The Home Server Show #22 – The WHS Team

The Home Server Show Podcast

The Home Server Show #22 interviews CJ Saretto, Mark Pendergrast, Brendan Grant and Jonas Svensson from the Windows Home Server team, who took the time out of their schedule whilst at PDC2008 to be interviewed by the shows host David McCabe.

The 18 minute podcast is available from here.

How to Install SqueezeCenter on Windows Home Server

We have posted in the past details on how to install SqueezeCenter on Windows Home Server, one of the most used network audio players. SqueezeCenter from Logitech is a powerful and free Open Source software that will power any Squeezebox, Transporter or a software MP3 player on your network.

Another tutorial bought to my attention by the German language home server blog may be easier to follow and is more complete is available from the Logitech Slim Devices Wiki.

Windows Home Server – A Robust Backup Solution

Website Geeks to Do! has a review of Windows Home server which although basic, should be a refresher to those of us in the know.

In conclusion the article states:

…if you have a multi-PC home network, or a home business, this is a robust backup solution. While it can be expensive, the extra features such as remote access and shared folders are added benefits to this choice.

You can read the full article here.

Setup Windows Home Server and a Playstation 3.

PS3

Whilst browsing the forums of MediaSmartServer.net I came across a post on how to setup Windows Home Server and a Sony Playstation 3. The tutorial explains how to get them integrated and working together, which you can read here.

How well does WHS protect your data?

Have you ever seen the following error message appear:

Backup Database Error Message

A user by the name of Linis did after his Seagate 500GB hard drive failed. But has he states in his post:

All in all I’m very pleased. I lost some episodes of Numb3rs and a few old Disney movies that I had saved, but not replicated. Congrats to the Windows Home Server team for making this 500GB hard drive failure as simple as an RMA with no loss of important data!

Some data like video etc may not need to be duplicated, but remember if certain data is precious make sure to enable folder duplication.

You can read his story here.

Tranquil PC SQA-5H turns German

German store Digital Sources will stock the SQA-5H model Home Server’s from Tranquil PC along with it’s accessories the SQA Extender and the SQA HDD enclosure.

More information from Digital Sources – Das gute Gefühl – Ihre Daten sind in guten Händen

If Windows Update is Off, Install Emergency Security Update

Microsoft has released an emergency security update that fixes a critical security hole that is already being exploited in the wild. It fixes a remote code execution vulnerability in the Windows Server Service, which affects WHS as well as other operating systems including XP and Vista.

This is the first time in 18 months that Microsoft has released an emergency security update "out of band" (not on the regular Patch Tuesday).

On Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003 and Windows Home Server anonymous users with access to the target network could exploit the weakness by sending a specially crafted network packet to the affected system. Microsoft has rated the vulnerability as "critical" – its most severe designation – for those versions.

The MS patch will be installed automatically via Windows/Microsoft Update on WHS. If you have Windows Update turned off, then due to the serious nature of the vulnerability install the new MS patch manually without hesitation.

Be aware that this update requires a restart of Windows Home Server.

More information is available here, here and here.

Add-In: AutoExit 2008 R2

Nick from the add-in AutoExit has been in touch to let us know that R2 of the 2008 version is now available for download.

Nick says that the beta program of AutoExit is nearly finished and this should be the last version before releasing the final.

AutoExit 2008 R2

New features:

  • WOL Server from client automatically. Waking up the server can now be done
    from every client automatically, so that when a client wakes up, the server
    is woken up.

Changes:

  • A few small additions in the guideline.
  • The balloon tip for the client that pops up after startup, has been
    removed.
  • WOL Server didn’t always work, this is fixed.
  • Installer supports more languages.
  • When a machine was upgraded, it is displayed twice in the list (which is
    normal), but it couldn’t be shut down because AutoExit gave a message that
    the machine was offline. This has been fixed.

The latest version is available from here.

The Home Server Show #21

The Home Server Show Podcast

The Home Server Show #21 is now available to listen to. This episode looks at the latest news including the new security update MS08-067 (958644).

All the links to this episode are available from here.

Setup a Live Webcam and Remote Access It on WHS

WeGotServed.co.uk has a great tutorial on how to run a live webcam on Windows Home Server and access it remotely when you’re away from home. And this can all be done using a everyday home USB webcam and a piece of software called Active Webcam.

You can read all the details here.