Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

  • Storms In Teacups

    I see that Torchwood is returning to our haunted fishtanks next month. While I’ve been pretty disparaging about the series in the past, I have to say that I thought that it redeemed itself with the Children of Earth series.

    Now, however, there is some faux controversy being drummed up by a certain Dan Martin over in a Guardian blog. He is fulminating over the fact that viewers in the US get to see the show a whole six days before viewers in the UK:

    We get the culture we deserve, really. But it’s hard not to think that the BBC is treating a big show – a show that it developed and established – recklessly. Yes, of course, contracts are contracts. But a two-day broadcast gap worked perfectly well for Game Of Thrones. Why the long pause here?

    Shock. Horror. It’s six days, Mr. Martin. Get over it. Deferred gratification is a good thing, and a sign of maturity in a human.

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  • Getting Started With Windows Home Server 2011

    I see that Microsoft’s Michael Leworthy has posted that the latest update of the “Getting Started With Windows Home Server 2011” document is now available. This version is dated June 2011, and replaces an earlier one dated February 2011.

    It’s a pity, therefore, to report that errors that were present in the February version are still there in the June edition. For example, take this page:

    WHS2011 57

    In the Pre-Defined Shared Folders section, it states:

    Your home server is pre-configured with the following shared folders: Pictures, Music, Videos, Documents, Recorded TV and Users. From the Windows Home Server 2011 Dashboard you can specify the user permissions for these folders and create a number of new shared folders.

    Wrong. In WHS 2011, the pre-defined shared folders are: Client Computer Backups, Documents, Music, Pictures, Music, Recorded TV, and Videos (as can be seen in the screenshot immediately above in the Guide). In the original version of WHS, the pre-defined folders were Photos, Music, Videos, Public, and Software. In addition, every user who had an account created on WHS would automatically have a folder created for them; e.g. user Geoff would have a folder  \\server\users\geoff. In WHS 2011, these user folders are no longer created automatically, so there is no “users” folder.

    At the end of the Guide, there is a section on Resources that are available to help you with WHS 2011:

    WHS2011 58

    Unfortunately, the links given for Installation Instructions and General Help are still mistakenly swapped (doesn’t anyone at Microsoft check this stuff?). The link under Installation Instructions takes you to the General Help pages, and the link under the General Help pages takes you to the online Release Notes (which contain the latest Installation Instructions).

    I’ve commented on the poor quality of the General Help pages before (both here on the blog, and in feedback direct to Microsoft); unfortunately, as far as I can see, they are still unchanged and as bad as ever. The WHS 2011 Product Pages were supposed to be cleaned up this week also. As of today, they are still in the same chaotic state that they’ve had for a few weeks now.

    Addendum 5th July 2011: I was browsing through the excellent We Got Served forums today, and noticed that someone had reported that the WHS 2011 notification icon in the Windows System Tray wasn’t turning blue when a backup of the PC was in progress. This was always the case in WHS v1, so I was surprised to read that it wasn’t apparently working in WHS 2011. It’s even mentioned in the Getting Started documentation:

    WHS2011 62 

    Intrigued, I looked at the System Tray icon on a couple of my PCs whilst they were having a backup taken, and sure enough, it wasn’t turning blue. I then discovered that this bug had been reported to Microsoft on the Microsoft Connect web site (note, if you haven’t got an account there, you won’t be able to follow that link, I’m afraid). Astonishingly, Microsoft have replied:

    This is a good suggestion, although we decided in the 2011 release that backups should be seamless and not neccessarily [sic] notify the user of when they are in place.

    Ah, yes, the “it’s not a bug, it’s a feature” defence. If they’re going to pull that one, then they should also change the documentation to be in line… And what on earth do they mean by describing this as “seamless”? “Invisible”, more like. The whole point of the icon behaviour in WHS v1 was that you could see at a glance whether a backup was in progress, so that you didn’t shut down your computer while it was underway. I’m already seeing complaints on the forums that people are missing this, and pointing out that it was very easy to use by family members. Now, you have to go into the Launchpad and click the backup button. If there’s no backup underway, the Launchpad will ask you if you want to start one. If there is one underway, the Launchpad will tell you how far it’s got. Family members don’t want this hassle (many don’t even want to see the Launchpad), and neither do I.

    I’m sorry that I always seem to be negative about WHS 2011. I really want it to succeed, but it seems to me that the lack of attention to detail and the resulting slip in quality, not to mention the issues in the shipped software, does not generate a good impression of the product. It could have been so much better.

    3 responses to “Getting Started With Windows Home Server 2011”

    1. Robert Dammers Avatar
      Robert Dammers

      Actually Geoff, it’s probably half-updated. “Documents” is a 2011 share, not present by default in V1. Apart from my own new folders (Calendar, Downloads, GI Laptop Backups :), P80ServiceImages and WebFolders4WHSShare) I have Music, Photos, Public, Recorded TV, Software, Users and Videos. I wonder if it got typed on autopilot and the proof-readers saw what they thought they saw – Grauniad-style.

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Hah! – you’re right, of course, Robert! Thanks.

        Reply
    2. Windows Home Server Support | Geoff Coupe's Blog

      […] complained about the poor quality of the support documentation for Windows Home Server before (here, here, and here), but I just keep finding more […]

      Reply

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  • Daisy, Daisy, Give Me Your Answer Do…

    No, it’s no good, I must stop reading the stuff that Mark Vernon is prone to write (and, I might add, get paid for!). It’s not good for my spleen.

    This time he’s using some philosophical fenceplay from Raymond Tallis as an excuse to trot out his (Vernon’s) own earnestly desired wish that we are not just wetware, meat machines; that consciousness simply has to be more than just neurons firing.

    While I rather like the work of Tallis as an author and philosopher, it does strike me that he’s got a book to sell (Aping Mankind), so coining terms such as neuromania and Darwinitis may be good for the book sales, rather than having any real basis behind them. I note also that his book has garnered glowing reviews from the likes of Roger Scruton and Mary Midgley – neither of whom I count for much when it comes to the field of science. And on the basis of this article, that goes for Mark Vernon as well.

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  • Windows Home Server 2011 Product Pages

    Update 13 January 2012: Well, it’s taken Microsoft over six months to do it, but it looks as though they now have a new set of Product Pages. They are very much simplified (perhaps too much so), but at least the howlers of the previous set are no more.

    …

    I’ve been looking through the web pages that Microsoft has put up to market the Windows Home Server 2011 product.

    The web pages were originally set up for the first Windows Home Server product, and have now been updated, not always consistently or completely, to reflect the new, 2011, version.

    For example, on this page, the “Find your files easily” and “Share photos, music, and videos” links are currently broken:

    WHS2011 54

    Other pages also have lots of broken links. This one, for example:

    WHS2011 55

    Update 18 July 2011: Well, it looks as though Microsoft have removed the broken links instead of fixing them. Originally (i.e. on the WHS v1 pages), those links led you to the full-size screenshots of the thumbnails to the left of each link. And the thumbnails themselves had embedded links to do the same thing. Now Microsoft have simply deleted all the links, both in the text and the thumbnails, so there is no way someone reading the product pages can see the full-size screenshots. Instead they have to be satisfied by squinting at the thumbnails. This is supposed to be good marketing?

    And then there are pages that still continue to refer to the old version of Windows Home Server. This page, for example, still has screenshots of the WHS version 1, and it refers to the “Console” of WHS v1, instead of the “Dashboard” of WHS 2011:

    WHS2011 56

    And it’s not the only page to do this. There’s plenty of other examples to be found, including pages that refer to the Drive Extender technology, which has been dropped from WHS 2011.

    Microsoft seem to be intent on not only confusing the home user, but also their developer community. On the Windows Home Server Support page, the link given under the Developer resources section leads not to the Windows Home Server MSDN site as it claims, but to a now-obsolete toolkit (it was designed for WHS v1 and will not work on WHS 2011) to install diagnostic software on WHS v1. Diagnostic software, note, not information about how to build software for WHS 2011, which is what developers need to get started with. The link should really go to the SDK (Software Development Toolkit) for WHS 2011.

    Finally, I know that I’m a pedant about grammar, so I let out a groan of despair when I read this page:

    WHS2011 52

    Take a look at the tagline under the link to the official Blog of the Windows Home Server Team:

    WHS2011 53

    “You’re guide…”? Sigh – whatever happened to good education? Or useful and accurate web pages, for that matter?

    2 responses to “Windows Home Server 2011 Product Pages”

    1. Getting Started With Windows Home Server 2011 | Geoff Coupe's Blog

      […] I’ve commented on the poor quality of the General Help pages before (both here on the blog, and in feedback direct to Microsoft); unfortunately, as far as I can see, they are still unchanged and as bad as ever. The WHS 2011 Product Pages were supposed to be cleaned up this week also. As of today, they are still in the same chaotic state that they’ve had for a few weeks now. […]

      Reply
    2. Windows Home Server Support | Geoff Coupe's Blog

      […] about the poor quality of the support documentation for Windows Home Server before (here, here, and here), but I just keep finding more […]

      Reply

    Leave a comment

  • Yet More Problems With The Media Library in WHS 2011

    A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about some of the errors and design issues I was seeing when using the Media Library within Windows Home Server 2011. Since then, another issue has made itself known, and I’ve had yet another facepalm moment whilst contemplating the shortcomings of WHS 2011.

    This time, it’s a metadata issue in the Music Library section.

    There are two types of metadata stored in the Music Library section of WHS 2011. The first is metadata stored as Tags in the audio files (the tracks) themselves. Examples of Tags are:

    • Track title
    • Track Artist
    • Album
    • Date Album released
    • Genre
    • Album Art (e.g. the cover of the CD or LP)

    In both Windows 7 and WHS 2011, the Album Art is also stored as an image file in JPEG format alongside the audio files in each directory folder containing the collection of tracks making up an Album. By convention, the Album Art is stored as a file called folder.jpg. These JPEG files are the second form of metadata used in the Music Library. The Windows Media Player application will also automatically generate additional JPEG files holding copies of the Album Art at different resolutions. These all have names of the form AlbumArt_{alphanumeric}_Large.jpg, AlbumArt_{alphanumeric}_Small.jpg, and AlbumArtSmall.jpg. The “Large” files contain Album Art with a resolution of 200 x 200 pixels, while the “Small” files have Album Art at a resolution of 75 x 75 pixels.

