Right now one might be wondering if I am a fascist or a communist, or some sort of enemy of the free world. No, not at all. In fact on the contrary.

Back in 2008, I wrote a post condemning Google’s nonchalant attitude towards what users do when using their services. I read a bunch of articles about this new announcement by Google, and some of them seems to me to be a bit (well, way) out of line. Particularly this one which says that “Brazil’s 3,663 data requests and 291 removal requests [...] underscores Brasília’s restriction of free speech”. According to articles like this; racism, pedophilia and cyber bullying are the same as freedom of speech (if citing Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights).

Funny, it have The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) right in front of me, and according to this document, the author of this article is wrong. In fact, he is full of bull. This is yet another case (as I did before) of citing Article 30 of the UDHR:

Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

Basically Article 30 asserts this isn’t the “world of do as you please regardless of others by saying you have the right to do so because of the UDHR”, like many people (including many at Google, as per my previous article) seem to claim.

And I am proud to see that the Brazilian government seems to be on pair with the UDHR. Is targeting pedophilia a violation of free speech? No, because paedophilia is abusing the human rights of its victims, thus it is against the UDHR. Is targeting racist websites and pages in Orkut (Google’s social platform, mostly popular in Brazil) a violation of free speech? No, because racism is against the UDHR (Articles 2, 3 and 5 just to name a few). Is targeting cyber bullying (Article 12)… You get the idea – so I hope.

Kudos to the Brazilian government for sending the right message to Google and the rest of the world. We shall defend the UDHR in its entirely (and not just what is convenient to a few) along with our constitution.

It is not my objective to troll Microsoft here, but I want Microsoft to know why I can’t see myself using this product. In fact, I’d like to think this is a constructive criticism, and I did send a feedback to the Office Live Team concerning all the points I am raising here. But I would honestly like to hear back from the community as well if I am wrong about something (misconceptions perhaps), if Microsoft is working to improve on the points I am raising, or perhaps if anyone in the community had similar frustrations but found some sort of workaround.

I use Google Apps for a lot of my domains, and the standard (free) version of Google Apps does it quite well for me. But for some of these domains, I need is a simple Intranet, accessible through a subdomain, where I can collaborate with fellow workers. Google Apps offer their Sites application which could be used for such purpose, but I think it is way too simplistic (even the commercial version of Google Apps).

In technical terms what I needed for these particular domains is an online service like Microsoft SharePoint, which basically is what Office Live is based on. If possible a free one, which I could gradually upgrade by buying extra/commercial services and tools according to my needs.

So when I heard that Office Live would offer a Small Business version for free, I thought that my prayers have been answered. So I signed-in for the service, and based on my experiences so far, I was left quite disappointment as simply couldn’t use the service. Here is think Office Live failed to launch:

1. The requirement of the entire domain name to be redirected to the Office Live service (i.e.: can’t use subdomains):
   Not to be able to use subdomains with Office Live is, to say the least, inconvenient. I want to have an Intranet at http://intranet.mydomain.com but I still want to keep my company’s public website somewhere else, and I am pretty confident that I am not the only one out there with such requirement. Plus I do have other online services that depend on the configuration of subdomains and other DNS records, so I MUST have a proper dashboard where I can administer my domain name. Here is an article that gets more into this premise.
2. Once I sign in, I am presented with some sort of overview page that I can’t customise:
   My point here is, after I sign in into my Office Live account (through http://home.officelive.com), I am presented with the same annoying – sorry for the strong word, but it is annoying – “Getting started” content, explaining how to design my site (already have it, thank you), get a domain (already have it but you don’t allow me to use a subdomain from it since want is Intranet functionality), set-up business email (already have email service from somewhere else). The page is filled with links to instructions and guides. Uff… Come on! I want to present my company’s Intranet here.
3. Allow only one Office Live Account per Windows Live ID:
   Really don’t get this. Simply put, Microsoft competitors (i.e.: Google Apps) don’t have such limitation.
   I think it is important to say that, with regards to the points I made above, Google Apps doesn’t have these limitations (not even with the standard/free version). In fact, a major downer of Google Apps is that they fix almost their entire business model in web-only clients/applications.

