When I tried to set it up with my HP MediaSmart Server though the HP installer would constantly generate a Windows error, before displaying an error message with “RegOpenKeyExW” and then exiting.

Trying the vanilla installer from a system-builder install of Windows Home Server lead to more helpful information, and a series of steps that will resolve this problem;

For anyone encountering the “RegOpenKeyExW” with the HP MediaSmart Server/Windows Home Server, and Windows 7 try the following steps;

1. Click Start button and type “Command”. When  “Command Prompt” appears in the list, right-click on it and choose “Run as Administrator”
2. Enter the following: reg delete HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SQMClient\Windows\DisabledSessions /va /f
3. Press enter. If you receive an error you are probably not running as an administrator.
4. Close the command prompt. The Windows Home Server connector software should now install successfully.

Currently you’re Windows 7 machine will be listed as “Windows Vista”, but that’s a known issue!

A few people have (somewhat) successfully virtualized Windows Home Server on their Windows Media Center box but while I admire their cunning there’s potentially a rather ugly problem. If the OS drive for WMC should ever fail you have a chicken-and-egg situation. No WMC = No WHS = No restore from backup.

I think a better scenario then is to have Windows Media Center running as a service on the Home Server box with all output being through one or more extenders. With a few constraints I couldn’t think of any reason why this wouldn’t work so I decided to give it a go

Note the following were required;

1. A VM package that supports USB devices and can be run as a service.
2. USB Tuners
3. Acceptance of being limited to extenders, and not being able to record protected digital content (for the same reasons you can’t record digital content with a custom-built box).

Virtual Machine package

I initially started with the free version of VMware Server 2.0 which worked but had two drawbacks; The most awful web based administration imaginable and a limit of two USB devices. The first I could live with since post-install I’d use Remote Desktop for admin tasks, but the second’s a deal breaker for Media Center duties with USB tuners.

When I discovered this post-install I switched to VMware Player which is free but restricts virtual machines to being run, not created or edited. As I’d already created my VM in VMware Server this wasn’t a problem.

VMware Player doesn’t run as a service but can easily be configured to do so, even featuring a “No GUI” option for this purpose. It also supports USB 2.0 devices and will automatically reconnect them upon startup.

One other important detail is your VM package must support “Bridged” networking. This is where both VM and the host share the same network connection but have different IP addresses. The alternative is NAT where your VM is on a different IP range and invisible to devices such as extenders.

USB Tuners

Because Media Center is running in a virtual machine it’s unable to access physical hardware, with the exception of hard-disks and USB devices which can be bridged from the host.

For this experiment I picked up a used Adaptec 3610 USB Analog Tuner from eBay for about $35. As well as dual-tuners it has a built in eHome IR blaster for controlling STB’s which is super-handy. If a virtual Media Center proves not to be an option I’ll likely be switching my Media Center to a smaller machine anyhow so it won’t be going to waste.

For an ATSC HD tuner I currently use a VBox PCI card, but would switch to the HD HomeRun. It’s pricey ($170+) but has dual hybrid ATSC/QAM inputs and is Ethernet based.

Acceptance

As noted there’s two obvious caveats to a VM Media Center – Firstly that all Media must be played back via an Extender, and secondly CableCard support will not be an option.

The first is ok with me. As crazy as it sounds I’d prefer NOT to have a PC next to the TV The second is the same limitation as custom building a machine – sucky but what can you do. While I’d like CableCard I can live without it. Most of the shows I watch are on local network channels and ATSC works fine here, arguably even better infact.

(On a side note: why are the only OEM PC’s that support CableCard so big, ugly, and non-Media-ish?)

The results

I ran this experiment on the Windows Home Server I built last year, which since buying a MediaSmart Server has been relegated to a development role. The specs (Athlon X2 2.0 Ghz, 2GB RAM) are higher than the stock MSS but around the spec that it can be upgraded to with hardware/bios mods.

Aside from the horrible web interface, installation under VMware server was painless.

The first thing I did was setup an extender to test that it could connect and stream the provided sample videos. There should be absolutely no difference, but for reference I went with the Xbox 360 for these tests. It was in the living room and I think it’s a better implementation.

The Extender connected first time without any problems and I could immediately select and view all of the sample media without a problem. This was my “wow” moment when I realized that this could actually all work.

Next up it was time to configure the tuners and, aside from having to switch to VMware Player, this is when I experienced my first hitch – TV setup cannot be performed via an Extender and must be done on the Media Center PC itself.

Because the virtual display drivers do not support hardware video you cannot see anything while configuring TV. This leads to a “TV Signal” screen that looks similar-but-not-quite-the-same as when there’s no signal detected.

