Power Pack 1 – Only Days Away
After my post yesterday Public Beta PP1 – Microsoft Needs You!, Microsoft have started to send out the emails requesting users to sign up to the Windows Home Server Power Pack 1 public beta.
As well as including the fix for the data corruption bug, PP1 will also include a host of other bug fixes and new capabilities.
The public beta will start in early June and the email states that in order to deliver a fix of the highest quality a sufficient time for feedback is required. The timeline for a final release will depend on this feedback and testing.
The email also explains how to prepare for the public beta and guidelines on how to prepare a home server for testing are also available from Microsoft’s connect site.
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Yes, getting close. My MS Connect page already has the prep info listed. My WHS is all ready to go.
Now just waiting on the files to become available for download via MS Connect.
I have an HP MHS and it looks like HP released this update yesterday. I checked my HP updates, and downloaded a small one. I wasn’t sure it downloaded and installed correctly, so I checked HP updates again. This time I downloaded a much larger file, and when I installed it noticed some significant changes – Mcafee was available, new icon allowing for configuring add-ins, and how many you had installed. Also PV Connect was a new add-in. So far very nice. Not sure if the data fix was included. Anyone else with an HP Home Server get this update?
Barry
Do you know if WHS Public Beta PP1 deals with all the issues identified in the latest KB 946676:
• Photoshop Elements
• Zune Software
• Apple iTunes
• TagScanner
• Mozilla Thunderbird
• Adobe Lightroom
• Intuit Quicken
• MS Digital Image Library
• MP3BookHelper
• ACDSee
• WinAmp
• Windows Media Player 11
• Microsoft Office Excel
• Visual DataFlex
… or will we still wind up with caveat????
Where is the WHS database backup feature in PP1?
Did I miss out on something here?
I’ve been wanting to backup my WHS since last year and there’s NO database backup feature in WHS Public Beta PP1!
I believe that I’ve had this same bug happen on my Home server three times. For a while I was using live photo gallery to edit pictures, and I kept getting warnings from the console after that. I would log into the console click the repair button and it would go away. Since they released the bug information I have stopped using live photo gallery, and I haven’t had the data corruption since. The interesting thing is that my Home Server has just one drive in it.
Todd Headrick, marketing director for Windows Home Server already stated the ability to back up the backup database has been dropped from Power Pack 1.
Partners, enthusiasts and customers are getting more amped up about the backup issue because of the earlier data corruption bug, but it seems like the Windows Home Server group needs to take stock of the situation and get their act together.
Other Microsoft MVPs are less willing to forgive Microsoft for removing the backup feature. “I am all about holding the product back until it’s perfect, but if you ship a product and then yank its primary feature set what are you left with?” wrote Vlad Mazek, a Microsoft Exchange MVP and Small Business Specialist based in Orlando, Fla., in a Wednesday blog post.
http://www.vladville.com/2008/05/more-microsoft-mesh-windows-home-server-loses-client-backup.html
Taken from the Windows Home Server team forum 23 May 2008:
“we do not believe the internal testing and private beta testing we have done is sufficient for us to feel we have “proven” that there are no additional bugs.”
“We cannot promise that we missed any bugs (KB946676) …the whole point of doing this public beta is to verify that we did not miss anything.”
“We will not ship the update until we feel that we have proven that the product meets our quality goals.” — Which just didn’t happen the first time around way back in April 2007.
How much confidence does this provide WHS users with a proven data corrupting design flaw in their paid products?
In January at CES, Microsoft announced Home Server Power Pack 1 and said it would not only fix a number of minor issues in the software, but also give users the ability to perform full Home Server data backups on external storage devices, including the backup database.
However, Todd Headrick, marketing director for Windows Home Server, said the ability to back up the backup database has been dropped from Power Pack 1. But, Todd blames WHS customers by stating “consumers may hork their backup database by doing an incomplete backup or interrupting the restore process” rather than stating the actual truth in that this promised featured still has remaining bugs to which haven’t even passed Microsoft’s own internal quality bar standards.
So… basically you’re saying “we’re cutting this feature because we think our users are too stupid to use it correctly”.
Don’t you just love how Microsoft blames it’s customers while Microsoft was NOT taking responsibility for it’s own crappy code!
This is the same problem with the data corruption design defect, as only Microsoft itself had created the fatal flaw in WHS and then delayed ever since last year to fix it. In fact, Microsoft’s own software doesn’t even work with WHS and again Microsoft blames everything else and everyone but their own blunders in creating this design defect more than a year ago.