    The issue is that there is a scheduled process running in the background in WHS 2011 that goes around generating metadata for the Music Library, and it is doing two things:

    • As well as generating the additional JPEG files in each Album folder, it is also overwriting the original folder.jpg files with a version of the Album Art having a fixed resolution of 200 x 200 pixels.
    • In some cases, it is also appears to be writing incorrect Tag metadata into the audio files themselves.

    This is unwanted and unwelcome behaviour. Many of us have spent hours ensuring that our music metadata is accurate, complete with high-resolution Album Art. To have WHS 2011 come along, and without so much as a by-your-leave, destroy hours of work is simply a disaster.

    Those of us who are using Windows Media Center to access our Music Libraries on WHS 2011 have deliberately created high-resolution versions of Album Art. As one exasperated user writes:

    Seriously Microsoft. On what planet is 200×200 an acceptable resolution for cover art? Are we back in the 1980s or something? Windows Media Center is displaying the image on a 1080p display, which is pretty much the norm these days, and the 200×200 image stretched looks absolutely ratshit.

    Quite.

    I have at least got a workaround for the Album Art issue. I store high-resolution versions of the Album Art as Tags directly into the audio files themselves. I have found that Windows Media Center does seem to have the sense to use these embedded Album Art tags, rather than the low-resolution versions of the folder.jpg files written by WHS 2011. However, you have to have the Album Art tags in place first, before Windows Media Center adds the album to its library, otherwise it will take the low resolution folder.jpg file instead, and once it has that, it’s not a simple job to wipe it out.

    The fact that WHS 2011 can also apparently write incorrect Tag metadata into audio files is particularly worrying. I have found seven albums (out of about 900) in my collection where this seems to have occurred. The albums’ files have been modified since being placed on the server – and I haven’t modified them, so I can only conclude that it was something in WHS 2011 running as a scheduled process. This is absolutely not acceptable behaviour, and we need to find a workaround, or for Microsoft to come up with a fix, quickly.

    Update 5 August 2011: Well, at long last, it seems that Microsoft have responded to the pleas over this mangling of metadata. Today, they finally acknowledged that a workaround that was first posted on the Microsoft Connect web site on the 20th June would in fact stop this behaviour.

    Perhaps they were embarrassed by the evident frustration of a user called wiseadam1 who posted this scream on the 1st August:

    This is unacceptable. Not sure if one guy in MS has been the same three eyed mentally challenged ignoramous that thinks this feature being turned on by default in all versions of WMP since v6.4, is the best idea since sliced bread…it’s NOT!

    I don’t like your music scraper touching my tags, and I’m tired of it. I pay for your server software, and you slip one in on us in the background to start grabbing tags from WMP and the internet that only YOU seem to think are incorrect. TURN IT OFF! I understand you think you can make this music media world a better place, if you could only go in and tag it all yourself….but even when I have perfectly tagged albums, you still seem to think the one bonus track at the end is part of a japanese release with a different album art when it’s not, or you take the 500×500 perfect album art Folder.jpg and kill it to a 200×200 pixelated craptastic jpg!

    If you, or anyone there ever wondered why we all chose every other music manager rather than WMP….it’s because it’s horrible at managing music. I wish I was ignorant to the whole thing and I could just dumb it out like I guess what you think the majority are that will use WHS2011, or that use your WMP “recommended settings” will magically do for them, but I can’t. I won’t. $130 down the drain, and now that it’s down to about $50…..so I’m guessing I’m the only one that bought it.

    EPIC WHS FAIL

    Amen, brother!

    Update 16 February 2012: Microsoft have released a software update to address this issue. See this post for more information.

    19 responses to “Yet More Problems With The Media Library in WHS 2011”

    1. The Media Library in Windows Home Server 2011–Revisited | Geoff Coupe's Blog

      […] appears as though WHS 2011 will rummage through the Album Art and metadata of your music files – and overwrite them as it sees fit. A disaster if you’ve spent hours/days/weeks getting your Album Art and metadata the way you want […]

      Reply
    2. Wilkes Avatar
      Wilkes

      Geoff, I recently was bit by this folder.jpg and metadata issue on my WHS 2011 server. I run Squeezebox server on my WHS box to serve up my audio and found that all my folder.jpg files had been changed to not only 200×200, but had also been changed to hidden along with adding the 3 hidden AlbumArt*.jpg files in each of my album directories. Along with the unwelcome changes to my cover art I found several of my mp3’s had the “date modified” updated, but I haven’t really been able to identify that anything was actually changed in my tags??

      As a stop gap I removed my music folder from being set as a shared folder in the media library and posted the issue in the Slimdevices forum. I got a response that says you can stop WHS from mangling your music stuff by disabling the “Media Streaming Metadata Synchronizer” on the WHS server. To do this you will need to RDP to your WHS server and go to Administrative tools -> Task Scheduler. In the Task Scheduler library go to the Microsoft – Windows – Windows Server folder and disable the “Media Streaming Metadata Synchronizer” task. You should then be able to safely add your music folder back to being a shared media folder.

      Wilkes

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Wilkes, thanks for your comments, and for that workaround. Since the original post, I had seen that workaround being posted over in the Microsoft Connect forum for WHS in the bug report for this metadata mangling. I think that the workaround is safe, but I note that Microsoft have not yet responded to the direct question of whether it is safe to use…

        Reply
    3. Al Feersum Avatar
      Al Feersum

      Meh. I maintain my meta data client side using WMP… and even after [i]turning off[/i] the Metadata Syncronizer task, the tags don’t seem to want to stay as I’ve set them, often requiring editing about 4 times before [i]something[/i] finally gets the message that what I’ve supplied is the truth.

      I was hoping that UR1 would ‘fix’ some of the unwanted ‘features’ of WHS, but it seems that it does…. well… nothing really: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2554634

      Reply
    4. Practical Bliss | Geoff Coupe's Blog

      […] As you may be aware, I’m not very happy with the Media Library in Windows Home Server 2011. As well as the shortcomings and design issues that I wrote about here, it also turned out that WHS 2011 has a tendency to corrupt music metadata and Album art stored in the Music Library. […]

      Reply
    5. Peter Avatar
      Peter

      Has anyone seen an issue with WHS2011 changing other (non-music) jpegs? Whilst sorting out a load of pictures I’d moved onto the server, I noticed that the modification date for lots of them had changed to that day, and that file sizes had reduced. Subsequently I’ve compared EXIF data on one where I had an old copy, and although the resolution is identical, FileSource and SceneType have changed from “DSC – Digital still camera” and “A directly photographed image” respectively to simply “Other”.

      I must stress I’ve not proved it’s WHS2011, and have not turned up any similar issues online, but it’s very odd and I’m not sure what other application (e.g. on my main machine) could have tampered with them. If anyone’s seen something similar – or could recommend a way to investigate further it would be much appreciated!

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Peter,

        I’ve not seen this happening on my WHS 2011 system – even when the Media Update service was running. That’s not to say that it didn’t happen with you. However, I did have (and still have) some issues with Windows Live Photo Gallery modifying image files behind my back on my Desktop PC.. Do a search for WLPG on my blog to see my posts on the issues.

        Reply
    6. Mike Avatar
      Mike

      Any updates to the media library errors? I am about to uninstall WHS 2011 and trash it. I have been unable to successfully use remote log in to access the photos library although it works on the music library. is there and add-in that will replace media library? Thanks

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Mike, no updates that I am aware of, I’m afraid. I’m also not aware of a replacement Add-in that covers the functions of the Media Library. Frankly, for giving access to friends and family to my photos, I use Flickr and Skydrive – both can have access control, and Skydrive can be more flexible with access control than Flickr. However, Flickr can also be used for videos (as can YouTube, of course).

        Reply
    7. Simon Bradley Avatar
      Simon Bradley

      Hi Geoff,

      I’ve just been reading your WHS2011-related posts. Thank you for the time and effort you’ve put into these!

      I’m particularly concerned about the possibility of WHS doing things with my data behind the scenes, and I’m not quite sure how to be certain that WHS isn’t going to mess with my files, once I copy them onto my (new) server.

      At present, I have several hard drives inside my Win7 PC (music and photos being the main ones of concern here), and my server is acting as backup to these. But I’m considering changing the structure such that my server is my main (working) repository, with an external (possibly rotating) backup. (I’ve just read your posts about WHS’s server backup problems: 2TB limit! I have way more than that to back up. But that’s a different story.)

      However, if there’s any chance of WHS changing tags in my music files (mainly FLAC, but also WMA and MP3) or altering EXIF/metadata in my photos (RAW and JPEG), then I just can’t risk it.

      When does this happen? Is it only if you put files into the default shares (Music, Pictures, etc.)? (Btw, I hate the default shares; I’d much rather start with a clean slate and be able to define the shares the way I prefer.) Is there a way to guarantee that your data will not be altered by WHS?

      Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer (and sorry if I’ve missed an obvious answer in one of your posts)!

      Simon

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Simon, thanks for your comments and questions. I’ll try and answer the questions as best I can.

        First, as far as I am aware, WHS 2011 will only try and update your music metadata. It runs a task every 24hours that does this. There is no equivalent task that focuses on photo/image metadata. That seems to be the case from my own experience: I’ve seen music metadata being overwritten, but I have never seen image metadata being overwritten by WHS 2011.

        Second, I have seen some folks say that if you don’t use the default music share, then this updating task won’t affect your music metadata. However, I’ve not looked at that workaround.

        The workaround that I’ve used is the one recommended by Microsoft themselves. It’s covered in the third item of this TechNet note:

        http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/media-streaming-known-issue-and-workaround-with-windows-home-server-2011-and-windows-storage-server-2008-r2-essentials.aspx

        Microsoft have also said that they are working on a patch for this issue, but have not said when it will be available. In the meantime, I suggest that you disable the media updating task as documented in the Technet note.

        As far as I’m aware, image metadata is not in danger from being updated by rogue tasks in WHS 2011…

        Reply
        1. Simon Bradley Avatar
          Simon Bradley

          Thanks, Geoff!