NOTE: Recently Google started to realise that they can’t escape the value of certain desktop applications, and started to give-in to the needs of their customers. Google’s Microsoft Outlook Sync Tool is a good example (but not available to users of the standard/free version of Google Apps). There is also some 3rd party add-ins to Microsoft Office to make it work with Google App sites as if they were SharePoint/Office Live sites. I tried one but it was still a long way to go. Also, there are many protests of Google Apps customers complaining that several services and features offered to standard end-user Google accounts aren’t available in Google Apps (e.g.: Google Wave), or have limited features in Google Apps.

Microsoft on the other hand have what I believe to be a nicer business model, which is the integration of thick-client (desktop) applications such as Word and Groove with their offering of online clouds (Live Workspace, Office Live, Online Services), while they are also working on online version of Office Applications (neat!). I am anxiously waiting for the release of Office 2010 and the new Windows Live Essentials (Wave 4).

However, concerning Office Live I am not that enthusiastic. From what I have been reading on the Internet and also based on my experience so far with Office 2010 (although at the time I am writing this the product is yet to be released and I am using a pre-release version), I reckon that Office Live will have a sad ending. The current version of the Office Live add-in isn’t supported in Office 2010, meaning that documents stored in Office Live (or Live Workspace for that matter) can’t be accessed by Office 2010 applications. Office 2010 instead has built-in support for SkyDrive, which indicates to me (and well, to a lot of other people to be honest) a change of focus by Microsoft where SkyDrive will replace Office Live (and Live Workspace), at least with regards to online document storage.

But what about the other features provided by Office Live, such as Team Workspaces, e-mails, contact management and so on? Well I call this another hint, but you might think this is just a hunch: Microsoft Groove 2007 used to work perfectly with Office Live, without the need of any add-in. Now as for the new version of Groove in Office 2010 (which has been renamed to SharePoint Workspace 2010), when you try to connect to Office Live library, it gives an error saying that “SharePoint workspace cannot sync with the specified SharePoint site because its server version is not supported.” Another hunch, perhaps more obvious, is that when you try to use the built-in option to save a file on a document library from Office Live, it simply won’t work. So to me these are yet more evidences that Office Live is going to be deprecated.

It seems that based on the evolution one can notice from other Microsoft products and services, in particular Microsoft Online Services (which is in a way a more serious version of Office Live with a vast set of enterprise features and services, but there is no free version), Office 2010 (supporting SkyDrive but no Office Live add-in) and Windows Live Essentials (which will offer Office Online applications in its next release); and on the other hand no progress with Office Live, I can only conclude that Office Live will be discontinued.

It is a shame, really. I honestly thought that Office Live could go a long way and that the Small Business Edition would be the product that would stand-up for the match against Google Apps Standard Edition. Perhaps is too soon to tell if Microsoft is going will try to keep up with an offer of free Online Services to compete with Google’s, since all I hear at the moment is about Microsoft Online Services. But as far as Office Live goes, I think it is a flat-liner and I wouldn’t touch it until we get some pulse back from Microsoft, which might take a while.

Or perhaps, concerning a decent intranet/collaboration portal, there is no such thing such as “free lunch.”

Xaraya was a full of new promises, and most of them were fulfilled. It has a more flexible core, flexible template and layout system, strong debugging and error support and an extensive API. In my opinion, from an architectural perspective Xaraya is the best open source CRM out there. Of course this is only my opinion, which I based on my experience with several other systems (Xoops, Drupal, PHP-Nuke, etc), and I can proudly assert that I am the original creative thinker of several features that have been adopted by Xaraya. Looking back in time however I feel that most CMS systems, not matter how good their API or framework is, are failing to keep up with the recent trends and developments in the Internet.

