WHS: Network Disabled

Alright, its my fault. In the process of tweaking for Jumbo Frame support I mistakenly right-clicked and chose the first option "Disable" instead of the second option "Status" (which would have taken me to the network configuration page) on the Network Connection icon. Dang!

This is obviously a headless machine and I am currently lost. Thankfully its not the first time something like this ever happened and tips from HomeServerLand gave me a clue.

If you have a headless device like the HP MediaSmart Server you can:
1. Connect an USB keyboard and wait about 30 seconds.
2. Next press CTRL + ALT + DELETE and then enter your WHS Administrator password and hit the ENTER key.
3. Then enter "windows + R", (where windows is the windows key on your keyboard) this will open the run dialog and then enter "ncpa.cpl" (without the quotes) this opens up network connections dialog.
4. Press the DOWN ARROW key (only once) and [Jamz: press the RIGHT ARROW key once] then press ENTER enter which will enable the NIC card,
5. If you have multiple NIC adapters you can toggle using the right and left keys [Jamz: or up and down keys] and YES you have to do it blind so make sure every keystroke counts.

I'm doing my darnest to get this working right now with fingers crossed.

[Edit: 10:44am] It worked! Hooaah!

WHS: Reference Account Locked Out?

Once in a while when I mistakenly log-on to the server shares I get the error message:

"The referenced account is currently locked and may not be logged on to."

Thats not too bad and easy enough to fix unless you have not clue how to RDP into your WHS. There are various help suggestions across this blog and elsewhere if the latter is a secondary issue. :-)

Moving along.... Basically what happened is Windows has locked you out for security purposes. So all you have to do is remote log-in (or physically if you can) into the server and reset the "Account is Locked Out" radio button.

You'll find that particular option by navigating:

My Computer --> Manager --> Local Users and Groups --> Users --> (login account) --> Properties --> (uncheck) Account is Locked Out

HP MediaServer EX470: HP Software Update 1.3-R and Home Server Power Pack 3

Its been a hectic few days, what with all the meetings and reporter interviews. Not to mention system maintenance and all that.

On the side though, its time to break out in song: At Last

At last my love has come along
My lonely days are over
And life is like a song ...

My HP MediaServer EX475 is once again alive and kicking and rid of that pesky lit RED LED. This same issue with the light was actually fixed some time after PP1 but it never dawned on me that somehow through some freak mishap the automatic installation of PP3 just recently actually rolled the server updates back.

How? I'm not so sure.

What is sure is that my membership in the WHS Beta Program still stands and that part of being a member is to be able to get bleeding updates. I dropped the ball and interest after PP2 came out and proof that's what was installed is the existence of the PVConnect plug-in. At the same time my HP Server Update version was 1.3.6.21622 and for some reason today it had rolled back to 1.1.1.13411?

To review, here's the HP MediaSmart Server Software Version list thus far:
1.1.1.13411
1.3.6.21622
1.3.8.25155

I also spent partial half of the whole afternoon trying to understand and reconfigure the internals of Photo Webshare due to the Error 500 page. Imagine the annoyance to find that after the initial update and the succeeding 1.3-R that it now works after all. Argh!

Right, with that being said everything is now working well and it feels a lot more snappy.

To recap .... Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 - check; HP MediaSmart Server Update 1.3.8.25155 (aka 1.3-R) - check; red warning light off - check; Photo Webshare back - check; and as you'll probably notice there's 2GB RAM already installed from a previous upgrade primed for HP Server Update 2.5 - check!

Its time to enjoy the WHS once again, that is as soon as the Drobo finishes its data protection run which it has pegged to keep going for over 24-hours. Its now apparently "usable" though even if the rest of the message says the Share isn't protecting any of my data at this time. Duh?

Apple Mac OS X:Time Machine

Thanks to the QNAP TS-809 Pro being Linux based, it was snap easy to have it create an iSCSI Target.

For those not quite familiar, iSCSI target provisioning allows a shared folder on your SAN (in this case a NAS) to be created and treated as a virtual storage volume.

Specific Mac instructions for all QNAP devices are here. All of this of course wouldn't be possible without globalSAN's iSCSI initiator which they've provided free.

WHS: Enough with the Reboots!