          I need to find time read thoroughly through all your WHS-related articles. I scanned most of them yesterday, but I’m sure there’s a lot of useful information in the details. 🙂

          I’m going to sync WHS with the primary copy of my files (after making the recommended change), then monitor the situation for at least a week or two before trusting WHS as my “primary” data store. I just hope there’s no way for that task to be auto-re-enabled!

          Thanks,
          Simon

          Reply
    8. Wilkes Avatar
      Wilkes

      Geoff, Just FYI. If you use WHS Settings (from the Dashboard) -> Media -> Media Library / Customize button and mark a non-default folder containing music (like MP3’s) as Yes to be a Shared folder in the media library WHS will gladly mess with your tags if you haven’t shut this “feature” off using the info provided by you and others in this thread.

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Ah – thanks for that info!

        Reply
    9. WHS 2011 and Metadata | Geoff Coupe's Blog

      […] June, I wrote about the fact that Windows Home Server 2011 was overwriting the metadata contained in media files. In August, Microsoft finally acknowledged the […]

      Reply
    10. James Wilson Avatar
      James Wilson

      Dear Mr. Coupe,

      I am an Englishman living in Germany.

      I have installed several WHS 2011 installations and have had randomly on several install the issue of libraries not updating (the only solution I had before was to just keep reinstalling and reinstalling until it seemed to be okay which is no solution I agree). A few days ago I was installing with a friend and business partner WHS 2011 server with him and low and behold the libraries updating monster raised its’ ugly head,

      After some head scratching we seem to have found the solution; no work arounds, no registry hacking or anything else that may be considered particularly unsavoury for that matter from the point of view of a home user, not necessarily technical savvy which is afterall the intended audience.

      As you seem to be one of the main champions in hunting a resolution to this issue I would like to invite you to test the solution and if indeed it is a successful as we believe, we would like for you to be the channel to deliver this solution to our fellow troubled WHS 2011 users. we are not vain enough to feel the need to start a new blog/thread/website whatever (although if successful, a mention would be nice) and you already have the audience (my friend and I are great believers in the collective) and think you can get the solution and message out more effectively.

      If you would be kind enough to find 30 minutes one day/evening I would be delighted to talk you through what we have found. Please drop me an email and we can exchange contact info (skype/phone whatever) with a proposed time for us to connect.

      Kind regards and tot ziens!

      James Wilson (Author) & Dominik Kowal (Fellow discoverer)

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Hello James,

        My suggestion would be to contact Terry Walsh, owner of the WeGotServed site (http://www.wegotserved.com/). That site is probably the main community and news site for all things to do with WHS, and I’m sure he would be interested in what you have come up with. My little blog is just for my personal ramblings. You’d be much better off delivering your solution via a channel such as WeGotServed which is set up to do this sort of thing.

        I wish you (and Dominik) every success.

        Regards, Geoff Coupe

        Reply
        1. James Wilson Avatar
          James Wilson

          Hello Geoff,

          Thank you for your reply, I have forwarded this to Mr Walsh as per your suggestion.

          Best regards

          James

          Reply
    11. Xbox Music App – Metadata Madness | Geoff Coupe's Blog

      […] earlier incarnations of their music applications. Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, Zune, Windows Home Server, they’ve all stomped all over my carefully prepared music metadata in their jackboots without so […]

      Reply

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  • The Lace Anniversary

    Last Sunday, the 12th June, we celebrated our 13th (Lace) Wedding Anniversary. Our combined ages are now 120 years, we’ve been together for (almost) 30 years, and this is our fifth year of living in our farmhouse, De Witte Wand.

    All the above seemed like a good excuse for a party, so on Sunday over thirty friends (old and new) joined us for lunch in the garden.

    Our new friends are from the neighbourhood, and they followed the local tradition of placing two fir trees decorated with paper roses outside the front door.

    20110612-1612-13

    As it was Martin’s birthday very recently, they also brought along an Abraham to mark the occasion.

    20110612-1548-27

    And since we had put up a tent for the party in the garden, they planted a Meiboom (Maypole) next to it. Whenever a new building is erected in this part of the Netherlands, a Meiboom is placed next to it to mark the occasion.

    20110612-1224-26

    20110612-1227-36

    It’s also traditional to make speeches at these events. Fortunately, these were light-hearted, accompanied by joke presents (e.g. we were presented with walking sticks, a box to soak our false teeth overnight in, and two pairs of long-johns), so everyone was thoroughly entertained.

    The weather was kind, and I think a good time was had by all. Martin and I certainly enjoyed it. Our thanks to everyone who helped make it special, and particularly to our new friends from the neighbourhood who have welcomed us so warmly, and who went to great trouble to make this a special day for us.

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  • iPod Illusions

    Marco Tempest is, on this evidence, a very good magician indeed.

     

    (hat tip to Richard Wiseman)

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  • World IPv6 Day

    The very first World IPv6 day was, er, yesterday. There’s a good explanation of what it was all about by Richard Cooper on the BBC’s Internet blog.

    I have to say that it passed very uneventfully for me, the internet continued to work…

    The day before I had set up my new ADSL router/modem, which I got on free loan from my Internet Service Provider, XS4ALL. They’ve always been at the forefront of internet technologies – the company was originally started as a Foundation back in 1993 to offer access to the Internet to private individuals. The only ISP operating in the Netherlands at the time (NLnet) offered its services only to companies. NLnet thought that there was no market in offering access to the Internet to the consumer – what a mistake that turned out to be.

    XS4ALL has been using IPv6 alongside IPv4 since last year; for example, 194.109.6.92 is the IPv4 address and 2001:888:0:18::80 the IPv6 address of www.xs4all.nl. With the advent of the first World IPv6 day, they’ve been actively trying to get their customers to register for an IPv6 address alongside their existing IPv4 address. That’s what I did on Monday, and the new addressing service seems to work OK for me. I now have both an IPv4 address and an IPv6 address at home. And with that new IPv6 address in place, I can also now access web sites that have IPv6 addresses, such as ipv6.bbc.co.uk. Of course, for the foreseeable future, the major web sites will have dual addresses in place, but the transition has now begun. IPv4 addresses are almost used up, and IPv6 addresses are starting to come on stream.

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  • So, How Was It For You? (part II)

    Last Saturday night saw the mid-season finale (who came up with that particular twist?) of Doctor Who, Series Six: A Good Man Goes To War.

    Actually, because we had visitors, I didn’t get to see it until the repeat on Sunday, and then I watched it straight through, twice, without stopping.

    While it seems to have divided the viewers, I loved it from beginning to end. Yes, there was an awful lot going on, the sounds of multiple kitchen sinks being thrown in, but they all seemed to have a purpose. The anchor is the quality of Steven Moffat’s writing: the plotting, the one-liners, the sly references to things outside the Who Universe. And then add into that actors who can deliver the lines with believability and panache, and I was on the edge of my seat with a huge grin, and/or tears, on my face.

    I particularly savoured the “Lady Penelope” exchange between the Victorian Silurian, and lesbian, Madame Vastra and her hansom-cab driver:

    “Thank you Parker, I won’t be needing you again tonight.”

    “Yis Me Lady.”

    There was Moffat’s playing to the gallery humour of “by special dispensation of the Papal Mainframe, Herself” from Colonel Manton of the Clerics, and then there was the look on Rory’s face as he attempts to offer some comfort to the dying Commander Strax, the Sontaran warrior, and Strax spits back the fact that instead of dying as a warrior, he dies forced to be a nurse as penance for his crimes. Rory is, of course, a nurse.

    There’s lots more in there. The episode repays multiple viewings and I look forward to doing just that. And the final joke by Moffat is the next episode to follow this one in the Autumn. He seems to have deliberately invoked Godwin’s Law. The episode’s title? Let’s Kill Hitler.

    2 responses to “So, How Was It For You? (part II)”

    1. dr. who (duncan) Avatar
      dr. who (duncan)

      please will you email me about shelock holmes tv series i need to no about season 2.
      if there is more than just 3 episodes and other things.

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Duncan, I suggest you consult wikipedia for this information. It knows more than I do. See:
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_(TV_series)

        Reply

    Leave a comment

  • The Media Library in Windows Home Server 2011–Revisited

    A week ago, I blogged about my first impressions of using the Media Library in Windows Home Server 2011. My experience wasn’t entirely positive, as I found a couple of wrinkles when I was accessing the server via the Remote Web Access facility.

    Since then, I’ve played around with it some more, and I have to say that my earlier misgivings have not been assuaged with further use. Indeed, accessing the Media Library via Remote Web Access is not a particularly satisfying experience for me at the moment. This is, as almost to be expected, somewhat in contrast to the experience of Microsoft people such as Sean Daniel.

    Let’s take a closer look at what seem to be its shortcomings…

    When I use Remote Web Access to look at my server, after I sign in with my userid and password, I’m presented with the home screen of my WHS 2011 server. As you can see, the attached computers and shared folders are seen at once, but the view of the Media Library is still being built.

    WHS2011 46

    Now, I don’t mind waiting (a short while) for the view of the Media Library to be built, but what I do object to are messages such as this (An error has occurred on the server. Please try again later. If the error continues, view Support Information for help):

    WHS2011 36

    …or this (An unknown error occurred. Please try again later. If the problem persists, view Support Information to help resolve this issue at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=179234):

    WHS2011 49

    …or this (I have 45,125 pictures, not 2,000, and 12,513 songs, not 1,000 as is claimed here):

    WHS2011 44

    Such errors occur frequently, not rarely, and almost always when I first log on remotely. This all adds up to a bad experience, not a good one.

    But it doesn’t stop there.

    I had thought of using the media library facility via Remote Web Access to enable friends and relatives to browse through my photos. So, when I click on the “Browse Pictures” link, it seems that for 50% of the time, I get an error message, instead of a view of the Photo Folders:

    WHS2011 45

    Trying again usually will get me what I expected in the first place, a view of my photo folders:

    WHS2011 47

    Note, though, the “Loading details” message; the first time around after changes have been made to your photos, this can take some time to enumerate. After moving a few folders containing no more than a few dozen photos, I waited for 20 minutes for the index to be rebuilt and the details displayed…

    While my friends and relatives could browse through the photo folders, this is a pretty clumsy way of trying to find photos of interest. I have tagged all my photos using the IPTC Core Metadata standard. So I naturally assumed that using the “Search your pictures” box shown above I could enter photo tags and display the relevant photos.

