: With BitDefender 2009 File Vault, a secured storage space for personal information or sensitive files kept locally in your computer, encrypted data is stored that is invulnerable to theft or to a security breach.
• Improved Integrated Online Security: BitDefender Total Security 2009 provides users a full range of proactive protection technologies for secure everyday online activities such as banking, shopping, browsing or socializing. Web, email and Instant messaging traffic are now scanned in real-time for viruses, spyware, phishing and identity theft attempts.
• More control via Home Network Management: For home users, BitDefender 2009 provides the ability to manage the security of a home network from a single location. BitDefender software from other computers in the network can be remotely configured, while tasks such as scans, tune-ups and updates can be scheduled and run.
• Other Improvements include: an improved Gamer mode, a Laptop mode, increased performance with lower resources consumption, enhanced usability, and firewall (IDS and IPv6 support) support.

Make sure you work through the test cases, but hurry as you only have 9 days left to beta test! and thanks to The Home Server Show for the heads up.

To download beta 2 or to sign up for the beta program, do so here.

Beta 2 of F-Secure Home Server Security is now available for download which includes the following enhancements and bug fixes:

Enhancements:

• Sidegrade – conflicting products are automatically detected and the user is prompted to uninstall a conflicting product before proceeding with installation.
• Configurable notifications – it is now possible to configure when the product sends notifications to the user via Windows Home Server Connector.

Bug fixes

• Subscription cannot be activated if the keycode has not been validated within 7 days [59588]
• Infected files are deleted on a removable drive even if the action is set to “Quarantine automatically” [59678]
• Error 1392 is shown when trying to open the quarantine [59748]
• Incorrect notification is sent when the product malfunctions [59808]
• Excluded file types are not removed as they should [59824]
• The Apply button does not work in F-Secure settings dialog [59826]
• “Not enough memory” error is reported to the event log while scanning a file [59958]
• F-Secure settings get reset when other WHS settings are changed [59964]
• FSHSS causes Remote Desktop connection to terminate [59965]
• Some typos in the Settings dialog [59993]
• Real-time scanning and automatic updates turn off without user actions [60001]
• Quick check in the Scan wizard always shows 0 viruses found [59725]
• The product may get malfunction after Scheduled scanning is enabled [59742]
• Pressing “Check now” link doesn’t show any results [59686]
• Scan archives setting is not available on the manual tab page in F-Secure settings [59986]

Existing testers will receive an email with download locations whilst new users wishing to apply for the beta program can do so here.

Another Windows Vista Sidebar gadget for Windows Home Server users. This two in one gadget enables quick access to the shared files by clicking on one of the six icons which will open Windows Explorer to the share in question.

The other feature is the ability to to drag and drop files onto the gadget’s various icons and thus into the appropriate share automatically.

All the details are here.

Donavon West from Home Server Hacks has written a headline ticket sidebar gadget for Windows Vista. Called Home Server Blogs it scrolls scrolls news headlines on your desktop just like on the bottom of your television screen from mswhs.com, the Windows Home Server Team Blog, We Got Served and Home Server Hacks.

If you left click on mthe gadgets “orb” and you have the WHS Connector software installed, a popup menu will appear that contains a menu of shortcuts to common WHS tasks like: opening the Windows Home Server Console,  Backup Now and opening common shared folders.

Other features are included which can be seen here along with the download.

PerfectDisk 2008 Service Pack 2 (Build 52) is now available for download. As well as bug fixes, boot time defragmentation performance has been significantly improved.

You can “Check For Updates” under the Product Resources tab in PerfectDisk, or wait for for the Autoupdate.

New Feature

• Improved boot time defragmentation performance — up to 5 times faster. Results will vary based on number of files, file sizes and drive size.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed boot time defrag issue on very large drives.
• Occasionally boot time defragmentation passes cannot move a file. Changes were made to minimize this condition.
• A change was made to the boot time defragmentation code to work around changes in Vista SP1. Previously, user may have received a driver conflict message and the boot-time defragmentation pass was skipped.
• When querying files with more than 1000 names, PD91Engine may sometimes crash. This has been fixed.
• During a boot time defragmentation pass on Vista, the computer sometimes failed to reboot after the defragmentation pass completed. This has been fixed.
• Fixed defragmentation schedules that would run “in series” while scheduled “in parallel”.
• Added to the Excluded Files tab all files excluded from defragmentation by default.
• Formatted the display of file and drive sizes as xxx.xx.
• Put a higher resolution PerfectDisk icon that is displayed when switching applications via Alt-Tab.
• The file $Secure:$SDS is no longer excluded from online defragmentation.
• Fixed inconsistencies and omissions in PerfectDisk’s Support Info.
• Fixed negative value of Number of Clusters on the Drive Properties dialog.
• Fixed not working “?” (Help) icons.
• Fixed statistics errors saved to a file in File Organization Summary section.
• Fixed network port configuration via Config.ini file.
• Fixed find files selection on the drive map for small (~300Mb) drives.

A beta of a security suite specifically for Windows Home Server users is available from F-Secure. Home Server Security beta protects Windows Home Server against all kinds of malicious content, such as viruses, worms, Trojans, spyware and riskware.

Installation, configuration and management is performed through the Windows Home Server Console and notifications are sent through the WHS Connector. As a benefit F-Secure would like to offer the following to beta participants:

• An early preview of upcoming features and the ability to provide feedback on how to improve the features.
• A free twelve-month F-Secure Home Server Security subscription for users who send us invaluable feedback.
• Power of influence: you can be part of making the best-of-breed security solutions.

F-Secure Home Server Security provides real-time scanning, whenever files are accessed on Windows Home Server, they are automatically scanned for viruses and spyware and with manual and scheduled scanning also being supported, the whole system or selected folder(s) can be checked by user request or on a defined schedule.

Infected files, spyware and other potentially unsafe files can be placed in quarantine where they can be reviewed, restored from and deleted and virus and spyware definition databases as well as software updates are received and applied automatically via automatic updates.

Easy to install and easy to use, quick setup and minimum configuration enables a simple deployment.

Release notes in RTF format are available for download from here and those interested in signing up for the beta program can do so from here. For instructions on how to install F-Secure Home Server Security, see the Quick Installation Guide and the F-Secure Home Server Security forum.

File Alert Monitor is a Windows application, which will display a pop-up Window or optionally play an audio alert whenever your home server files are created or updated by monitoring specified directories on your server.

Within the options of this freeware application the user can specify which events (creation, update and / or deletion) are to be monitored. Additionally, users may specify which file types are to be monitored, by specification of the appropriate file suffix(s).

http://www.phoneinbuddy.com/FAM_main.htm

The defragmentation tool PerfectDisk 2008 has been updated to build 43. The following features and fixes are for all versions of PerfectDisk 2008. eg Professional, Server,  WHS etc:

UPDATE: Build 43/Service Pack 1 of PerfectDisk 2008 has been temporarily pulled. You will not see this if you try to update now. A new build and service pack will be coming shortly.

The blog “Bite my bytes” has details on their particular Windows Home Server setup and lists third party software that they use including Hamachi, FolderShare and TrueCrypt. They also use mRemote to remote access their WHS, instead of using the default option.

The blog entry.

If one of your client computers is an XP machine then there is a newer version of the Remote Desktop Client which is used if you want to remote desktop into the Home Server machine. It has been available as an Optional Software Update at the Windows Update site but for those of you that want the link it is available from Microsoft.