First and foremost, portals are designed with the end-user in mind. It doesn’t matter who your target audience is and their level of knowledge; the portal must make sense to its user base, not its administrators. What is the value that you are willing to offer to our user base? And most importantly, what is that your portal has to offer to your potential user base that users can’t find somewhere else? This is the fundamental basis of a marketing orientation approach, in which the organisations must be aware of customer needs and the competition. So if you are offering a photo gallery, forums and some basic social network features, bear in mind that there are tons of other sites out there that are offering the same for free. As an example, which should members of my family register at my portal to make use of forums and photo galleries when they could use Facebook and Flickr?

Another point is that users don’t like redundancy and ambiguity. Users don’t want to register into yet another website, in which they will have to maintain yet another identity and upload pictures once again. With the recent trends in Web 2.0 users are welcoming integration of social networking features, which is exactly what I think is missing in Content Management Systems at the moment. With Facebook’s application framework and Google’s approach with the Open Social platform, there is a lot of development opportunities that free Content Management Systems are failing to grasp.

For my family website, I would like that my users could log-in into the portal using their existing Windows Live, Yahoo or Google ID, and be able to make use of social network features of sites like Facebook and Google’s Open Social. I would also like my users to be able to link their Flickr photo gallery into their profile at my family portal, and to be able to interact with related groups in Facebook and Orkut. In the case of my portal, it would be futile to expect my user base to participate in it. Why you ask? Well my family portal is a silo of information, meaning that only the users of my family portal would be able to interact with the data. It is unrealistic to expect that my users would actively participate in discussions and upload pictures and other contents, while they could do the same in portals with a wider audience like Facebook or Orkut.

Now don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that Content Management Systems shouldn’t have their own photo galeries, forums and other functionality. On the contrary, I do love to see all the fantastic open source applications that are out there and I think they are a viable option for portals in which integration with 3rd parties would be unrealistic. This is particularly the case in which portals memberships are closed to given members (e.g.: site is closed for subscribers or over 18s only). However, being most of these features modularised, I believe that portal administrators should have the freedom to choose. Moreover with Web 2.0, portal owners could have their implementations of Menalto’s Gallery and phpBB forums integrated with Facebook or Google’s Open Social platform. The possibilities are numerous.

Therefore I urge for the developers of open source CMS out there to start adapting their systems to integrate with what Web 2.0 has to offer. Authentication modules for Windows Live, Yahoo and Google IDs would be a great start. More documentation and modules that focus on integration with Facebook and Google’s Open Social would also be of great value for portals that are willing to target a wide user base.

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.

After upgrading the amount of RAM on my MediaSmart served from 512MB to 2GB, I felt this would be a great opportunity to have a Linux system without compromising the features of Windows Home Server. So I have prepared this guide to explain what I have done to run a Linux virtual machine under my Windows Home Server. I part from the principle that you know what you are doing and you have some idea of what virtualisation all about.

Here is what you need:

• Upgrade your server’s RAM. 512MB is unrealistic if you want to do anything with Windows Home Server besides its out-of-the-box features. If you have a HP MediaSmart server, you can find instructions on how to upgrade the server memory here.
• A copy of Microsoft Virtual Server. At the time of writing this post, the last version was 2005 R2 SP1. Virtual Server is free and can be downloaded from here.
• A distribution of Linux. I am a big Ubuntu fan. However I opted to use openSUSE because of the benefits it has from the interoperability agreement Novell has with Microsoft (e.g.: virtual machine additions). You can get openSUSE from here, and Ubuntu from here.