    Wrong.

    That search box only seems to understand filename searches – and that’s simply not good enough. This limitation is all the more surprising because tags are displayed along with photos, see here for an example:

    WHS2011 43

    By the way, notice how the “Date created” field in the above screenshot is using the US format (mm/dd/yyyy), despite the fact that the format setting on my server has been set to the European format (dd/mm/yyyy). Furthermore, is this field the date the file was created, or the date the picture was taken? “Date created” is NOT necessarily the same as “Date taken” for digital pictures. Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011 recognises this, and displays the “Date taken” field (see screenshot below). The Media Library in WHS 2011 is either displaying a different field or using the wrong metadata name. More inconsistency in the user experience, it would seem.

    WLPG 10

    Update 6/6/2011: I’ve just discovered that the Slideshow function in Remote Web Access is not working for me either. I get a blank screen:

    WHS2011 50

    Oddly enough, it just seems to be this particular folder. Other picture folders that I’ve checked seem OK, but not this one. I don’t think it’s related to the number of items, or the size of the photos, either individually or collectively. Other folders that have comparable numbers or sizes are working in the Slideshow view, but admittedly, I haven’t been through every single folder in the Library to check this.

    Oh, and the search function seems to fall over more often than not anyway:

    WHS2011 40

    And, even more bizarrely, while you can’t search for photo tags within the Media Library, if you switch to using Shared Folders via Remote Web Access, you can:

    WHS2011 48

    This however, has its own limitations. You’ll notice that I searched for the tag “pond”. I did this while viewing the shared folders containing my photos. However, the search has returned results from all of my shared folders… Sigh.

    Oh, and remember that I said that the Media Library would display the tags contained in photos, even if you couldn’t search on them? Well, the Shared Folders won’t display any tags in photos (there’s no equivalent of the “File properties” view in Remote Web Access), but you can search on tags… Honestly, is this experience designed, or did it just grow, like Topsy?

    So, to summarise; I’m seeing both errors and design shortcomings:

    Errors:

    • Every time I first log on to my WHS 2011 domain, I will get some sort of error from the Media Library. I need to refresh the browser, and then I will see the Media Library folders. I’m using IE9.
    • Clicking on the “Browse Pictures” link in the Media Library results in an error about 50% of the time.
    • Searching on the pictures in the Media Library frequently results in a “Request Failed” error.
    • The Slideshow function of the Pictures Library is not working.

    Design shortcomings:

    • The Search function in the Media Library only seems to search on the filename – it does not search picture tag metadata. And yet, selecting a photo will display the tag metadata.
    • The Search function in the Shared Folders does search tag metadata, yet selecting a photo in the Shared Folders view does not display tag metadata (i.e. you can’t display the properties of a file).
    • The Search function in the Shared Folders view searches across all the folders – it does not seem possible to restrict the search to a subset of folders – e.g. search only within the Picture folders.

    With these issues and shortcomings, I’m reluctant to open up access to my photo library for friends and relatives – I fear that the experience will turn them off more than encourage them to use it.

    Update: I just wanted to mention the fact that in addition to these issues, it also appears as though WHS 2011 will rummage through the Album Art and metadata of your music files – and overwrite them as it sees fit. A disaster if you’ve spent hours/days/weeks getting your Album Art and metadata the way you want it to be.

    80 responses to “The Media Library in Windows Home Server 2011–Revisited”

    1. The Media Library in Windows Home Server 2011 | Geoff Coupe's Blog

      […] I have discovered more issues with the Media Library. See this post. GA_googleAddAttr("AdOpt", "1"); GA_googleAddAttr("Origin", "other"); GA_googleAddAttr("LangId", […]

      Reply
    2. Yet More Problems With The Media Library in WHS 2011 | Geoff Coupe's Blog

      […] The Media Library in WHS 2011 Posted on June 18, 2011 by Geoff Coupe A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about some of the errors and design issues I was seeing when using the Media Library within Windows Home Server 2011. Since then, another […]

      Reply
    3. Erik Verreijt Avatar
      Erik Verreijt

      Geoff,

      I am also an WHS 2011 user with the same expiriences you have, the media libary throws these errors randomly at me, but sometimes it works flaweles.
      This kind of bugs me on the new release 2007 was configured with less media expierence, but at least that build was stable.
      Just like you I am located in the Netherlands but dutch intead of British I saw some topics on Connect about this issue but no answer from Microsoft yet.

      I have another question is your WHS 2011 also memory hungry and slow while doing folder transfers?

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Erik, thanks for your comments. Yep, we’re not the only ones experiencing these issues with the Media Library in Remote Web Access. However, I don’t expect any sort of quick fix from Microsoft. It will probably wait until at least the service pack – if there ever is one.

        I’ve got 4GB memory in my system, but I’ve only ever seen a maximum of 3GB being used during file transfers – most of the time I’m at 2GB. Mind you, this is with SyncToy copying of shared folders to a backup disc connected via USB 2.0. So I’m only seeing 25 MB/s transfers anyway.

        Reply
      2. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Erik, I’m trying to elinimate possible causes here. Any you using a Fritz!Box modem/router by any chance? Thanks.

        Reply
    4. Helmer Zandbergen Avatar
      Helmer Zandbergen

      Hi there,

      I have similar issues since I installed the RTM of WHS 2011. Maybe it’s a problem only the Dutch have? 🙂 I’m also from the Netherlands, let’s hope there will be a fix from MS soon.
      I’m really into WHS 2011, even now with the Windows Phone 7 app in beta. Too bad with the issues on the website I’m unable to use the cool WP7 app 😦 because the media stuff doesn’t work…

      Let’s pray and hope for a quick fix from Microsoft!

      regards,
      Helmer

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Helmer, I don’t think it’s just us Dutch 🙂 I’m afraid we’ll all have to wait for a fix…

        Reply
      2. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Helmer, I’m trying to elinimate possible causes here. Any you using a Fritz!Box modem/router by any chance? Thanks.

        Reply
    5. WHS2011 Media Library Design Shortcomings?

      […] what he sees as design limitations in the Media interface. An interesting read which you can find here. // | Share this WHS Article | var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; […]

      Reply
    6. Mike Avatar
      Mike

      I’m also seeing intermittent errors with the remote media sharing. And no, it’s not a Dutch issue as I’m stateside. 🙂

      In addition to the media errors, I’m also experiencing stability issues with USB-connected hard drives. It appears system restarts and inadvertent losses of the USB connection are causing “intermittent” loss of folders. I have been testing both Drive Bender and Stablebit DrivePool, but have been reluctant to fully commission either given the instabilities. At first I thought the issue might be related to the “drive extenders,” but I’m seeing problems with neither being active.

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Mike, that’s an interesting comment about stability issues with USB-connected hard drives. I wonder if that was behind the problems I had when trying to rotate USB Backup drives for offsite storage. See:

        My WHS 2011 Experience (Thus Far)

        Reply
      2. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Oh, and just to add to my last comment – I’m not running either Drive Bender or Stablebit DrivePool, or indeed, any form of RAID for that matter. I just have a very simple setup,,,

        Reply
    7. Christian Johansson Avatar
      Christian Johansson

      Hi,
      I’ve not used the Remote Access functions of WHS 2011 yet, but I’m experiencing problems in local network that can be related to media library shortcomings also.

      I have an Xbox360 setup as media viewer – accessing the WHS 2011 through the console’s similary named libraries “Movies”, “Pictures” and “Music”.
      Accessing Movies for example, can be a bit of a gamble; sometimes it work just fine – sometimes not. Ususally with the error “No movies found”. And I have several hundreds of them…

      On WHS v.1 this worked almost flawlessly.
      On WHS 2011 it’s a 50/50 hit or miss first time, you have to persist and try multiple times to enjoy a movie.

      What can be the real problem here, a bad implementation of “Windows Media Player Library” or whatever it’s called?

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Christian, I don’t have an Xbox, so I can’t compare. I have to say that my HTPC (with MyMovies) seems to be fine with WHS 2011, but then again, it’s probably not invoking any functions of the Media Library, but just using the WHS 2011 as a file server…

        Reply
    8. Dannybuoy Avatar
      Dannybuoy

      I also get these media library errors (in the UK!). I have a fairly large media library, I haven’t tried to see if it works with a smaller set of files, but I may do that when I get the time. Sometimes when I first log in it starts to work, although reporting the incorrect numbers of items, and once I even managed to get it to show a photo slideshow. I’ve never got audi or video streaming to work though.

      One thing to investigate though is UPnP on the router, I’m not sure whether this needs to be working correctly for the remote web access to the media library. I sometimes get errors that my router is not set up correctly, so I am going to eventually try a factory reset or firmware upgrade of my router or maybe get a new one.

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Danny, I thought using UPnP to open up ports was a one-time thing when the Remote Web Access is first set up. However, in addition to ports 80 and 443, I see that I have a number of randomly-assigned UDP ports as well, and indeed, I think that these may be associated with the activities of the Media Library.

        You may well be on to something here. But if it is down to UPnP failures, then I’m not going to be changing my router any time soon. For one thing, it’s pretty new (a Fritz!Box 7340 – supplied by my ISP), and it’s needed for IPv6 support. The firmware is also the latest.

        Reply
    9. The Home Server Show 141 : Home Server Show

      […] StableBit Scanner […]

      Reply
    10. Glenn Avatar
      Glenn

      Geoff, I share your pain. I moved from WHS2011 RC1 which had no problem with an over 16k MP3 library (just a little slow, as it appeared to build the view every time someone logged on). With the RTM paid for version I can never get to look at my music library without an error. Also, nothing reported anywhere on what the exatc error is.

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Glenn, the only hope is that enough people will be having these issues to make Microsoft acknowledge the problems and do something about it. Otherwise, nothing will be done, and we’ll just have to live with it.

        Reply
    11. Christian H. Avatar
      Christian H.

      Same problems here. German Homeserver 2011 RTM. Huge Libraries, though.

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Christian, I’m trying to elinimate possible causes here. Any you using a Fritz!Box modem/router by any chance? Thanks.

