By on June 07th, 2010

Small Firm Saves Full Day of Work after Deploying WHS

Bunten and Associates, a small accounting firm with 3 employees now saves a full day of work each week after deploying Windows Home Server.

Bunten & Associates provides small businesses and individuals with payroll, accounting, and tax services. With just three employees, the firm provides approximately 60 small businesses with accounting and payroll services, and helps up to 500 individuals annually with tax preparation. The firm wanted to improve its management of customer information, and in October 2009, Bunten & Associates learned about the Windows Home Server operating system from Kevin Royalty of Total Care Computer Consulting. “We were immediately sold on the ease of use of Windows Home Server,” says accountant, Jennifer Means. With automated backups and streamlined access to information, the firm’s three employees save nearly a full day of work each week. Using the solution, the firm also has optimized its protection of valuable customer data.

Thanks to the Windows Home Server Blog for providing the link to the case study which is available to read online.

News • Windows Home Server
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By on June 07th, 2010

Home Server Backups Fail when Using Norton Ghost

Norton Ghost is an imaging program similar to Acronis True Image which creates full system and file backups by cloning the hard drive.

And why is this relevant for Windows Home Server users?

Well it seems that having Norton Ghost 15 installed on Windows 7 (or Ghost 14 on XP or Vista) will cause the Home Server backups to fail. There is a solution available which involves removing the Symantec VSS Provider key from the Windows Registry, which will allow Ghost 15 to continue to work as well as the WHS backup, although you may have to reboot between using both programs.

The steps necessary are available here.

Other Software • Windows Home Server
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By on June 07th, 2010

Build an MSI Installer Package for your Add-In for Free

Andreas M writes about Advanced Installer, a free application which allows you to build an MSI (Windows Installer) package for your Windows Home Server Add-In.

Advanced Installer

Andreas takes us through the creation of the installer project, fine tuning it and building the package.

You can read it here.

Tutorial • Windows Home Server
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By on June 07th, 2010

Add-In: WHS Thumbnailer 1.0.0.5 Beta

The thumbnail generator and photo resizer add-in for Home Server users has been updated.

WHS Thumbnailer version 1.0.0.5 beta includes the following changes:

  • Fixed some anomalies around default settings
  • Finished settings dialog validation
  • Start / pause processing buttons on console now reflect service status
  • Added ‘buy me a coffee’ donate button! 😉

You can download this latest version from here.

add-ins • Windows Home Server
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By on June 05th, 2010

WHS Software for $70

TigerDirect have Windows Home Server available at $69.99 (plus $4.79 Shipping + No Tax, Except FL, IL, and NC). That’s $40 off the list price of $109.99.

Grab a copy before it goes from here.

News • Windows Home Server
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By on June 04th, 2010

Add-In: WHSClamAV 0.1.8

The Open Source antivirus solution for Home Server users WHSClamAV has been updated to version 0.1.8

This latest version:

  • Supports an updated version of ClamWin (0.96.1)
  • Provides the ability to scan a backup drive on E:

More details are available from here.

add-ins • Windows Home Server
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By on June 04th, 2010

DVBLogic Version 3.0 RC1

The guys and girls at DVBLogic have been busy lately, by just releasing RC1 of DVBLink version 3.0 just a few days after beta2 was announced.

Here’s what’s new and fixed:

All products:

  • fixed series importing when using xmltv
  • fixed "show other showings" when using xmltv
  • implemented duplicates handling mechanism for xmltv files

NetPack:

  • Several improvements for web server stability

More details plus the appropriate downloads are available from here.

Other Software • Windows Home Server
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By on June 04th, 2010

PerfectDisk Vail Beta Program

Raxco Software Inc. are developing a new version of the defragmentation tool PerfectDisk which will be fully integrated into the new Vail dashboard and Launchpad, which will deliver a complete storage management solution for Vail.

To help them develop this solution they are after your help. If you are a Vail user you can join the PerfectDisk Private Beta program:

This program will allow participants to get early access to our product code as well as give them a close "seat" to the Microsoft Vail development team. Since we are in regular meetings with Microsoft and it is soliciting our feedback, we are also in a position to share user feedback and requests with the Vail team.

If you are interested in joining the beta program, send an email request to PDVailBeta@perfectdisk.com

Other Software • Windows Home Server
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By on June 04th, 2010

Western Digital Beats Seagate in HD Sales

CrunchGear is reporting that Western Digital beat Seagate in the first quarter of 2010 by shipping 51.1 million hard drives, 3.2% up from the same period last year. Where Seagate (only) shipped 50.3 million.

The full story is here.

News • Windows Home Server
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By on June 03rd, 2010

Add-In: PerfectDisk 11 WHS Service Pack 2 Build 174

The defragmentation program, PerfectDisk 11 Windows Home Server has had an update.

Service Pack 2 (Build 174) has the following bug fixes and minor enhancements:

  • Correct issues connecting to and displaying data stores for Exchange 2010
  • Change behavior when stopping a defrag pass. PerfectDisk used to display the statistics at the time you stopped even though they were inaccurate. PerfectDisk no longer does this.
  • The display files in block feature has been disabled during a defrag and analyze pass since there was no data to display
  • Corrected some display issues on the virtual machine tab
  • Added support for translation into Japanese
  • Corrected some statistical calculations when files are being added and deleted from the drive during the defragmentation pass.
  • The list of drive types that can be impersonated was limited to prevent confusion. The purpose of impersonating drive types was due to the inability to accurately determine whether or not a drive is a solid state drive.
  • Corrected a display issue on the Hyper-V host product. GUID was being displayed in lieu of the guest computer name.
  • Clarified the code to ensure the user realized the schedules maximum duration only applies to the online portion of the schedule. There is not maximum duration for a boot-time defragmentation pass.
  • Ensure that PerfectDisk does not attempt to perform an offline defragmentation pass on a FAT/FAT32 from a schedule. This functionality is not supported.
  • Corrected some typo’s in displayed text
  • Changed the default behavior regarding file modification date on FAT/FAT32 drives. When no date exists we now display nothing. We used to display 1980.
  • Improved the layout to better fit all the on screen data
  • Corrected a bug when defragmenting drives greater than 2,147,483,648 clusters (8 TB with 4k cluster size)
  • Improved boot-time defragmentation logging.
  • Corrected a display issue with the schedule tab buttons when using Group Policy.
  • Certain error messages were improved to aid the user in understanding what went wrong.

Existing users can get this latest version by using the “Check For Updates”  feature or waiting for an Autoupdate.

More news on PerfectDisk 11 Windows Home Server can be found here.

add-ins • Windows Home Server
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