Microsoft has no plans what’s so ever at this time for backing up the operating system/system partition. – Ken Warren MVP
And that’s a relief for all WHS paying customers with a proven data corrupting design flaw to be happy about?
A backup server that doesn’t even back itself up!
Heaven forbid if anyone needs to reinstall WHS. That’s because the reinstall itself takes almost an hour. Plus any required drivers. Plus Windows updates. Plus any needed reboots. Plus restarting the console after every add-in. And then you have any non-standard applications.
Now why wouldn’t just backing up the OS system be better?
Unless, you’re Microsoft of course thinking to make everything the most difficult for your paying customers!
Ken Warren MVP from the Microsoft WHS Forum stated, “The reinstallation itself could conceivably take days if you have a data pool with terabytes of data.”
Why should WHS need many days just to reinstall WHS?
Why should reinstalling WHS needing days to complete be reasonable for paying customers, when all this could be avoided in the first place just to provide the means to backup the full complete package rather than just user folders and accounts?
Who wants to sit around for days to have WHS reinstall?
Only Aaron the crazy fanboi troll could be happy to waste his time here. He even think a backup server that doesn’t back itself up is worth spending many hundreds of dollars that doesn’t work right with a proven data destroying design flaw built into WHS known as KB 946676.
Microsoft has already delayed the resolution since last year for customer relief and now Microsoft decides to remove the database backup!
This is like shooting your own foot with an army tank for goodness sake. What’s next, a data corruption bug in the patch for the fix used in PP1?
@Aaron
I agree, these comments are ridiculous, and obviously the same person or the same small group of people whose only purpose on this blog is to slag WHS in any way that they can (ignoring reason, omitting facts, lying outright, and failing to offer viable alternatives whenever convenient).
I’m finding it frustrating that the folks running this blog are not doing more to filter out and clean up these pointless attacks. Misinformation, intentional misdirection, personation (posting under many names to give the illusion of consensus and popularity to their opinions) and FUD should have no more welcome here than spam does. Do not mistake these attacks for constructive criticism and logical debate, which they are not.
Wow, so many MS HATERS here.
Question: Why’d you buy WHS for? Go tinker with your l33t Linux distro and leave it alone.
So many bashers of MS now-a-days. It’s a bit sad really that all the poorly evolved, genetically ‘ape level’ type people floating around the intraweb gaggle on like those bloody million monkeys trying harder and harder to write shakespear…sorry people it’s not going to happen…your all a mess.
What WHS does it simple and advanced. The file system is pretty cool and very useful and the PPack stuff it a great addition to an already great product. It just works…that’s what I pay my hard earned money for…did I pay for PP1 features? No, they weren’t even coceived then…I bought it for what it did…and it has been worth every penny. PP1 is just cream people.
So what if the DBase backup isn’t ready yet? Damn whingers. How hard is it to do an install if something stuffs up…all your data is still there on the drives.
If you want to install a PS3 combobulater or some other way out addon and your WHS croaks it…is that MS fault? No it’s yours…you idiot.
Noooo it’s really, truely MS’s fault as you well know…EVERYONE HATES MS…
Ehem…why is that little Jimmy-ever-the-complainer…?
Jimmy: just cause…u know…they are EVIL…
Ohh poor little jimmy…can’t you hear that Ghost busters music a-playin??
WHS is a product that is solid. I have run MS 2003 servers since they came out and they don’t just stuff up. WHS is on that very platform so mostly morons will mess it up.
Put some beta junk on it…what do you expect?
Oh and a 45 min install isn’t exactly going to kill the cat is it?
But dude…you know, I have to…put…you know…drivers…in it…
Noooooo stop that crazy talk…right now soldier!!
Days for the install you say? Stop running that 200mhz Pentium Pro bro!! It’s time to upgrade!
I have to agree with the reference to Tod above…you obviously are the ‘too stupid’ candidates referenced above.
OMG a PRIMARY FEATURE has been yanked…quick EVERYONE KILL YOURSELVES!!!! I said a PRIMARY FEATURE! (I can see the army guy on TF2 banging his head with his shovel!)
Get a life people…imagine the lot of you living through the Windows 98/Me days…you would all have blown blood vessels…but at least you wouldn’t have then been in the rest our faces!
Now…blow those blood vessels…and make em important ones too :O)