Pedro Innecco

Feeling like getting a Windows Home Server (WHS)? I must say, the product really rocks! Well at least in theory. In practice, the product has been overwhelmed with bugs. I am not only talking about the well known data corruption issue. There are other issues that could really drive you nuts. I’ve been using the WHS without any issues so far, but that is because I am only making use of 40% of what I originally wanted to do with it.

So, if you want to consider having a WHS, you should be aware of some of the bugs haunting the system. Below is a list of the ones that are personally afecting me. Besides a description, I have included my own classification of severity, and useful links.

• Forum Thread: You should join (or at least monitor) the discussion other enthusiasts are having in the official Microsoft forum for the WHS about the particular issue.
• KB Article: When Microsoft acts like a mature company and acknowledges the issue, they publish information about it on knowledge base article, and their official position about the issue.
• Feedback on Connect: This is the site where users and testers of WHS can raise issues (bugs) and suggestions to Microsoft. If you are experiencing one of these issues, you should go to Microsoft Connect and give your feedback.

Data Corruption with alternate NTFS data streams

This is the infamous one that is giving everyone the goosegumbs. If you try to modify directly from a fileshare using certain applications, the file can be corrupted. Microsoft claims that the issue is likely to happen only if you have more than two hard disks, and as per the discussions in the official Microsoft forums, this is likely to be an issue of WHS data replication (wich ironicaly has been designed to protect your data through redundancy) not handling alternate data streams very well (if you don’t know what alternate data streams are, have a look here).

UPDATE (JULY/08): This bug has been addressed with the release of Power Pack 1 (PP1) for Windows Home Server.

Severity: 5/5

[Forum Thread] [KB article] [Download Fix]

PORTFWD.EXE Memory/CPU Overload

You can notice that your WHS is running slow, or claiming that it is low on system memory. You check task manager and finds out that a single process named POWRTFWD.EXE is consuming a huge amount of CPU and/or RAM. Often rebooting the server will sort out the issue – at least for a while. For what could understand, this service is used to automatically update power forwarding using uPnP. If you have manually configured port forwarding, you might as well disable this service as a workaround.

Severity: 4/5

[Forum Thread] [Feedback on Connect]

SYS Volume Failing – NOT

You keep receiving messages from your WHS that the SYS disk is failing and needs to be repaired. Rebboting would often make the message go away (this what I do). By other users report, the message can also go away by repairing the disk from the WHS console, or by scheduling a CHKDSK on the disk. Nevertheless the error would eventually return. Ah, almost forgot: There is NOTHING wrong with the disk, by the way (you ran every single diagnosis tool available on the planet).

UPDATE (APRIL/08): By looking at the logs through Event Viewer, I noticed some “not enough memory” error events around the time of reported SYS volume failures. After I disabled the PORTFWRD.EXE service (see above), the issue of SYS volume failures disappeared; which hints that the PORTFWRD.EXE memory leak issue might be associate with the SYS volume failure.

Severity: 3/5

[Forum Thread] [Feedback on Connect]