I've had it. The chip upgrade was a bust. To test my theory that it was the over-endowed muscle that was killing my server daily, I quickly disassembled and reassembled humpty-dumpty in less than 10-minutes using the old Sempron stock chip.

Guess what, Voila! No more reboots, no more hangs, no more shutdowns. The memory upgrade was sufficient enough to get everything up to speed. So yeah, I guess HP was right in allowing the memory upgrade but not the chip as it is sufficient to run the standard gamut of applications intended. Of course, if you're wanting to use the MediaSmart for some super computing then maybe its best to invest in some high power fans, extra cooling, or better yet building your own instead of using the weakly ventilated version.

WHS: Upgrades with Zip Zoom Bang!

So I finally caved in and got some new hardware. It was fortunate that I found cheaper options for the NetGear FVS336G and the only place for Seagate Barracuda 1.5 TB drives at NewEgg. Figured with the shipping I may as well let it ride.

Following the basic memory and chip upgrade instructions the only difference would be the use of an AMD LE-1660 (Lima) 2.7 GHz.


G.Skill 2GB DDR2 667Mhz PC-5300 which was on sale for $30 that week.







First things first, remove the installed drives and label them so you know which order to put them back. WHS uses DE and you don't want to confuse the operating system and inadvertently trashing your data. The main bay is locked and I used a quarter to twist this clockwise (a large screwdriver would work but beware the groove marks if its tight).






Slide the gray top cover forward gently and it should slide out from the grooves. There are four actions items from this angel that you need to do.

Make sure to mark where the cables match up and be careful not to switch things around later (it could be bad).




Gently remove the black cable as well and gently move it out of the way.








Twist the blue tabs outward to unlock the backplane. Its this backplane that serves to connect the SATA disks.





Put your hand in and reach for the spaces with your fingers, then gently pull up. Be careful as there's a (barely used) thermostat you don't want to damage as you do this.
Remove the two-(2) small black screws on the front lower right side of the casing.






There's an insulated cable in there thats pressed against it and will usually cause it to pop out (don't loose the screws!). Do this gently (I keep saying that) since too much pressure on these small screws could ruin their tread -- mine's almost that way.

Use a medium sized Philip's screwdriver to remove the two-(2) anchoring screws between the casing and power supply.



Gently pull this tray out while gently pushing left as the components tend to snag.







Welcome to the guts/brains of your HP EX475 system.









Disconnect the power supply cable from the board and move it out of the way.






Remove the stick of memory as well. You'll need all the space to remove the heatsink from the chip by unscrewing it in an X-pattern so as to relieve the pressure on the chip gradually.

Then with a twisting left and right action gently remove.








With pure alcohol (pick one type as long as its more than 70% proof such as vodka or isoprophyl) make sure to clean the heatsink and set it aside to dry.

For those who've never replaced a chip before, there's a lever that needs to be lifted before you can remove the chip for replacement. Be careful to re-orient the new chip's pins the same way (don't forget to wipe the beads of sweat off your brow as any of it dripping onto the board isn't good ... and close your mouth).

A little goes a long way in terms of the heat seal, just a 1.5 grain of rice will do.







Then put Humpty-Dumpty together again and reverse the steps above.






Since I was using pure isopropyl and drinking that could cause major gastric distress (check the label), best I could do was step outside for a beer and a smoke. :-)

WHS: Its Ali-i-i-i-v-e!

I've been ignoring the HP MSS for about a week now.

It does some of what its been promised to do, that is to backup my MS Outlook .PST mail files and ensure I don't loose them.

The server now also contains all my multimedia files and such plus a backup of installation packages that I've collected over the years from SimTel and so on. Yeah, it doesn't make sense to have archives of different versioned software but just like sifting through your music collections (is it iTunes or MediaMonkey or The Godfather or ...) its a tedious task to weed out through the junk. I may just end up deleting it all and refreshing someday. But not today.

Anyway, here I am wondering how its been doing the past few days after the PRE-PP1 and suddenly -

And on the other Windows XP client -

So hey, whats going on here? Thats never happened before (it probably should have) if it were working correctly, but still....

I rushed over to the net and poked around. Aha! Seems to be that today was the official "D-day" for PP1 after all. Thats "D" as in deploy.