Setup Instructions

1. First and foremost, you must do a remote access to your HomeServer using UltraVNC or Remote Desktop and log in as administrator.
2. Once on the servers desktop, install Microsoft Virtual Server. Reboot the server is necessary and remote desktop into the server again as administrator.
3. On the Servers Start Menu under Microsoft Virtual Server, click on Virtual Server Administration Website.
4. Under Virtual Machines on the left-side menu of the Admin Site, choose click on Create.
5. You must now provide the initial settings of your virtual machine. Here are some of my recommended settings for a simple Unix Server:
   1. Name. The name of the Virtual PC (e.g.: Linux, openSUSE, Ubuntu).
   2. Memory. The amount of RAM you want to provide for the virtual machine, bearing in mind you should leave enough for your server to run smoothly. It really depends of the amount of RAM you have and what you want to do with your Linux server. For example if I only want to use some console (text) applications I would go from a minimum of 256MB to 512MB (if I want to run services for a development environment). If using a graphical desktop and/or some more intensive applications, I might go to 1GB. As I have 2GB for my home server, I prefer to never leave the Home Server operating system with less than 1GB.
   3. Virtual hard disk. You can create the disk to use with your Linux virtual machine now or specify one later.
      NOTE: If you already have or plan to have Linux on an external disk or flash drive, you could create a linked virtual hard disk that points to the Linux you partition you want to use (see point 8 below for further instructions).
   4. Virtual network adapter. Make sure you configure your virtual machine to connect to the external network. This will ensure that the virtual machine can be seen and accessed on your network.
6. Once the machine is created, you will be presented with its configuration page.
7. If you need to install Linux, you need to ensure the virtual machine will be able to initiate the Linux installation process:
   1. If you have a CD/DVD drive on your home server, simply put the disk on the drive and ensure your virtual machine CD/DVD drive properties is configure to use your physical CD/DVD drive.
      NOTE: If you want to use your CD/DVD drive within your Linux virtual machine, you should do this procedure regardless if you need to install Linux or not.
   2. If your home server doesn’t have a CD/DVD drive, you must configure the virtual machines CD/DVD driver properties to capture the ISO image of your Linux install disk.
8. OPTIONAL: If you already have an external disk with Linux installed, or if you want to install Linux on a dedicated disk, you must create a linked virtual disk that points to your existing Linux install:
   1. Plug the external disk with Linux on your home server.
   2. On the Virtual Server Admin Site under Virtual Disks, choose Create then Linked Virtual Hard Disk.
   3. Specify the location name of the file to be saved and the physical drive that will be used for the virtual disk.
   4. Go back to the configuration page of your Linux virtual machine and under hard disks, provide the filename of the file created for your linked virtual hard disk.
9. OPTIONAL: Still on the virtual machine configuration page, you can click on General properties in order to specify a username and password to run the virtual machine upon system start-up. Recommended if you want your Linux virtual machine to be always on (i.e.: starts when the home server start).
10. On the Virtual Server Admin Site under Virtual Server, choose Server Properties.
11. On the bottom of the page under your server Properties, click on Virtual Machine Remote Control(VMRC).
12. On the Virtual Machine Remote Control (CMRC) Server Properties page, ensure you enable VMRC server and specify a TCP/IP port that is not already in use on the server. Then click OK to reflect the changes.
13. OPTIONAL: Back on the left-side menu of the Virtual Server Admin Site, under Virtual Server you could click on Resource Allocation to specify the maximum amount of resources your virtual machines can use in order to ensure resilience to your home server.
14. Once again on the left-side menu of the Virtual Server Admin Site, under Navigation click on Master Status in order to see your recently created virtual machine. Hove the mouse over its title to show its context menu that would allow it to start and stop the virtual machine, as well to Remote Control it.

All done! Once I got my Linux box installed, I was running things like shell scripting, mySQL, Apache, PHP and other nifty tools. I hope you found this little guide useful!

As a next step, you could look into Microsoft Services for Unix for good interoperability between your Linux virtual machine and your Windows hosts. You can find more about Windows Services for Unix here.

If you want to discuss this implementation with other Windows Home Server enthusiasts, there is a forum thread at wegotserved.co.uk (registration required) here. Thanks to Bodog from wegotserved.co.uk for the support!

It is not my intention to just second Thurrott in his opinions. In fact that would be a waste of time, as probably a good part of the IT community that is familiar with Windows and the recent strategies announced by Microsoft (particularly about Windows 7) is chuckling at Gartner’s comments. For those that would like to know why, you can read Thurrott’s views about Gartner’s assertions on his website here and then here.

