News
        
        Beta Update of Windows Home Server Offered
        Microsoft has begun enlisting the support of beta testers  for Windows Home Server Power Pack 1.
        
        
			- By Kurt Mackie
- May 22, 2008
        Microsoft has begun enlisting the support of beta testers  for Windows Home Server Power Pack 1. Participants can now sign up to review the  beta release that updates Microsoft's consumer-oriented server product,  according to an 
announcement. 
This Power Pack will contain a fix for a previously noted data  corruption problem, according to a blog by  one of Microsoft's beta testers. That problem affected Windows Home Server systems  using more  than one hard drive. 
Microsoft has already provided a patch for a different  problem in which files were getting corrupted after being compressed using  the NTFS file system on Windows Home Server.
Power Pack 1 will omit an anticipated feature in Windows  Home Server -- namely, the ability of users to back up their backups. According  to a  post at the We Got Served blog, that feature was eliminated to avoid the  possibility of users experiencing corrupted database backups.
Some Windows Home Server users apparently have had problems  with remote access after they installed Windows XP Service Pack 3, according to a  post at the Microsoft Windows Home Server Forums. The problem stems from a  default setting in which "Terminal Services ActiveX control is disabled by  default in XPSP3 as a security measure," according to a Forum reply. The  reply provides a way to solve this problem.
Those who want to participate in the beta testing of Windows  Home Server Power Pack 1 need to gain access through Microsoft Connect. The  public download for Windows Home Server Power Pack 1, which will contain  various fixes, is expected to become available in early June.
Windows Home Server is marketed toward families, providing a  means to connect multiple home PCs and share multimedia files, as well as  perform data backups. The product was first publicly unveiled by Microsoft  Chairman Bill Gates in January 2007 at the International Consumer Electronics  Show.   
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
            
        
        
                
                    About the Author
                    
                
                    
                    Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.