The update console confirms that my system is up-to-date. Nice. Thats good, what us beta-users are probably wondering is how is that going to affect my beta-patched HP MSS EX475? Simple, you've got to roll-back and get rid of the PRE-RELEASE (thanks for the memories) and install the official update from the Microsoft Downloads site. Alright then, here we go -


Earlier last month I had a couple of projects lined up for the Home Server. That is, a bunch of add-ins that I'm currently testing and have loaded up in the directory in the off-hand chance I get some time out to try them out. Hasn't happened yet, but I digress. The end result though was seemingly the WHS picked up on the uninstalled add-ins and started to alert me about the latest versions and updates.

Alrighty then, as a result here's long list of statuses that the WHSC alerted me about, saying that the MSS was at "risk". Huh? I don't think so. Thats near confusing as saying I'm "infected" with a trojan horse program, whereas we all know trojan horses don't infect --- "viruses" do.


The most notable here are the updates that were previously pulled some time in April and people have tried to get around. Good thing I waited and didn't have to brute force it. This month's bag of goodies include 64-bit compatibility, McAfee Total Protection, and the much anticipated PV Connect Media Server add-ins.

Follow-up: Turns out that alerting me about the non-installed add-ins is one of the specified behaviours of the HP MSS update.

I admit relenting to the fact that my systems are needing and thus getting a hardware update. This Home Server business isn't currently giving me anything worth real squat that my FreeNAS wasn't already giving me for FREE. Time to give it a chance to shine.

.... but first, better I give in to my other diversion in the coming weeks, and my promise of an update when it finaly arrives!

Windows XP: Service Pack 3

I've got two-(2) Windows XP machines being backed up using HP MSS (mostly gigabytes worth of .PST files) and its all working fine. Machines are of course top of the line updated via Microsoft Update to avoid some of the common distractions like botnets scanning for victims. Of course all of this is behind a serious hardware firewall in combination with the default Windows Firewall.

The thing is, Windows XP SP3 has been out for some time and its a humongous update. Lots of things that I didn't think were too broken appear to be critically so. But I won't update, not too soon.

And why is that? Well, simply the fact that on a basis there are two-(2) factors. Perhaps the underpinning issue is that I'm running WHS PP1 which is sort on beta stage; and the other is that SP3 appears to have broken RDP to the WHS -- not good considering that the WHS Console is a basic RDP subset to control the system.

Nothing to do with issue #1 as something has go to get fixed from the 60's (get my drift?). Besides that, I'm still using the core basic system unchanged for warranty's sake (am breaking down on this stance real soon now if it gets MSS to a level faster than Windows XP on a Pentium II). Of course for issue #2 I've got RDP Beta running on my Mac (thanks MS guys!) and can probably survive somewhat, but that basically does make WHSC useless in the interim, eh? :-(

Give me a few days, will update the experience and the machines by then.

LinuxMCE vs WindowsMCE

While MS Windows Home Server running in my HP EX475 is a cool thing (albeit my grumpiness for that AMD Sempron chip), long before this I'd already been playing around with LinuxMCE.

PS> And before that I'd also been playing around with Windows XP Media Center 2005 and got the Media Center Extender for the original Xbox -- no cigar there though. The OS license is now done for and Microsoft refuses to honor my soft-modded Xbox even if I was paying for Xbox Live for 2-years. I said goodbye to that righteous setup, its now just a standalone game station with the rest of its console brethren in the living room.

The base machine I was using for my initial test was from spare parts from the office, basically an Intel P4 clone and an 80GB IDE HDD with built-in sound card. Its video card was built-in and not really fit to run as the core/hybrid system -- yet given that LinuxMCE is taking advantage of Kubuntu 7.04 (or if you like then install Ubuntu and just convert it from the default to KDE) it ran well enough. Installation was pretty straightforward similar to the video (sans the Fiire producs which I only sort of drool about).