        Reply
    12. Joel Leichty Avatar
      Joel Leichty

      I’d like to add another huge design flaw – you can’t set user permissions for media sharing. So I can’t view all photos via the media link, but let my extended family view a subset of photos.

      I’ve read other posts where they use DLNA compliance as the excuse, which is just not correct because you are logging into a authenticated site, not just putting a share on your home network.

      Bottom line is the only option to share photos is using the folder view. It’s just horrible design.

      Reply
      1. Terry Downes Avatar
        Terry Downes

        Hi Joel,

        This is the exact same issue I’m having, you can stop users viewing certain folders using Shared Folders by permission changes but it goes completely out of the window when using Media Library!!

        I have to say though that apart from the router giving me configuration errors every 30 mins it’s the only other problem I have.

        I’m generally happy with the way my server is running and the media streaming isn’t an issue for me.

        Specs: HP Proliant Microserver: AMD 1.5Ghz x2, 8GB RAM, 8TB HDD (4x2TB) WHS v2011 (x64)

        Reply
    13. AGA Bloga Avatar
      AGA Bloga

      Hi Geoff
      I am having the problem where the media libraries are not populated. i have restarted the server several times and still cannot get them to populate. Do you have any suggestions? is there a service that i should start or somthing.
      Other than this problem i am pleased with the server. I am using a Shuttle XS – Atom fanless system. so far so good! Running itunes as well so that i can stream to the Apple TV.
      thanks
      John

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        John, one thing you could perhaps try is to delete the current Media Library index, and force a rebuild. That might perhaps kickstart things. See here for the steps that you’ll need to follow:
        http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-GB/whsvailbeta/thread/acf30d3b-c3e3-4880-af0e-d2d6c6ab2f53

        Reply
        1. Andy Avatar
          Andy

          Hey Guys, I have have a repro on the empty media library on login. Not every time but I would say 9 times out of 10. I found that restarting Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service and refreshing the browser would get the library to populate. I created a scheduled task to stop and start the service. I think this will cause issues if for instance I was streaming a movie from the server, and there are probably other impacts. I will try this for a day to see how it goes. I also need to check out your link above as that might be a more elegant way to overcome the issue. Good Luck!
          Andy

          Reply
          1. Andy Avatar
            Andy

            This approach isn’t really going to work, of course the media library errors out while the service is restarting so it pretty much defeats it’s own purpose.

            Reply
    14. Al Feersum Avatar
      Al Feersum

      Hi Geoff,

      So far I haven’t used the media library stuff on WHS 2011 in anger – I’ve had real issues with my install running as a Hyper-V guest on a 2008 R2 server. I thought I’d be clever and use 128G VHDs mounted as software RAID, but it kept stuffing bad clusters on the disk (low level format, and a full check cleaned ’em all out, now the drive is mounted direct through a Hyper-V virtual device).

      Today is the first real test of the remote media functionality: when I got to work today I found that my iPod database got corrupted (probably due to a WinAmp sync this morning), so I thought I’d stream music from my library.

      Works great!

      … until the login session times out, and the SilverLight remote media player reports that the tracks it’s trying to play have ‘errors’. Think I’ll have to have a dig around and see if I can increase the session timeout.

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Hi Al, sounds as though you’ve been doing the “one step forwards, two steps back” waltz along with the rest of us with WHS 2011. 🙂

        The Media Library is still giving me issues via Remote Web access. I see that over at Microsoft’s Connect site, where they track bugs with their products, this problem has now been marked as “Closed”, with “External” as the qualifier. What this means is that they acknowledge it as a problem, but the resolution is not in the hands of the WHS 2011 team. I suspect that it’s over to the Silverlight team to fix the damn thing.

        Reply
      2. CAM55 Avatar
        CAM55

        Al,

        When you run WHS in a Hyper-V environment, you will have success if you pass through your drives instead of using vhd files. Leave the drives offline in the host OS and then set them up directly as scsi drives in the settings for the WHS machine. You will then see the drives when you run the machine. I was running that way for a couple of years without any issues and over 9TB of HDD space (internal SATA, eSATA, and USB for backup drives). I only recently separated my Home Server to reduce comlexity for any restore issues. I hope this is helpful.

        Reply
    15. Wouter de Poter Avatar
      Wouter de Poter

      Hi,i also have WHS 2011.It’s running ok but i also have problems with media libary remote acces.Sometimes the pictures,music and some movie folders appear but mostly not.I think that the problem is Upnp related.Most of the time WHS 2011 gives an alert that the router is not correctly working.But everything works fine with shared folders,also streaming films on a mediaplayer.
      And there are a little video extensions such as mkv. that are not supported.So i hope that Microsoft takes a look in this problem.On the former WHS1 i had also a WordPress blog.Pity there are no add ins for WHS 2011 yet.Cheers Wouter.

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Hi Wouter, It’s interesting that you say you get Alerts relating to UPnP not working properly. I’ve not had any such alerts, but I do wonder whether the problems are indeed related to UPnP settings – in particular the setting up of UDP ports used for streaming.

        Anyway, now that Microsoft have acknowledged that there is a problem (see my reply to Al Feersum above), we’ll see whether someone in Microsoft will fix it…

        Reply
    16. Morty Avatar
      Morty

      windows home server 2011 media library error
      ———————————————————————
      Here is what I found.
      I had placed 1400 photos into the Pictures directory. It seems as WHS 2011 cannot
      handle this number.

      I created a folder and moved them into it.
      I have ~ >30 subdirectories with ~ more than 3000 photos.
      Everything seems to work now. I hope this helps.

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Thanks for the comment Morty. Unfortunately, for those of us with larger libraries, it’s still very much broken.

        I currently have 47,404 photos in 867 subdirectories. WHS 2011 simply cannot cope.

        Reply
    17. e Blue Avatar
      e Blue

      I’m seeing pretty much the same things that everyone else has mentioned. I don’t think its UPNP-related because I see the same ridiculously bad performance on my local network. Either it has the worst indexing system ever designed or it simply doesn’t actually index the files and tries to generate the media listing on the fly. My gut feeling is that the product was not adequately tested on larger (>10,000) media libraries. For me the net effect is that it is pretty much unusable and considering that it was the only real reason to consider ‘upgrading’ to WHS 2011 the move has been a colossal waste of my time.

      Reply
    18. Simon Russell Avatar
      Simon Russell

      Just to say that this is #1 in the Google rankings when searching for the error. I’ve had it since shortly after installing and have not got any further on.

      I don’t have #that# much in my library either. Maybe 2000 songs, couple of hundred photos, couple of hundred videos. I am gradually migrating all of my media over, since it was in a mess, and it fell over around this level.

      Occasionally it works, mostly it doesn’t. Thought an update fixed it a while ago, but after five minutes, back to normal.

      I’m in the UK, although that doesn’t seem to matter.

      I also get a “cookie rejected” error when trying to remote connect to the dashboard, but I don’t think that’s related.

      Reply
    19. Practical Bliss | Geoff Coupe's Blog

      […] the Media Library in Windows Home Server 2011. As well as the shortcomings and design issues that I wrote about here, it also turned out that WHS 2011 has a tendency to corrupt music metadata and Album art stored in […]

      Reply
    20. Tom Avatar
      Tom

      Hi, although i havent got errors, my libary just wont fill after a specific folder so i can acces my libary but not all of it, same on my xbox it does not show all of my libary, now for my xbox i installed tversity and its doeing pretty well(it also transcodes mkv) but web acces libary is a failure, however you can rebuild your libary it worked once for me so you could give it a shot

      http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-GB/whsvailbeta/thread/acf30d3b-c3e3-4880-af0e-d2d6c6ab2f53

      I read however geof you allready did that.

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Yup, been there, done that, didn’t help me…

        Reply
    21. DT Avatar
      DT

      Just installed WHS 2011…Media Library will not populate…

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        DT, you could try forcing the Media Library to rebuild itself… See here for the steps listed by Masahiko Sada on how to do this:
        http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-GB/whsvailbeta/thread/acf30d3b-c3e3-4880-af0e-d2d6c6ab2f53

        Reply
    22. Jeremy Avatar
      Jeremy

      I’ve been having some problems with the Media Library as you described but lately, it just plain stopped working and now just shows 0 items in all three libraries. Many reboots and restarts of IIS later, nothing is resolved.

      Overall, this has been a disappointing product and having lost the libraries function, I’m tempted to just wipe this box and install a standard copy of win2k8r2 and be done with WHS forever.

      Reply
    23. Schwemmi Avatar
      Schwemmi

      Hi. I have the same problems with the Libraries (Lots of Pics & Music) but each are shown with 0 Elements. I delete my Librarie File and the Server created a new one: about 600MB. But either with MediaPlayer as Foreign Library in the LAN nor with the WebAccess over Internet: Still 0 Elements. And, yes, I use a FritzBox, but I can’t see a Problem with this, because the MediaPlayer in my LAN has an empty Database, too. It’s disappointing.
      Schwemmi, German WHS 2011 on Hyper-V.

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Hi Schwemmi, if I understand you correctly, you are saying that Windows Media Player running on a client PC in your home network doesn’t see any media stored on your WHS 2011, even though you have added the folders into the WMP Library?

        That’s odd. All my client PCs are able to access the media stored on my WHS 2011 over the LAN – it’s only when I try and use the Media Library services over Remote Web Access that I have problems.

        There must be something else going on in your case.

        Reply
        1. Schwemmi Avatar
          Schwemmi

          Hi Geoff.
          No, I always had Access to my e.g. Music Folder, Media Player was able to build his own, local Library with the Music Files. That was not the Problem. Even via Webinterface I could open the Folders and I saw the content.
          What not worked was the Media Library in the Web Interface. Always shown with 0 Items.
          So, please check your Settings as I described below.
          Schwemmi

          Reply
      2. Schwemmi Avatar
        Schwemmi

        Schwemmi again:
        I found a solution for my Problem (Remember my Issue was that in my Media-Library the Folders Pictures, Music and Videos were shown with 0 Itmes)
        I try to Translate form German OS:
        So I went to the Dashboard -> Server Settings -> Homenetworkgroup.
        There I clicked Change Settings.
        In this Window all my Folders have been marked with no Access. (I wonder about this because in my LAN and in my Remoteweb I had Access to those folders)
        Anyway: I set my Music, Pictures and Videos to Full Access!
        Suddenly everything was fine!

