By Philip Churchill on January 23rd, 2010
The Home Server Show Podcast Episode 73
Episode 73 of "The Home Server Show" podcast is up with the latest news and views from John, Jim, Chris, and Dave.
You can get it from here.
By Al West on January 22nd, 2010
Setting up DVBLink on WHS
This is an overview of how to setup DVBLink on Windows Home Server allowing one to serve live TV to other devices on your network including UPNP Players, Windows Media Centre and Windows Media Player.
Setting up your hardware
Open device manager and see if your hardware has been detected. In most cases you should see your hardware present but no drivers may be found for it. You’ll have to locate the drivers either on CD with the tuner device or download them from the manufacturer’s website.
I previously downloaded the drivers for my TechnoTrend USB 3600 from their site and pointed the installer to the files on my USB stick. Simply follow the hardware installation wizard
By Philip Churchill on January 22nd, 2010
The Safe Home Server
Tranquil PC’s Weblog has a great series of short articles on the Safe Home Server.
The aim, for Safe Server, is to provide a 100% bullet proof, affordable system for either small businesses or home users.
Tranquil are promoting the SSM solution, a unique device which can be plugged into a SQA-5H Home Servers HDD1 bay. The device is a mix of the new WHS based Drive Extender (DE) technology, with the established RAID hardware technology and comes with 2x 500GB 2.5” HDDs, prepared in a RAID1 mirror array, including a Tranquil build of Windows Home Server (PP3) for either the Series 1 or Series 2 SQA-5H (English or German) and is the ideal solution for a safe Home Server.
The SSM is priced at £169.00 + VAT, and here’s what’s in the box:
- SSM with 2x 500GB HDDs preset for RAID1
- Desktop Application software for monitoring / messaging
- New SQA-5H Home Server recovery DVD, supporting the SSM
- A FREE copy of the AVA Media CD ripper is also included on the DVD (worth £49.00)
Here is the series:
By Philip Churchill on January 22nd, 2010
Acer Aspire EasyStore H340 Reviewed by CNET
cnet has a review of the Acer Aspire EasyStore H340.
The 2 page review looks at the design, setup, feature set and performance of the unit and unsurprisingly it gets a CNET editors’ rating of “Very good”.
You can read it here.
By Philip Churchill on January 22nd, 2010
How to Back Up Recorded TV Shows Using WHS
Microsoft have an online article on how to "Back up recorded TV shows using Windows Home Server",
The article explains in easy steps how to back up the TV shows to your home server and also how to create a smaller, compressed version of a TV show file.
You can read it here.
By Philip Churchill on January 21st, 2010
Add-In: AVA Media 1.5.1.0
Tranquil PC have announced an update to their AVA Media add-in for Windows Home Server / AVA Media Servers.
Version 1.5.1.0 of the free upgrade includes the following:
- Added: User customization content for My Movies 3
- Fix: Workaround to problem with special discs that AnyDVD cannot handle for external programs.
- Fix: Issue preventing the program from getting album art from Amazon when copying CD’s
- Fix: Issue where reading a disc id from AnyDVD could fail
- Fix: Issue with selecting language on Xtreamer, TViX and Dune integrations
- Fix: Issue with Blu-ray copying where UDF driver broke
- Update: Database version matches My Movies 3.04
- Update: Minor changes to shared files between My Movies for WHS and My Movies for WMC
NOTE: The Please note the AVA Media add-in will only function on Tranquil PC / AVA Media systems.
Upgrade instructions and the download are located here.
By Philip Churchill on January 21st, 2010
Add-In: AdminiMe 1.0.1
Asoft the company behind AutoExit for WHS have just released a new add-in called AdminiMe.
AdminiMe for Windows Home Server monitors your server and notifies you if something goes wrong.
As well as the monitoring function, the add-in also contains a console where you can watch in real-time the CPU, memory, network, disks and all kinds of statistics like uptime, longest uptime, # of starts etc.
The add-in also has shortcuts to relevant tools, such as Event Viewer, Task Manager, Performance Monitor and Remote Desktop as well as an option to add your own shortcuts to applications too.
And next to that, there is a ‘Run-box’ which has the same functionality as the Windows Run Dialog plus a screen where you can view, which users have open files to the server shares.
And all these events are kept in a log that can be consulted later on.
AdminiMe has 99.99% functionalities enabled in the unregistered version and it shows a small nag-screen, but it is recommended to register for a small license fee and support the development of AdminiMe.
Features in AdminiMe 2010 for Windows Home Server
- Multilingual UI (supports German, French, Japanese).
- A console that shows a lot of information: CPU Usage (in total or per processor), Upload & Download speed of the network traffic, Memory usage, Total Disk usage, Current Time, System Uptime, Longest/Total Uptime, # of starts, First/Last start, Detailed information on the storage (activity, temperature, disk space,…), All the files that have sessions open by users, The logging of all events that occurred.
- Handy features in the console: Possibility to create shortcuts to applications, Shortcuts to important system tools (Event Viewer, Performance Monitor, Task Manager, Remote desktop), Run box (like the Run dialog functionality in the Windows Menu), Automatically shut down the server when no clients are connected.
- Health monitoring: Send a mail in case of problems
- Monitoring: CPU (monitors the average usage over a certain amount of time), Memory (Memory usage), Hard disks (Disk space monitoring, disk temperature monitoring), System Event Log (Problems reported in the Event Viewer are monitored), WHS Events (Warning / Errors), Failed Remote Access Attempts, System (warns if the system has been running non-stop for x amount of days, improper shutdown).
More details are available from here.
By Philip Churchill on January 21st, 2010
Computer Shopper Reviews the Lenovo IdeaCentre D400
Computer Shopper (online) has a review of the Lenovo IdeaCentre D400
The D400 gets an Editor’s Rating of 7.2 and reviewer Daniel Begun compares it to the EX495 and looks at the file-transfer performance and its power consumption amongst other things. You can catch he’s review here.
By Philip Churchill on January 21st, 2010
Add-In: Windows Home Server Conflict Resolver 1.1
There is a new version of the add-in which helps you recover from file conflict errors.
Version 1.1 of the Windows Home Server Conflict Resolver add-in includes the following updates/fixes:
- Implemented ‘The Stamp Icon’
- (Hopefully) fixed bug where very large files were being marked as corrupt
- Improved user experience with checkboxes
- Implemented debug mode that is accessible by pressing F3
More information is available from here.
By Philip Churchill on January 20th, 2010
Access the WHS Desktop using the Add-In AAC
If you are using the add-in Advanced Admin Console (AAC), then it’s developer Andreas M has another feature focus. This time on "Show Desktop".
As the name implies "Show Desktop" enables you to access the Windows Home Server’s desktop just by using the Advanced Admin Console add-in.
You can read about it here.