Some quick things about LinuxMCE:
1. its the spin-off from the Pluto Home project; the project actually links back to the LinuxMCE for those DIY people like me
2. Pluto Home and thus LinuxMCE is being OEM'ed (or licensed or whatever), the point is that apparently Monster Cable based their Monster Home product on it
3. it has more built-in functionality than whatever WindowsMCE has yet to offer, up to home security and automation
4. it supports orbiters of almost all walks and sizes right down to your Symbian 60 phone
5. it is FREE, FREE, FREE, get it, FREE

Some digression. All my media is pending to be streamed from the MSS (and I mean pending given that the most promising thing I've gotten to do on it is probably have a server to host websites at home and some pictures which isn't much given the bandwidth limitations that Comcast has for serving files, gee the puny UM150 from Verizon gives me almost the same speed -- thus I may have to resort to using PhotoSync+Flickr or linking my Picassa/PhotoBucket/Kodak instead). I've installed the SageTV add-in and made a quick test which was pretty slow rendering on my MacBook Pro -- attributing this to the EX475's lowend AMD Sempron and 512MB memory. TVersity actually does a better job at streaming my media, but its not a full MCE that I've yet to see stream stuff like TV Guide.

Last night I thought about an alternative form factor similar to the MSS and started my eBay search. That net me a Shuttle XPC Legend with 2-GB memory, Intel GMA950 display, and a P4 3-GHz chip for starters (in fairness it would cost just a wee bit less at $500 with a 1-TB HDD purchase, add the approximate cost of the WHS OS license and its a cost match). I'm planning to combine this with the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR 950 and see what happens.

I've also started to be a bit more active in the wiki and put up my first contribution to it this morning, pending updates when the rig gets put together some time next week.

Stay tuned...

MSS: SageTV add-in

I know nothing about this add-in apart from it being one of the top downloads at one of the MSS sites that my browsing leads me to. SageTV is of course a commercial distribution and its 21-day evaluation period sounds acceptable (why no 30-days?). There's a .DMG instalation for Sage PlaceShifter, thats what I tested briefly via wireless. All I can say is that its not SlingBox and not intuitive enough for an easy install by consumers (who usually forego reading the manual and here wizard setups are a must). Disappointed. I wonder about MythTV ....

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Recently, I made some commentary on errors seen on PowerPack 1's installation. Not too major as its still working well far as I can tell. Just to make things interesting though, I decided to move the MSS beside the router in the hopes that proximity could improve whatever video streaming plans from it (such as the above SageTV). So, I proceeded to shut down and got this screen. Now, WTF is that all about? Of course, wanting this to be a true consumer experience I simply ignored the error and forced shut-down. Moved the rig to the living room next to the router and haven't RDP'ed to it yet to see if other errors came up on reboot. As far as my WHSC's on the other computers and other operations things appear to be running normal. Not too worried, yet.

WHS: Power Pack 1

I've finally gotten TVersity running on the MSS, but its a tad slow though due to the memory requirements of codec translation. Pretty much that chip and memory upgrade regardless of the warranty breaking is looking like a decent proposition right now if it can boost productivity (come on HP, give it up and let us poor folk who bought this expensive hardware do it already!). Joe's already done it with one of his systems taking a cue from that other guy from HomeServerHacks.

Anyway, moving along. Joe personally invited me to beta test the supposed new WHS SP1 coming out in June last month. My lazy excuse here is that so many projects in the works and I've not been on personal email too much recently. What I did do though is sign-up for the WHS Beta Program as mentioned in another forum which allowed me to get WHS Power Pack 1 just the other day. Skipping the instructions I simply dumped everything in the MSS/Software directory and initiated a Remote Desktop session and installed it from there.... Done!

WHS MSS upgraded and my WHS Connect Software as expected complained about a need for an upgrade by flashing (!) on the taskbar icon as well as (oh, thank you MS guys for thinking of backward compatibility issues) in the original WHS Connect console. Looking good so far.

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I've gone back to the document today to see if I missed some steps and to verify the installation. Its still a multi-disk system but am not ready to just turn on disk duplication back on for my critical multi-media files just yet. The aim of my beta test is to (1) ensure the installation works, and funny enough it was Patch Tuesday yesterday so there's possibly a new update available and so (2) ensure that patches are installed successfully.

There two-(2) consoles I'm using WHSC on and per the update instructions there's a manual way to get the update from the WHS (on page #19), which I did. And why is that? Simply because using the download instructions from the beta document got me a possible update from Microsoft but it wasn't connecting to my MSS! Best assumption then is to get what was really packaged where it was installed thus the above steps done.

Right then, on to verification but not before seeing what would happen if I followed the written instructions on page #12. Clicking on the "Update Now" button resulted in the following window inside WHSC.

Ah, so was this a result of the Power Pack 1 update or were these patches from Patch Tuesday? Looks to me that IE 7's being updated so it must be the latter. More on this later.