What I do want in this case is to share you my views on what is the real problem with Windows. In my view, the biggest nonsense in Gartner’s argument is that they say Windows should have different kernels (“one size doesn’t fit all”) but at the same time they make a case against the over-complexity of the operating system.

Different kernels? This is as complex as it gets. My view is that Gartner simply wanted to sound smart and give the impression that they know what they’re talking about. As Thurrott well put in his site, Windows VISTA is the most modularised version of Windows, and there are several editions available for different needs (Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, Ultimate, …). The factual difference is that, instead of creating different kernels (as Gartner argues in favour) the key is to modularise it instead — a practice that is Microsoft’s main strategy for the Windows brand.

The problem I see here is that Microsoft should have opted for modularisation about five years ago. And I mean way more modularisation than Microsoft have now with Windows VISTA and Windows Server 2008. Things like the NTVDM, POSIX and OS/2 compatibility layers should have been optional modules. In fact, I was just recently thinking about NTVDM being removed from x64 flavours of Windows. Well, for me it makes sense. I mean, I can get much better DOS legacy support by getting something like DOSBOX to run DOS applications.

As for complexity, again I see this as a problem of modularisation. Just out of curiosity: What happened with the option of doing a “custom install” in Windows and choose NOT to install Painter, Screensavers and things like that? For a 14GB of HD space hungry operating system like Windows VISTA, this is a must. I want to be able to choose what to add or remove during the installation, and without having to edit some unnatened script files.

Moreover, I think the complexity problem is way beyond bundled goodies like Windows Mail or Windows Movie Maker. The problem is that Windows VISTA requires a minimum of 1GB of RAM to barely run. I’m sorry but this is insane. I don’t care how much cheaper memory is these days. What I see is that today you can do similar funky graphics in *nix with 512MB RAM. The problem? Again I think is the fact of little modularity within the kernel.

As for hardware compatibility, I agree with Thurrott that Windows VISTA being having issues of incompatibility is a myth. I know that VISTA has much, MUCH better drivers. However, this came with a dreadful cost (which is a related, but different subject):

The fact that Microsoft only allow signed drivers to run under Windows x64 is SUICIDE. Probably one of the siliest moves Microsoft did for the x64 platform. Why? Well, sometimes there are nice open source applications out there that require abstraction layers that sits on drivers (e.g.: network analysis tools, emulators, etc). Being open source drivers, it is well likely that they won’t have their drivers signed (me thinks). So, what if I want to install some open source cryptographic tool? what about VNC’s video driver? What about network analysis tools, and some *nix ported applications which require “drivers”? See my point?

Moreover, I despite the fact that Microsoft added some shenanigans on their HAL, such as disabling sound features when someone inputs something in the MIC IN or LINE IN of the PC, etc. These shenanigans, which were added to hurdle piracy, do little to prevent piracy, but do a lot to annoy customers.

The way I perceive these issues, I don’t believe Windows is in danger of collapsing — far from it in fact. But I do think that Microsoft is in danger of loosing market within the enterprise and power user segments of the market to *nix (BSD, Linux, Unix-based systems) — And I make my point as an IT specialist and implementator, not as an analyst.

Perhaps you’re starting to doubt your IT skills, or are simply shouting obscenities to the computer’s open carcass in rage and frustration. However, the question you should be asking yourself at this stage is not how much you know or think you know about IT, but know much you know or think you know about electronics?

Altough IT is a science on its own, many ‘self-made IT gurus’ tend to make the (honest) mistake to forget that first and foremost, the world of computers is governed by electronics. Like IT, electronics is a fascinating, complex and broad science that studies “the flow of charge through various materials and devices” (Wikipedia, 2008).

What are they?

One particular component I would like to draw your attention to is to capacitors. In dummy terms, capacitors are in a way like little bateries, as they store electric energy between a pair of conductors (called plates). These plates are separated by an insulator (i.e.: non-conductive material) known as dielectric. Dielectrics can be, in theory, any non-conductive material such as air, porcelain, chemicals (e.g.: electrolytes) and teflon. Besides storing energy, capacitors can have other applications such as filtering, signal processing and power conditioning; and the type of dielectric implies for what application it would be best used for.

