HP SlowDown
Have you experienced a slow down to your HP MediaSmart Server after installing PP1 and the 2 HP downloads McAfee’s Total Protection Service and PacketVideo’s PVConnect Media Server?
A number of users have experienced slowdowns due to the PVConnect media indexing task, which runs after installation, compounded by McAfee’s on-access malware protection (per disk-read basis), which makes the disks in the server thrash non-stop. This brings the performance of the entire server down to a crawl and makes the console open extremely slow or completely disappear (crash) when clicking the add-in tabs.
So Why’s It Happening?
The minimum system requirements for the 2 add-ins are an Intel® Pentium® processor or compatible and 64MB RAM (512MB recommended for servers) for McAfee’s Total Protection Service and a Intel® Pentium® 4 processor or compatible (1.6ghz+) 512MB RAM for the PacketVideo’s PVConnect Media Server software. Now after a reboot and at rest, the HP MediaSmart Server has only about 200MB of physical memory available. Installing the add-ins, thus caused the mentioned problems due to lack of sufficient memory.
The Solution
Leave the PVConnect add-in to do its thing and complete its indexing of all your media files, but beware, this has been known to take more than 24 hours to complete and during that time the console can become completely unusable. Meaning, if you did want to uninstall the add-ins during that time you would have to remote desktop onto the server, and launch the console from there to get access to the Settings page to remove PVConnect and McAfee, followed by a reboot to return the server to a usable state.
You could also either uninstall both add-ins, or just McAfee itself, which some users are reporting cures the problem. If you would rather keep them both, then the only real solution is to install more RAM and/or tweak the virtual memory settings on the server.
More information is available from Rafaels Within Windows website.
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I unistalled McAfee a day or two after it showed up, but my WHS Console keeps going yellow and telling me that my network is at risk because McAfee Total Protection is ready to install. Even though I check the box to say “ignore this issue” it comes back within a day, with the box unchecked.
I have one other issue that I ignore (a machine not backed up that is rarely on the network) and it’s never come back as an issue, so this is either a bug or McAfee keeps resetting the bit to try to get me to install it. Any thoughts on how to make it go away for good?
Thanks! Terry
As soon as I hit post, it occurred to me that I could probably just delete the add-in from Software/Add-Ins on my Windows Home Server. I used Remote Desktop to login to the server, then opened Windows Explorer. I copied the McAfee Addin off to the desktop just in case and then deleted the file. My console then reported that my network was green and in good health, so hopefully that fixes it for me and that it doesn’t come back everytime the WHS updates. We’ll see. This is a minor thing though – I love my WHS!
Terry
Putting the add-in into a subfolder of Software/Add-Ins will also prevent the network health alert from appearing. I made a folder called “saved” and moved it there.
McAfee is garbage, I will not install McAfee on any system!
If McAfee comes on any system I always remove it.
This is true for all McAfee products.
To the contrary I found PP1 made MSS seemingly faster (even after my 2GB upgrade)..so kudos to Microsoft on that. Engadget did a post regarding this potential slowdown and I don’t like the way they phrased the headline. HP should have never pushed these two add-ons on existing MSS customers. Hopefully, for HP’s sake they update the MSS series to 1GB minimum. PVConnect was always a curious choice on my part. Normally you provide add-ins which add capabilities that are all together missing from the OS. PVConnect is just an interim solution (if you can call it that) because I’m 99% certain Microsoft will be enhancing this side of WHS in future releases.
Thanks Sue for providing an easy way to remove those alerts.
Uninstalled, and lo! the server is back! Thanks for the clue, and the tip about the Add-Ins subfolder!
How can anyone be expected to be happy about having to wait 24 hours for indexing to occur while the WHS console can become completely unusable!
This is how Microsoft has planned for it’s users or customers to reap the benefits of using Windows Home Server?
Slow downs… just like using Vista… What’s the difference, as both as sold and made by Microsoft!
I cannot uninstall anything — the server panel runs too slow. I installed these worthless updates months ago when they were first released and have not been able to use the control panel since. It can take an hour or more just to make a selection. I upgraded to 2 GB when I first got my server so more RAM is not the solution. HELP!