And suddenly, an Application Error on [homeserverconsole.exe]. Uh, WTF? Clicking on the "OK" button resulted in that WHSC v.1 session crashing. Fine, closed it and moved to the WHSC v.2 session which was of course locked off from registering and connecting to the MSS due to inability for a concurrent session.

Now WHSC is based on Windows 2003 server, so why aren't concurrent sessions allowed?!!

Once more check if the update pushed through, and apparently it did (oh really?).






Here's the version check as mentioned from page #17. It plainly shows WHS with PP1, and components at version 6.0.1771.0













When in doubt, check again. So I made an RDP session and discovered that apparently the updates continued to go on regardless of the previous application error, and is now requiring me to reboot.














In fact, the reboot timer did this for me. And yes, just last night I refused the reboot on my Windows XP production machine since I had a couple of emails that were pending and earmarked for response... But nooooo, the system went ahead and did it in my sleep!













Bummer, now I've got to go back and re-read and possibly miss responding to some items. (Hello MS Office 2007 guys, a good feature would be to re-open messages in similar cases. Someone work with the patch update team please?!).

Alright, so the HP MSS EX475 rebooted successfully. I did a once over update check again and WHSC reports no more updates available. Via RDP the system profile shows I'm still running WHS SP2 after the update. Unfortunately, the WHSC still tells the story of Hotel California, that my update is current as of 1969.



"Good night", said the watchman. We are programmed to deceive. "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."

PS> A quick comment on the new WHSC is that during all the tests it was running alot better, by that I mean it had faster response. Something tells me the WHS Team may have sped up some connection problems either as part of the update or inadvertently. For that, I'm really thankful! You guys rock.

AND NOW, on to other hurdles like configuring the server to host either this blog or a portion of it; as well as figuring out how to start serving pictures and video for the family back home in Baguio City. Mama Linda, Jeng, Ashley, Jaune, Jay, Tin, Gavin, Len, Craig -- we miss you!

WHS: To Do List Projects

There's a couple of things lined up for the MSS when I get down to it. I've got too many open tabs though at the moment so best not to forget what they are:
1. phpBB
2. phpMyAdmin
3. MediaWiki

Some new add-ins that I may play around with from WeGotServed:
a. WHS Customizer
b. Whiist
c. DupeCleaner
d. uTorrent
e. WebGuide
f. ipsHomeControl
g. Homebase
h. easyRADIUS

These add-ins seem to already be in MSS at least last I looked via RDP:
i. FireFly
ii. MediaConnect Controller

All of the above of course is really dependent on the processing power at the moment for MSS as its still running the stock AMD Sempron and 512MB RAM. Thats going to cost at least $100 to get going and I'm not sure about cashing out yet (and even more so because hardware modification will almost certainly void whatever warranty Fry's and HP have on it). *sigh*

HP MediaSmart EX475

This is probably my 2nd system reset attempt tonight and its driving me nuts!

After seeing my friend's Joe and Laura's use of the EX470 for their web server use I decided to look around for similar products.

I've already got a Promise NS4300N which also serves as my FTP and file storage backup, just recently upgraded to have an iTunes and BitTorrent plug-ins (and before that my lowly LAN|Drive was dong all the FTP and file sharing).My blogs (this one included) are happily hosted by Blogger. To reach me on whatever protocol I've already used DynDNS to redirect wherever. My trusty old Netgear WGRv4 has been so far redirecting all traffic where it needs to. So why even?

The answer is simple. Even after switching to Gigabit ethernet my NS4300N wasn't performing to the standards. File transfers were ok but iTunes took a little more buffering time. Besides, I technically don't own it and so it makes sense for me to move all my personal stuff off of it in the off hand just in case, you know?

Looking thru an online bulletin board I happened on someone selling about a hundred bucks cheaper than what I would pay even if I did go with Fry's sale price this weekend. Justifying the need vs cost, I went for it.

The big problem here is that the EX475 (a 1TB implementation of the EX740) had already been pre-configured for someone and I didn't want to have to call the seller until the last option After all, this gadget guru wasn't going to give up on a system until it gave way to splitting its innards ... which is really close on this system mind you.

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Its almost 4am, time for a nap.


(image courtesy of HP.com)