        Rgds from Germany,
        Schwemmi

        Reply
        1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
          Geoff Coupe

          See, I thought that there must be something else going on… Glad you got it sorted. As far as I understand it, the Media Server settings control the DLNA service available over the Remote Web Access. This is separate from the Media Library settings…

          Reply
    24. Michael McDermott Avatar
      Michael McDermott

      I had the same problem as Schwemmi — no media visible to DLNA server or remote access. Turns out if you turn off Homegroup file sharing, nothing is made available! Talk about counter-intuitive.

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Michael, the Homegroup feature has its own problems, but the issue you describe is not one of them, I think. I do not use the Homegroup feature, because I want access controls per user. If you don’t define any users, then certainly no media will be visible to DLNA devices or remote access.

        Reply
        1. al feersum Avatar
          al feersum

          I have to agree with Geoff here. Don’t use Homegroup – you lose the granularity of user controls. I don’t want people in my household accidentally making changes or deleting data ‘by accident’.

          Reply
      2. Morty Avatar
        Morty

        I experienced the same problem and solution. Turning of HomeGroup made things visible again.

        Reply
    25. dszigeti Avatar
      dszigeti

      Geoff, As I have similar problems to you with WHS 2011 and the Media Library (for example not showing photos and indicating “X” in slideshow mode … I decided to log into my WHS 2011 box directly (I have a head on it) and see what happens directly in Windows Media Player.

      Lo and behold, WMP didn’t show all of my photos (surprise, surprise). After I checked a few settings that really didn’t change anything, I decided to run an “Apply media changes” (on the “organize” menu) … and then I waited … and waited … but it would not complete. I did notice that the message on the dialog indicated that the “Server was busy”, and sometimes the indexing would reinitialize to 0%. It barely made it to 5% for a few hours. I tried upping the priority of WMP but it didn’t help.

      I then ran WMP using the “Run as Administrator” (I know that I am logged in as Administrator … but what the heck!) …

      Sure enough the library finally updated to 100%. Logging back in through the web interface showed all the photos and allowed the slide show mode to run correctly!!!

      So now all I need is for someone (err Microsoft?) to tell us how to fix this permanently … I hope this helps us resolve the issue sometime soon.

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Hmm, interesting. My system is headless, but I’ll try using RDP and poking around. Thanks for the suggestion!

        Reply
    26. Mark J Avatar
      Mark J

      Having the same problem with 100k files. Wasn’t a problem with a few CD rips but once I got them all in, selected and shared the WMP has had the CPU pegged for several hours now. This isn’t a typical home server either. I dropped in a Intel Dual Port Gigabit Server NIC and LSI raid card. The CPU is a Core 2 duo, not super-duper fast but I never had problems indexing those same files before. So really this is a software problem. WMP shows all the files in there but at the bottom right updating the media library for T:\X folder. Even more odd is that when I clicked on the Music portion of the window media player on the server locally I got an error: “The remote media library did not allow the connection. Please contact device manufacturer.” Um I am the device architect. This is the local machine, what connection failed? I can get to the stuff on the share drive that I have mapped over the lan, why not at the core on the machine it’self. I wonder if updating windows media player might do it.

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Since it’s a server, I doubt whether Microsoft consider using WMP locally to be a supported scenario, so it doesn’t surprise me that there are problems using it. There are clearly issues in the media library/DLNA implementation of WHS 2011. I just hope that Microsoft are addressing them.

        Reply
    27. Mark J Avatar
      Mark J

      Also of interest the library started to build and there was a lot but sometime after 3 pages of music it failed.

      Reply
    28. Anno Avatar
      Anno

      Hello, is there all a solution to the error problem. My library don’t work at all.

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Anno, well, if your library doesn’t work “at all”, then I think there must be some other problem that needs to be fixed first. But if you are getting the same errors as I am, then I’m afraid that all Microsoft can suggest is that we reduce the size of our libraries…

        http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/media-streaming-known-issue-and-workaround-with-windows-home-server-2011-and-windows-storage-server-2008-r2-essentials.aspx

        On Microsoft’s bug reporting site they state:

        “We are aware of the particular issue that you have reported. However, due to circumstances we will not be able to address it in the current release, it will continue to be tracked in our system and we will aim to address it in the near future.”

        The “near future” probably translates to “in a year or two, if you’re lucky”.

        Reply
    29. Simon Avatar
      Simon

      Oddly enough, my error went away a while ago. I don’t recall doing anything bizarre to the server.

      I started using a client machine’s Media Player to Find Album Info and Update the music. I don’t know whether that inadvertently fixed a file that the server was tripping over on.

      Mind you, I’ve only got about 2k photos, 6k songs and a few hundred videos. I have more, but I’m moving them over gradually so I can have a clear out on the way.

      Really wish I could offer a solution, but somehow mine just started working again.

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Simon, I think that’s the thing – Microsoft’s media library software simply doesn’t scale. I have over 50,000 photos and 12,500 songs, and the media library just doesn’t work without throwing errors.

        Reply
        1. Simon Avatar
          Simon

          Yes, agreed. Thing is, I used to get the error 99% of the time. I was thinking that maybe I’d thrown too much at it too quickly, and it takes an unreasonable amount of time to process the library. I certainly haven’t removed anything from the library, so who knows.

          Like you say, everything points to large libraries (or at least large as far as WHS is concerned).

          Reply
          1. Anno Avatar
            Anno

            Here there same problem. i have a lot of photos and some music. I have the problem from the start. about a year now. So it will take some more waiting time than. But nobody except Microsoft can fix the problem?

            Reply
            1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
              Geoff Coupe

              I don’t think that there is an easy-to-install third party equivalent of Microsoft’s Remote Web Access to the Media Library feature. Some people are using Subsonic to stream music via the web, but that’s not a complete solution, nor does it look easy to setup and maintain. So unless someone has another suggestion, it looks as though we’re stuck with waiting for Microsoft.

              If you want to replace Microsoft’s Media Libary for access over your local network, then some people are using Serviio to do this. Since my problems are with Remote Access over the Web (local network access works fine), then I haven’t gone down this route.

              Reply
              1. Anno Avatar
                Anno

                The local access works fine to (but the load time of starting the dashboard is long). Oke i will wait and hope that someone beats microsoft whit fixing this problem. (ow and I have followed this site since I had the problem)

                Reply
              2. Duke Avatar
                Duke

                Hi all,

                I’ve been experiencing these media library error for months, using either remote web access or the Windows phone application for WHS 2011. Please note I’m using this for music only (roughly 1300+ tracks).
                I spent hours and hours trying to isolate the error/find a workaround (I posted recently on Microsoft Connect, too) without success, and finally gave up.

                Then, some days ago, the Windows Phone application for WHS 2011 was updated. I tried using it again, and… it worked?!!! I went back to the remote web application… it also worked, whereas it would have systematically failed before.
                And this has been working without any error for several days now… I looked at the Windows update history, but could not identify any WHS 2011 specific one, so I wonder what was the trigger…

                Am I just lucky?

                Reply
                1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
                  Geoff Coupe

                  Duke, I think you’re right that things have improved following the update, but they are not totally solved for me. I still get errors when trying to view my photos sorted by date…

                  Reply
                  1. al feersum Avatar
                    al feersum

                    I’ll have to agree Geoff. Something /has/ improved… but it still isn’t great. I think the only real alternative is to crack open the SDK and work on replacing the remote interface as a collaborative open sourced project. Perhaps, then, with community involvement and a community of developers, a team can put together something that works /properly/ and also adds the features that users want, instead of using the default ‘basic’ interface. After all, that /is/ what the SDK is for…

                    Reply
                    1. Duke Avatar
                      Duke

                      What SDK are you talking about, Al? AFAIK, there’s no publicly documented SDK…

                      Reply
                      1. Al Feersum Avatar
                        Al Feersum

                        @Duke, see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb425866.aspx – and wrapped up with the Windows & .NET 4 SDK (for interfacing with WMP and using WCF – Silverlight) something quite neat could be rolled up. Or even without Silverlight – use HTML5 and RIA, which will remove the dependence on using an SL player…

    30. Dave Avatar
      Dave

      Problem using Remote App on an iTouch connecting to iTunes running on Windows Home Server 2011.
      Have recently built a server with Windows Home Server 2011, but am having an issue adding the iTunes Library on my iTouch. When I select add a library on my iTouch the passcode is displayed on my Win HS 2011 server and is accepted. But on the iTouch it just hands and the library name is not displayed. (I tried turning off the firewall but no effect). It all works fine on my Windows 7 64bit PC.
      Has anyone had a similar problem or things to try?

      Reply
      1. Dave Avatar
        Dave

        PS when the the iTouch it hangs, I any able to move back. iTunes is working OK on the server it’s just the remote that’s the issue.

        Reply
    31. WHS 2011 and Metadata | Geoff Coupe's Blog

      […] and I think I should add that none of the many other issues with the Media Library in WHS 2011 listed in this post have been resolved. They are all still there, making the use of the Media Library via the Web […]

      Reply
    32. haim benalon israel Avatar
      haim benalon israel

      Hello,
      I have exactly the same problem. Photos (lots of) wont show on media library and an error message appears. Am waiting for a fix. Like your blog:-) see what happens:-)

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Hi, I’m afraid there’s no fix in sight at the moment. Microsoft is aware of the issue, but all they suggest is to reduce the size of your media library…

        Reply
    33. Sharing Photos | Geoff Coupe's Blog

      […] people to access its media collection via the internet. At least, that’s the theory. In practice, the software is riddled with problems. I cannot use it, and Microsoft has no intention of fixing […]

      Reply
    34. Craig Avatar
      Craig

      Geoff, now that it’s 2015 what are you using for server software? I am still using whs 2011 and it’s still not very good even with all the updates.

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Craig, well, I’m still using WHS 2011, but I’m certainly not using the web-based Media Library feature. That’s as broken as it ever was.

        I am still using WHS 2011 as a media server, and for taking daily backups of our client PCs and tablets. For those purposes, WHS 2011 still excels, as far as I’m concerned.