As well as spotting this you need to use a process of elimination to determine which box maps to which tuner (luckily the Adaptec labels its external ports which makes it trivial) and whether the IR blaster is really changing channel or not.

So with everything setup it was on to some performance tests. First I watched and recorded “The Daily Show” and everything was great – CPU usage on the server was less than 30% and the picture was free of stutters, including while skipping back/forward.

After this I recorded “The Colbert Report” and started to rewatch the Daily Show. This is where things took a down-turn. The picture was generally ok but would occasionally stutter. Looking at Task Manager on the VM, CPU usage would spike from 50-100%, and on the server it would hover between 40-50%.

At this point I realized that VMware was maxing out one core on the server while the other went unused. I tried several things to get VMware to use both CPUs without any success – although VMware player is free it has no options so you’re restricted to editing config files using info gleamed on the web.

As I was already seeing problems with two simultaneous streams I was also concerned how it would handle a third show, or HD being thrown into the mix, or multiple extenders. All of these are things that are common in our house and if there’s one Mission Critical WAF item it’s TV

At this point I decided to call time on my experiment for the time being. As well as resolving the VMware problem with multiple cores I would need to purchase some USB ATSC hardware before I could satisfactorily judge performance.

My feeling is this setup is absolutely workable, and could work very well, but the spec of the host machine is likely to require more than the MediaSmart Server hardware can support.

Since my whole purpose was minimizing the footprint of both machines instead of switching back to a large form-factor server I’m more likely to purchase a dedicated machine such as a Dell Studio Hybrid or Mac Mini for Media Center purposes, then have it record to a network share. These are avenues I’ll probably explore in the new year.

It was fun tho

It looked neat and kind of trippy so I thought I’d post. Everything is fairly responsive too which is nice.

And yes, there is a reason for this hall-of-mirrors type madness. More later

The Power Pack 1 issue was due to the use of an undocumented (oops!) interface that was removed in PP1. Thanks to Brendan for pointing that out to me.

The HP Media Smart Server issue was caused by Whiist not preserving some HP-specific markup stored in the XML file which controls the list of website links of the public / private homepages.

The HP fix has been tested by several volunteers for a few weeks now without any sign of problems. I’ve removed the warning relating to the MSS from the Whiist homepage, however please note that Whiist still remains beta software.

Aside from these two changes, and some minor bug fixes, this release is identical to the previous 0.80 release. I know it’s been a while, but stay tuned for a proper new release soon

As my plan was to dual boot Vista/OSX I used GParted to shrink my main partition and create a little 20GB one for OSX. Then during the OSX install I selected this partition and formatted it with the Mac’s HFS+ filesystem.

At least that was the plan.

Somehow (and I blame the cat for distracting me) I managed to format both partitions and as a result blitzed my main Vista install. Document, settings, music, Whiist, (and most critically of all, my Counterstrike config file) all gone in the blink of an eye*. Yikes!

So, for the first time ever I found myself breaking out the Windows Home Server restore CD, placing it in my PC and rebooting with crossed fingers. And it worked, flawlessly and amazingly well. I clicked through the wizard, selected the backup from the night before, and a few hours later my PC was back in the same condition prior to my little faux pas.

Having been a Windows Home Server user since the early betas I’m well aware of its features and functions, but this is the first time I’ve ever needed it to save my bacon and it passed with flying colors. 

* Ok, I confess. I have multiple backups of these that should handle most combinations of disaster. Some of them lag by a week or so though and reinstalling and restoring everything would have been extremely tedious. And my Counterstrike file with my lovingly crafted bindings really would have been gone forever!

If you’ve tried to do this yourself you’ve probably found it isn’t very easy. You need to login via Remote Desktop, find the correct file, and then use an image editing program to paste your new image into the correct place, then resave the file.

Yeah, I never found the time to change mine either

Anyway, one of the goals of Whiist is to make managing all of the websites on your Windows Home Server a great deal easier, and to this end the latest version of Whiist (0.8) now includes a simple editor that lets you change this image.

Go to the Whiist options page using the settings button on the menu bar and you will find the option to customize your home page, along with a preview of how the page will look. In the editor select an image and use the mouse to position/zoom as desired. When you click ‘Apply’ Whiist will generate a new image for your Windows Home Server page and save it in the appropriate place.

I’m still working one a couple of “bigger” features for Whiist that I hope to have ready in the new year. I’m not quite ready to say what these are yet, but if you like blogging and photo galleries I think you’ll be happy

Merry Christmas!

Once person has claimed that Whiist overwrites settings required by the HP MSS – I can assure you that this is absolutely false! I very much believe that Whiist behaves as a “good citizen” in respect to Home Server;

Unless you choose to add/modify/remove a website or link, Whiist does nothing.

When you DO choose to add/modify/remove a website or link, Whiist only changes the item in question.