What is the problem?

The thing is that capacitors can age, particularly the electrolytic ones which use chemicals as its insulator. A while ago I was having a hard time with a computer I built. The system would simply freeze when my soundcard emited a sound, when I moved the mouse or at other simple tasks. I formated and reinstalled the operating system several times, troubleshooted all expansion cards and drives, tried different operating systems and flashed the BIOS; yet nothing worked. After opening my computer for the 100th time, I noticed that some of “those little aluminium cylinders” in my motherboard looked funny. After replacing the motherboard (which was out of warranty), everything started to work as it should. Here are some visual sympthoms of capacitor problems which I witnessed:

• Swollen or bulged caps: When the ‘top’ of the capacitor looks like its bulged. This is due to presure being built inside it.
• Leaking substance: When you can see a substance (mostly a black or brown crusty substance) coming out of it. That is the electrolyte, and yep: It shouldn’t be coming out!

What should I do first?

If your system and/or the failing component is under warranty, your first option should be to activate the warranty and have it repaired or replaced. For those with components out of warranty however, replacement can be quite drastic. Particularly if the problem is narrowed to a few capacitors. However, the best remedy is prevention. Here are some pointers on how to prevent being a victim of capacitors plague.

• Temperature: Keep your system cool. Electrolytic capacitors are sensitive to temperature and they will age faster if your system is too hot.
• Solid Capacitors: Look for motherboards and other components with fewer electrolytic capacitors as possible, as solid capacitors are more resistant to temperatures and more suitable for high-frequency applications.

However, certain systems could be simply doomed to failure due to poor design. I have a Linksys WAG54G v2 ADSL router and I noticed that its switched ports wouldn’t work with 1Gb network adapters unless I forced them to 10Mb (no, forcing to 100Mb wouldn’t work either). I did some research on the internet and a narrowed down the problem to (you probably guessed) capacitors. Basically the WAG54G was poorly designed and it overheats quite a lot, thus damaging the capacitors.

What should I do next?

Problem is, once a capacitor is damaged there is no other option rather than replacing or repairing the unit. This is why I am currently on a mission to learn a little bit more about electronics; at least enough to be able to test for defective capacitors (and other components) and learn how to replace them. And my suggestion to all other IT gurus out there is to do the same. The good news is that there is a lot of information on the Internet for us to get started. Here are a few ones:

• Wikipedia – Capacitors: This article will introduce you to capacitors, what they are, the different types, their applications, etc.
• HowStuffWorks.com – How Capacitors Work: If the previous article was little too much of a heavy reading you might want to check this one first (this is not a criticism! I read this one first as well).
• Wikipedia – Capacitors (component): This article gets a little bit more pratical as it discusses in more detail the different types of capacitors, their applications and their disadvantages.
• Wikipedia – Electronic color code: Believe it or not, electric components aren’t coloured just to look cute. Those colours actualy have a meaning, and understanding them would help you know the value of the capacitors (and other components such as resistors) in order to replace them.
• Wikipedia – Capacitor plague: This article discusses the premature failing of capacitors, giving a particular emphasis in computer electronics (e.g.: motherboards). It also gives some background information about the infamous industrial spionage case that plagued Taiwan with defective capacitors.
• Silicon Chip Online – Motherboard Capacitor Problem Blows Up: This article gives some good background information about the capacitor plague epidemic of the early 2000s that pestered several motherboard manufacturers.

I’m up for it!

Ok, so you had enough of theory reading and you want to get your hands dirty. Fair enough! First things first, consider that you will have to get a good set of equipment such as a good soldering kit, desoldering tools and of course: quality capacitors. In the UK, a good place to by all this equipment is Maplin. But before you start taking your credit card out of the wallet, I strongly recommend you visit capacitorlab.com. It is the best site I found so far with tutorials, pictures, suggestions, etc.