        The server holds all our media (films, recorded TV, music and photos), and makes it available over our home network to client devices. I still find myself using Windows Media Center on our HTPC for music/photo playback, but I’m still in the process of choosing between Plex and Emby (formerly known as MediaBrowser 3) for other media and devices. Whichever I choose, the media will still be held on the WHS 2011 system.

        Reply
        1. Simon Avatar
          Simon

          I’m currently in a similar boat. I’m migrating away from using Windows Media Center in favour of simpler clients and having a server perform the back end work (Chromecast/Raspberry Pi). Getting tired of maintaining PCs at every screen, when there are plug and play options out there. In the process of converting all movies to MKV and am running Plex for now, but not set on it. No one solution out there can get live TV, movies, music etc all in a single interface like WMC could. Trying out OSMC (what was Raspbmc), and seeing if I can get Plex in that to look native.

          The main difference is that my Movies are on an unRaid server (with all other files on WHS2011). The version of unRaid currently in RC status supports installing Plex (and other dockers), and can run virtual machine, so I am considering setting up some backup on that and doing away with the WHS2011 box altogether. Plex handles the web side, and Microsoft didn’t seem to care much for the home user, plus they appear to be acknowledging that others do the media side better seeing as they’re dropping WMC.

          Reply
    35. RIP, Windows Home Server… | Geoff Coupe's Blog

      […] with some features that had obvious design shortcomings or that never worked properly – hello, Media Library, I’m looking at you… Even the new server backup feature of WHS 2011 had a design […]

      Reply
    36. Sherwood Mcmasters Avatar
      Sherwood Mcmasters

      Good write-up. I certainly appreciate this website. Keep it up!😃 🤠 2021-09-23 23h 38min

      Reply

    Leave a comment

  • Slideshow Quality in Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011

    Almost a year ago, in July 2010, I blogged about something that I had noticed in the beta of Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011: the quality of the slideshows it displayed was noticeably poorer than in the previous version.

    It turned out that WLPG 2011 uses Windows Live Movie Maker to display slideshows, and this was what was causing the poorer quality. This was unchanged in the final release of WLPG 2011. Because of this poor quality, when I wanted to display a slideshow on my PC, I used the slideshow function in Windows Explorer. It doesn’t have any fancy transitions, but it displayed the images at a far higher quality than WLPG/WLMM 2011.

    And there the matter has stood, until now. Yesterday, I received an email from someone with the nickname tuxplorer, describing a simple change in the Windows Registry that will stop WLPG 2011 from using WLMM to display slideshows, and use its own built-in slideshow capability (that has been left in there from the previous version!).

    All you have to do is use Regedit to go in the registry to HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live\Photo Gallery and change the value of the “AutoMoviePlayerSlideshow” value to 0.

    That stops WLPG 2011 from using Windows Live Movie Maker, and makes it use its own slideshow capability. That slideshow engine has a number of transition effects, but if you choose the “Classic” theme, then you will get the same high-quality slideshows as in Windows Explorer.

    Hat-tip to tuxplorer!

    10 responses to “Slideshow Quality in Windows Live Photo Gallery 2011”

    1. madscientist Avatar
      madscientist

      OH thank god for that! This has been a problem since the very beginning of Windows Live Photo Gallery where it resamples pictures, even if the WinSAT score / system score is good enough.
      Very strange.

      Reply
    2. madscientist Avatar
      madscientist

      *Though they STILL haven’t sorted out colour management with this program! Sure, the photos viewed normally are colour managed, but as soon as you open them in the slideshow, boom, profiles get thrown out the window and you end up with over-saturated hideousness (depending on monitor, naturally).

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        That’s a good point. I don’t know of a fix for this, or even if it’s possible to correct it. My suspicion is that it’s not. Despite all the noises from the WLPG team that they want to do right by photographers, the evidence is that they mean people who use their smartphones to take snaps at drunken parties.

        Reply
        1. madscientist Avatar
          madscientist

          Yes exactly! I guess they do expect semi-pro and above to be using pro-tools, but to be honest I still prefer the organisation of WLPG and the things it offers like face tagging, plus just for viewing slideshows etc I don’t want to bother loading up anything else, but looks like I will have to! Sucks to want to achieve more!

          Reply
          1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
            Geoff Coupe

            There was a time – back in 2008 – when Microsoft were actively courting the pro photographer market. They had a whole series of web pages with articles aimed at the pro and enthusiastic amateur photographer. And while they were pushing their Expression 2 product (since dropped), they also covered their consumer tools. Alas, these pages have all been pulled.

            Reply
    3. John Avatar
      John

      Thanks for this. There’s one issue that still annoys me – you can’t display the captions that many of us have laboriously entered against our photos. I have resorted to using my old copy of MS’s Digital Image Suite 2006, which also lets me use a mouse scroll-wheel to zoom, and forwards and backwards buttons on the mouse work too.

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Yes, the ability to turn on the captions for display in the slideshow would be a very useful feature…

        Reply
    4. Petrovu Avatar
      Petrovu

      Thank you, Geoff, for the great tip.
      Do you happen to know, is it possible to drop still photos AND short videos into the same slideshow? Before or after the registry change? This is something that Vista Slideshow was able to do and I can’t find it anywhere in Windows 7 or various free Windows programs.

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Hi Petrovu, I honestly don’t know whether it’s possible to do that. I’ve never had occasion to try… Sorry.

        Reply
    5. Gary Lippe Avatar
      Gary Lippe

      When I changed the value of AutoMoviePlayerSlideshow” to 0, the player skipped all movies. I am on W7 home premium win live photo gallery build 15.4.3538.513. Currently Quick time movies plays in a herky jerky manner. Any ideas?

      Reply

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  • Windows 8

    Microsoft have given the first public demo of the user interface that will be included in the next version of Windows, currently known as Windows 8.

    At the D9 conference yesterday, Windows and Windows Live President Steven Sinofsky brought Corporate Vice President of Windows Program Management, Julie Larson-Green with him to show a demo to the audience. She has also written about the design of the interface in this article.

    Microsoft have also posted the first of what promises to be a series of videos to YouTube. This one gives a good impression of the new user interface.

    It’s clear that it is designed around touch and gesture, and shares a lot in common with the Metro interface of Windows Phone 7. Thankfully, for old fogies like me, the traditional Windows 7 interface will still be available. While I think that the new touch interface will be wonderful on tablets, slates and other handheld devices, I’ve never been convinced about its efficacy on touchscreen PCs. Reaching out to the screen in front of me all day will have a tendency to give me gorilla arm, I’m sure.

    And while the interface can be driven by a mouse, I have the feeling that a mouse is not the best device for this sort of interface. For example, you can use a mouse in a paint application, but the experience has been likened to “painting with a rock”. A digitiser with either a touch interface or pen is much more suited to these applications. I suspect that we’ll see a resurgence of digitiser pads if Windows 8 takes off.

    I look forward to trying it out on my old HP TX2000 Tablet PC – Windows 8 and an SSD replacement for the hard drive should give it a whole new lease of life…

    Leave a comment

  • All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace – II

    I mentioned how much I was looking forward to the new series of documentaries by Adam Curtis: All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace.

    Actually, the first episode was last week, and it was every bit as good as I had hoped for. I never realised, until Curtis made it clear, that there was a close, if not intimate, connection between Alan Greenspan and the ethical egoist-cum-sociopath Ayn Rand. Pause for shudder…

    Tonight’s episode will look at how our view of Nature, as interconnected ecosystems, echoes our view of machines. Should be good. And next week, Curtis will look at our view of the human being as machine, and tell the riveting, and almost outlandish, story of George Price, who was one of the first to come up with the idea of the Selfish Gene.

    Adam Curtis has also been on Little Atoms, talking about the series and the ideas behind it (the second link on this page). Well worth a listen.

    The underpinning theme of All Watched Over… is that of Cybernetics, with which I was fascinated when younger. I wonder whether Curtis will mention William Grey Walter and his cybernetic tortoises? I built one of those when I was a teenager, but really, one was not enough, you really needed several to be able to study the emergent behaviour…

    At the very least, I hope that Curtis gives a shout-out to Anthony Stafford Beer, who was invited by Salvador Allende to implement Cybersyn to manage the planned economy of Chile. Unfortunately, like so much else, the experiment was swept away in the military coup of 1973, which was, surprise, surprise, endorsed by the US.

    3 responses to “All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace – II”

    1. jonpatterns Avatar
      jonpatterns

      Adam mentions Chile, but not Stafford?

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Yes, I was a little bit disappointed in that, as well. Perhaps it didn’t fit his thesis.

        Reply
    2. jonpatterns Avatar
      jonpatterns

      He seems down on any sort of system analysis. But I think it can be useful, necessary to reduce complexity – but it is important to remember that it is just analysis.

      Reply

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  • The Media Library in Windows Home Server 2011

    As promised yesterday, here’s the follow-up post describing my experience (thus far) with the Media Library in Windows Home Server 2011.

    On installation, Windows Home Server 2011 will create a number of Folders by default for music, pictures, documents, recorded TV, and videos. These can be accessed either via Windows networking, or via the web using the Remote Web Access facilities of WHS 2011.

    On my home network, I’m using Windows networking for access by my Home Theatre PC (HTPC) and other computers to the digital media files held on my WHS 2011 system. This seems to be working as expected. I can play my music, or watch DVDs and Blu-rays streamed from the server to my PCs without issue.

    I did, however, find a couple of wrinkles when trying to access the same digital media files via the Remote Web Access facility of WHS 2011.

    Wrinkle 1

    When I first set up my WHS 2011 system, I had installed my music library on drive D:. And, I could access my music in the Music library displayed via the Remote Web Access. However, after a few days, I thought that I should move my picture and video libraries to different drives. I used the “Move the folder” Wizard in the Dashboard to accomplish these tasks.

    I then found that instead of being able to see in excess of 45,000 pictures in the Media Library, I was presented with the grand total of one picture:

    WHS2011 24a

    I also saw that I had a total of 54 videos, but when I tried to play any of them, the web-based player would start, but then fail with an error message complaining that the file-type may not be supported.

    Using Remote Web Access to browse the shared folders would show all the pictures, and would play the videos without problems.

    I thought at first that it was simply a case of the index service needing time to register the new locations of my picture and video files, so I waited, and I waited… I waited a couple of days, and nothing changed.

