By Philip Churchill on July 19th, 2008
Microsoft Publishes KB955690
Microsoft have published a Knowledge Base article that highlights applications that will not work with Windows Home Server, prior to the release of Power Pack 1 (PP1).
If you store Outlook.pst files and/or Quicken files on your home servers then you could run into problems as either of these solutions are not supported on any file server.
KB955690 is available here.
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Translating the Microsoftspeak:
1) We designed Outlook PST files to make you want Exchange. Home Server doesn’t change that.
2) The database corruption bug wasn’t a bug. People simply used Windows network like a Mac user would use a Mac network.
3) Remote Desktop is the solution. Oh wait, except we blocked it from working on XP Home. And then gave Live Mesh users that functionality. Yeah… so go clog up your systems with Live Mesh as well.
This is normal Microsoft gibberish! I will give them this, I have always known that they have never recommended directly accessing .pst files from any server. However, DATABASE FILES, Hmm. This should not be the case! I guess now that they have posted this, they can easily say, ‘well we don’t support those’, no need to fix it.
Any database system that has multi-user record locking should be able to be run from ANY remote computer that has network access, whether that is a ‘Server’ or not. That is the definition of a DMBS – to be able to handle mulitple user access to its files…
And, any application should be able to be run from a server, by a single user, without problems.
I have customers that have run multi-user database applications in a networked XP environment for years with no problems at all. And, now MS says they couldn’t use a WHS as their server??
I have supported WHS throughout all this DCB crap, but this ‘paper’, if I read it right, is saying that they don’t/won’t support ANY database use, then the DCB is not corrected yet, IMHO…
This has convinced me! I have now removed WHS from my server and installed linux based Clarkconnect, and wish I’d done it sooner, instead of hanging on and hoping microsoft would fix things!
I now have a home server that just works!
After rereading the topic description above, I now know why it seemed to me that the DCB is still in play…
The heading says:
“Microsoft Publishes KB955690
July 19, 2008 — Philip Churchill
Microsoft have published a Knowledge Base article that highlights applications that will not work with Windows Home Server, prior to the release of Power Pack 1 (PP1). ”
The key word I missed here is PRIOR. I really don’t understand why MS would publish this article, at this date, and not mention that it only describes the problem PRIOR to the release of PP1 – Which is now available and hopefully resolves all the issues the article is discussing…
???
I’m totally confused. Does this mean if I use WHS to back-up my PC’s and I have to do a system restore on one of them, that the Outlook and Quicken files will be corrupt. That’s a pretty major problem for me.
Hi Director Bob,
Outlook and Quicken files are by default designed to be accesesed via a local PC and NOT over a LAN. You can use your Windows Home Server home computer to store your .pst files, but we recommend that you use the Windows Home Server backup solution to create a backup copy of the files.
For the Quicken files it is OK to store a backup on WHS as long as you do not save, access, or modify a database directly from the server using the Quicken software.