Pedro Innecco

Back in 2002, I ventured myself into the wonders of open source Content Management System (CMS). Being a former SysOp for two Bulletin Board Systems during the mid-nineties, I was extremely excited with the prospects of what could be built using free tools to create dynamic and rich web portals – the web was finally making sense, I thought! However, a lot changed since 2002, and it seems that the open source Content Management Systems are lost in the plot.
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I read a few weeks ago in some of the Windows Home Server forums that some enthusiasts are trying to install Linux on a HP MediaSmart server. While I do find it to be a quite interesting exercise, I fail to see the benefits of replacing Windows Home Server with a copy of Linux, particularly since HP has their own Linux-based home servers, plus it would be probably cheaper to build a custom one.

On a personal note, I rather like the idea of having a Windows-based server at home. But I do miss having the ability to play with Linux hacks. So I was thinking what I could do to have Linux as an option at home when I came with a solution where I could have both Windows Home Server and Linux on my MediaSmart server running at the same time: Virtual Server.

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If you are into IT, you probably heard the news that Gartner, the big USA research and advisory company recently warned the industry in a conference that Windows is in danger of collapsing. A bold statement, and once you read Gartner’s argument, it can give the impression to neophyte readers that it is a smart and throughfully researched argument. Well, not really.
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So you consider yourself a hardcore IT techie. There is no computer issue so far that you couldn’t sort.
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The HP MediaSmart server comes with some handy add-ons, such as the iTunes server (for those who have an IPOD) and an addition to the web server called Photo Webshare, which allow users to create and share pictures through the web, straight from their Windows Home Server (WHS). Sounds cool, right? Well, not for me it doesn’t.

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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.

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I have been eagerly waiting for the Wireless-N standard to be rectified so I can finally change my home router for a new one. I must say that during the years I had enough of Linksys routers. Although owned by CISCO, I’ve been quite disappointed with the level of features provided by my WAG54G router. However, while browsing www.linksysinfo.org I found about two quite useful configuration pages which seem to be ‘hidden’ in the router. In particular, there is a page to configure DHCP reservation; a feature that I’ve been missing badly!

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If you are using Enterprise Search for a network location accessible through webDAV, you will find that clicking on search results will try to open the results in Internet Explorer. Here is a quick method to add an option for users to open links as Web
Folders.

NOTE1: This only works in Internet Explorer 5 or above
NOTE2: You will need SharePoint Designer for this tutorial
NOTE3: You must have a knowledge of html (understand tags, elements and attributes)

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One of the first things I decided to do with my Windows Home Server was to install a VNC server on it. VNC is an open source solution (i.e.: free) that allows remote access to a computer in a similar way that of Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). However, because my Windows Home Server is a headless computer which can only be accessed remotely with Microsoft RDP, the installation of VNC is not as straightforward as it seems. In this documentation I’ll explain how I successfully installed VNC on my Windows Home Server.

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The idea around this documentation is to modify the M34 software set-up to allow it to run as a Windows service under Windows Home Server (WHS).

A while ago, I acquired a Siemens DECT (cordless phone) to use at home in my office. I opted for Siemens first because they’re a market leader in DECT phone, and also because they had an interesting product called M34; a USB device which would allow a computer to join your DECT set-up.

With the M34 device you could do things such as remote control your computer over the telephone, have Skype calls routed to your phone system and other sorts of data transmission between your PC and DECT set-up. I got the M34 with the objective to set it on a home server, as soon as I could get one.

However, the M34 software was built around a desktop perspective. That is, its supporting software that communicates with the device were built to interact with users that are logged in into the PC. It technical terms, this means that the M34 software was not designed to be ran as a Windows service.

This documentation is a work in progress which I would like to share with people interested in using the M34 with a WHS. It is by no means a final documentation, but by sharing it with the world I am hopping to get more users interested in finding the best solution around setting the M34 with WHS as a Windows service. If there is any progress on this project, expect this documentation to change over time. Otherwise, consider it to be just the published results of my initial tests!

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