Whenever Whiist does create/modify/remove a website it does so via the IIS interface built into Windows Server. Whenever it changes a website link, it does so according to the specs in the Home Server SDK.

If you WERE to edit or remove a website that has been created by the HP software then I can completely see that this may cause problems. Within the next few days I’ll be releasing a version of Whiist that hides the HP entries from view so they cannot be accidentally removed or altered.

Clearly there IS a problem and for that reason I would recommend that if you are a HP Media Smart Server you proceed with caution if installing Whiist – and I would certainly recommend that you do not modify/remove any websites or links you have not created yourself.

If you have installed Whiist and are experiencing problems then I deeply apologize. please follow this link and provide as much detail as possible and I’ll endeavor to help you out;

Andrew

WebFolders4WHS allows you to choose shares on your home server and have them accessible via WebDav. Once installed you can use any program that supports WebDav to directly access the files on your Home Server. WebDav is a less well known Internet technology, but it’s an established protocol and there are a lot of programs that support it.

Windows Explorer supports WebDav so once you install WebFolders4WHS you can use Explorer to access the files on your WHS from anywhere you have an Internet connection. If you’re running Vista you can even map a share on your WHS to a drive letter and it’ll act exactly the same as any other drive. (Windows XP will let you access the files through a special link, though you can install WebDrive or NetDrive to map to a drive letter under XP).

Tres Cool!

So here’s how it went down;

Early on the Tuesday morning Liz and I flew to Seattle. Microsoft had paid for my flight so we cashed in some airmiles for Liz and then upgraded to first class – I felt it would help me get into a better state of mind for the competition  

After we checked into our hotel (complete with a packed welcome basket and card from the Windows Home Sever team) we headed into downtown Seattle and spent the day exploring and eating too much seafood. I’d never visited Seattle but it’s a really great place, definitely different to LA and mostly in a good way.

On Wednesday morning a limo picked us up at the crack of dawn. This was the first time I met the other finalists, Prakash Gautam the author of the excellent Community Feeds Add-in and David Wright, the author of Jungle Disk. I was a little nervous as both of their entries were polished products that had been in development for a long time, whereas Whiist was something I’d knocked up from scratch in a couple of weeks. I thought the fact that Whiist had been developed specifically for WHS might help me but I wasn’t feeling especially confident.

When we got to the Microsoft Campus they had breakfast ready and a tech crew to help us setup. There was a little scare as I hadn’t realized we were expected to take our own server to demo on, but thankfully Joel from the Home Server team managed to get me access to a server in another building which I could demo on via Remote Desktop.

The five judges were the respected technology bloggers Ed Bott, Paul Thurott and Rob Enderle, Steve VanRoekel from the Windows Server division and Charlie Kindel who began the Windows Home Server movement several years ago. We each presented in turn (with the other finalists remaining in a green-room for fairness) and then had a Q&A with the judges. Although we’d been told they weren’t familiar with our Add-Ins they asked a lot of good questions about Whiist and where it would go from here.

After the presentations there was a mini-break while the judges conferred, then we went backstage to wait before being called onstage to collect our prizes. When Prakash was given third place I had this feeling I was going to get second. I was 100% certain, so when they called the next name I actually started moving towards the stage before I realized they’d called David. Wait.. I won!??.. I WON!! Wow!

We were all presented with oversized checks and goodie bags (including a full copy of Windows Home server) before having a lot of picture taken with the judges and some of the team. We also got to checkout some of the OEM home server designs and the famous “Hockey Puck” concept model. Aside from the hockey puck the HP Media Smart Server was definitely my favorite, they really need to put an apple next to it in pictures or something because it’s unbelievable small.

After lunch we had the chance to spend time with some of the developers from the Windows Home Server team. It was great to meet the people behind the actual product and they were quick to ask us a lot of questions about how the SDK could be improved and what we’d like to see in the future. Two of the nicest compliments I had were from Todd and Chris who both told me they’d been using Whiist since it was released and were big fans. They also gave me a couple of good ideas about ways to improve Whiist based on things they’d run into and had to solve for the full product.

Before we left Dileep and Sasha from the WHS team took us to the ultra-cheap Microsoft Store where I took the chance to grab a two copies of Vista to update some home PCs and a copy of Office 2007. This was the day after Halo 3 was released and the store was full of a) boxes of Halo 3 and b) people buying Halo 3 – although I did notice two people buying copies of Windows Home Server

So in a nutshell that was Seattle and the Code2Fame finals. Big big thanks to Microsoft for arranging the competition, Charlie, Todd and the team for creating Windows Home Server, Dileep and Sasha for sponsoring our trip to the Microsoft Store, and Joel for saving my bacon before the event even started

And yes, I took the fake check home