While I see the value both products, first and foremost I don’t have an iPod, so I disabled the iTunes server. as for the Photo Webshare, I don’t like it for the main reason that the albums you create are independent from the pictures you have in your shared photos folder. Which also brings into the attention the fact that pictures published in Photo Webshare aren’t going to be protected by the folder replication redundancy feature.

The only problem is, I can ‘t find an out of the box way of uninstalling or disabling HP Photo Webshare. At the moment I am researching on how this could be done without breaking everything, and I’ll make sure I post my findings here. In the meantime, if you know a way to disable or uninstall HP Photo Webshare, please let me know how. Even better, you could share your findings with everyone at this forum.

 UPDATE (March 2010): After a long wait, HP has finally released an update for their MediaSmart Servers series 47x and 48x. This update will remove HP Photo Webshare, and add more features. You can find more information about this update here.

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]

This is the list of hidden pages in the WAG54G router. I have tested these using the 1.01.22 firmware and the work fine. To access these pages, point your browser to your router IP address 192.168.1.1) and append the correct page address (for example http://192.168.1.1/dhcp_reserved.asp).

You can find more information at linksysinfo.org. Let me know if you have any more WAG54G V2 hints!

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)

1. Launch SharePoint Designer and open your SharePoint site. Find your results.aspx page from your search centre, and make a copy of it. Let’s call this file docresults.aspx in our example.
   

   NOTE: You could as well modify your default results.aspx search page, but this is not really recommended as updates could break your work. Instead, make custom pages and configure SharePoint to use it.

2. Now edit the new file you created, called docresults.aspx. Looking at the code, you must add the following line under <style type="text/css">:
   

   a {behavior: url(#default#AnchorClick);}

3. Save the file, and exit Web SharePoint Designer.
4. If you created a custom search results page, you must now follow steps 5 to 7 in order to configure your site to use the appropriate results page. Otherwise jump to step 8.
5. Navigate to your portal as a SharePoint administrator. Click on Site Actions menu and select Site Settings.
6. Under Site Collection Administration, click on the Search scopes option.
7. For each scope you want to use the custom search results page, you must change is settings and specify the filename of the target results page you want to use (e.g.: docresults.aspx).
8. Now do a search (any search) on your site using a scope that would return results using the custom page.
9. On the results page, click on Site Actions menu and select Edit Page.
10. Locate your Search Core Results Web Part (should be on the Bottom Zone by default) and click on the edit menu. Choose Modify Shared Web Part.
11. Now, under the Search Core Results edit panel you should find a section called Data View Properties. Under this section, click on XSL Editor… button.
12. You can now see the code used for returning search results. What we need to look for here is the cold responsible for each result returned. Look for <xsl:template match="Result">
    
    You can see under this tag that each search result comprises of some span tags. Let’s have a look at three particular ones:
    • srch-Icon: The icon representing the application used to open the object returned
    • srch-Title: The title of the object returned in the search result
    • srch-URL: The URL of the object returned

    
    We are paying attention to these three span tags because they are clickable http links. You can see that each of these spans have a <a> (anchor) element, which contains a href="{$url}" attribute. If you want to make one of these links open the file in webDAV mode, all that you need to to is add the following extra attribute into the anchor of each span:

    folder="{$url}"

    Alternatively, you could add an extra span containing a link to open in webDAV mode. Here is a snip of code which you could include just after the closing of the src-title span tag:

    <span><a href="{$url}" folder="{url}"
    id="{concat(’CSR_IMG_’,$id)}"
    title="Click here to open the target folder in
    webDAV mode using Windows Explorer.">
    [Open in WebDAV]</a></span>

13. Click on Save to close the Web Part text editor. Click OK on the Search Core Results edit panel. Finally, click on Exit Edit Mode (just under the Site Actions menu) to finish.

That’s all! Hope you find this useful! For more information about the behaviour of webDAV folders in Internet Explorer, refer to this MSDN article.