    At this point, I decided to reboot my server, and lo and behold, the picture and video files were found:

    WHS2011 37

    You will notice that there are now 45,058 pictures and 92 videos found, and that the thumbnails show a real photo and video thumbnail.

    So I infer from this that using the “move folders” wizard is not sufficient to keep the WHS 2011 system running smoothly – it is also necessary to reboot the server in order for the indexing service to discover the new location of files. This, despite the fact that accessing the files via Windows networking appears to be able to account for the changes.

    For the case of web access, the server’s left hand does not know what the right hand has done…

    Wrinkle 2

    I noticed, from the forums, that some people were complaining that their Album Art (CD covers) in their Music Library was showing up in their Pictures Library. Clearly, this is wrong, and should not be happening.

    Then I realised that when the Pictures Library of WHS 2011 was showing just one picture, it was in fact a CD cover stored in my Music Library. Well, (a ) this should not be displayed in my Picture Library, but (b ) why was it just one? After all, my Music Library has 990 albums:

    WHS2011 39

    – why was it just displaying one album cover, and not 990 in the Picture Library?

    It turns out that WHS 2011 will ignore certain filenames when it is searching for items for inclusion in the Picture Library.

    WHS 2011 will ignore filenames in the Music Library folders when they have the form:

    • AlbumArt_{alphanumeric}_Large,
    • AlbumArt_{alphanumeric}_Small, AlbumArtSmall, and
    • Folder.jpg files

    However, if you have Album Art files that do not follow this convention, then WHS 2011 will count them in as part of the Picture Library.

    And that’s what was happening. I had an Album Art cover file with this name:

    Cover- Wiener Philharmoniker _Orchestra_- Strauss, R. Eine Alpensinfonie; Rosenkavalier-Suite.jpg

    Cover- Wiener Philharmoniker _Orchestra_- Strauss, R. Eine Alpensinfonie; Rosenkavalier-Suite

    and so WHS 2011 included it into the Picture Library…

    Sometimes I feel as though I’m an archaeologist, trying to second-guess what has been left by extinct civilisations…

    Update: I have discovered more issues with the Media Library. See this post.

    10 responses to “The Media Library in Windows Home Server 2011”

    1. My WHS 2011 Experience (Thus Far) | Geoff Coupe's Blog

      […] The Media Library in Remote Web Access has issues (I’ll address this in a follow-up post). […]

      Reply
    2. The Media Library in Windows Home Server 2011–Revisited | Geoff Coupe's Blog

      […] Windows Home Server 2011–Revisited Posted on June 4, 2011 by Geoff Coupe A week ago, I blogged about my first impressions of using the Media Library in Windows Home Server 2011. My experience wasn’t entirely positive, […]

      Reply
    3. Matt Avatar
      Matt

      Finding similar problems but they extend, seems my videos are in the pictures (all of them), my pictures are not in any of them, my movies are in my videos and meh its a mess….
      Hope they bring out a fix or something for it

      Reply
    4. Matt Avatar
      Matt

      Also note: I did not come from WHS v1, so my files arn’t perfectly layed out in MS format, if thats what MS needs I hope there is a way to batch convert (to correct file type and file structure) a whole tonne of files some how?

      Reply
    5. Derek Avatar
      Derek

      I’ve had this problem too, and it’s ridiculous that the web interface won’t just look at the “Pictures” folder for pictures. I’ve got “backdrop.jpg” “logo.jpg” “banner.jpg” for all my movies which also now appear as photos in the “Pictures” library.

      Reply
    6. dszigeti Avatar
      dszigeti

      Geoff … Great article thanks. I am coming from WHS V1 – actually I am running both V1 and 2011 in parallel until I can be sure that I can migrate successfully).

      I found the same problems that you mentioned with WHS 2011 – it is unfortunate that these bugs exist in what could be a good system. As someone famous … and you said … “definitely a Curate’s egg …”

      I am also coming to the same conclusion that you are. WHS 2011 generally works but it is not home user friendly … and we seem to be heading toward needing an IT guy to maintain the system. I don’t dislike WHS 2011 (except for the bugs) but I did expect it to build on WHS V1 and refine the “experience.” I am not seeing an improved experience at this time.

      Reply
    7. Dan Avatar
      Dan

      Hi Geoff, great blog. I’ve have just started using WHS 2011 this week and have found when I’m streaming media to my Win 7 Media Center from the server that Recorded TV does not appear in the shared tab in win 7 media center. It appears to stream fine to media player on the same pc just not to media center shared tab in the recorded tv menu. Just wondering if your experience was the same?
      Cheers,
      Dan

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Dan, as far as I know, the “recorded TV” folder is used for archived TV recordings that are made on your Media Center PC, and then automatically transferred across to the WHS 2011 system. On the Media Center PC, there should be a Home Server tab, with “archived TV” under it.

        I don’t use my Media Center PC for making TV recordings, so I’ve never been able to test this out.

        Reply
        1. Aussie_Z Avatar
          Aussie_Z

          Hi Geoff et al … I concur with your assessment … I don’t understand why WMC doesn’t allow us to just connect to a shared WHS 2011 folder(s) to select and play video. I don’t understand how the “automatic” archiving works … my thoughts are that, as usual, Microsoft has made this too difficult, when a simple solution would have been fine. I am not happy with the implementation … If I am wrong, I would be happy to hear the solution.

          Reply
          1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
            Geoff Coupe

            Hi Aussie, er, WMC does allow you to connect to a shared WHS 2011 folder(s) to select and play video… At least, it does on my systems. I’m not using any “special” codec packs, just the ones supplied with Microsoft. That allows me to play the videos that I have in the video library held on my WHS 2011. That library is separate from the “Recorded TV” folder, which, as I say, I don’t use.

            Reply

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  • The Psychopath Test

    I see that Jon Ronson has got a new book out: The Psychopath Test. I like Jon Ronson’s writing, so I think I should add his new book to my wishlist. There’s also a very positive review of the book in today’s Guardian, by Will Self. Check it out.

    One response to “The Psychopath Test”

    1. The Psychopath Test | Geoff Coupe's Blog

      […] weeks back I mentioned that I should put Jon Ronson’s new book: The Psychopath Test on my list of books to read. I did, […]

      Reply

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  • My WHS 2011 Experience (Thus Far)

    I think it’s safe to say that the development of Microsoft’s Windows Home Server 2011 (version two of the original Windows Home Server product) has not exactly been plain sailing. Fairly late on in the development cycle, Microsoft took the decision to pull the Drive Extender technology (the unique selling point of WHS v1) from the v2 product. The decision was greeted with howls of protest from WHS customers (including me), but Microsoft soldiered on and released WHS 2011 in April.

    Now, I know that I had said that I would be sticking with WHS V1 as long as possible, but those who really know me are aware that I am often unable to resist poking new technology to see how well it works. And so, I’ve messed about with the beta versions of WHS 2011 (and found some bad limitations, as well as the occasional plus point).

    I’ve been using version 1 of Windows Home Server since it was released in November 2007 (and I was kicking the tyres of the betas before that). So we have a long history together (in computer terms). And WHS v1 has served me well. There was the saga of the file corruption bug, but once identified, I was able to work around it until it was fixed by Microsoft in November 2008. Since then, I’ve been using WHS v1 very happily indeed. It has just worked, and has saved my bacon on a couple of occasions.

    Why, you might then ask, have I yielded to temptation and invested in an OEM disc of Windows Home Server 2011?

    Well, the major omission in WHS v1, from my perspective, was that it was not possible to backup the server itself. I wanted to be able to take server backups for off-site storage. Yes, it was possible to take copies of the Shared Folders of the server onto external discs for storage off-site (which I did); but it was not possible, using the facilities of WHS v1, to take a backup of the server operating system and copies of the client PC backups onto external storage. With WHS 2011 comes the additional feature of being able to make backups of all of the server itself for off-site storage.

    Thus, while WHS 2011 has lost the Drive Extender feature, it has seemingly gained the ability to make complete backups of the server. On balance, and given my hankering for new technology, I thought that I would invest in WHS 2011 and see how it would go.

    So, how has it gone?

    To be honest, it’s been a bit of a curate’s egg – it has good parts and bad parts.

    The Good Parts

    • Practically painless installation of the software (WHS v1 needed coddling to understand modern hardware) – but note the comment under the Questionable Parts heading.
    • Backup of the server is now possible.
    • Improvements for Remote Web Access.

    The Bad Parts

    • Removal of drive pooling because the Drive Extender technology is gone.
    • Server backup has a limit of 2TB. Note: See the Addendum at the bottom of this post.

    The Questionable Parts

    • Server installation defaults to a Workgroup called “Workgroup”. If yours is named something else (as mine was), you need to be aware of a workaround. I used it and it worked for me.
    • Server backups to more than one external drive don’t seem to be working properly.
    • The Media Library in Remote Web Access has issues (I’ll address this in a follow-up post).

    The Details

    I divide the data held on my Windows Home Server into two classes: critical and non-critical.

    • Critical data is that which I view as unique and irreplaceable. For example, the 44,000 (and counting) photos that I have taken over the course of my 62 year life. Then there are the 10,000+ emails generated over my 20 years online that I wish to preserve, at least for me, if not for posterity. And not forgetting documents that I have written, which are important to me, if not to anyone else.
    • In the class of non-critical fall the digital copies of my music and film collection. The originals are the CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays that I own. If the digital copies are lost, I can at least regenerate them from the original media.

    It turns out that this classification into two types of data is important because one of the bad (not to say ugly) parts of WHS 2011 is the fact that a server backup cannot exceed 2TB maximum.

    Because of this limitation, I am forced to adopt the strategy of saying that critical data is handled by the WHS 2011 server backup facility, while non-critical data is handled by an alternative facility – in my case I have chosen for SyncToy. It would have been wonderful to let all of my data be handled by the WHS 2011 server backup facility, but since I have more than 2TB of data, this just isn’t possible by the design that Microsoft have given us.

    Let’s just pause a moment and let this sink in. Because of the fact that the WHS 2011 server backup facility has a hard limit of 2TB, I have to use a mixture of backup methods in order to ensure that all my data is backed up. This means:

    • We are no longer in home user territory. We are in the world of needing to know IT.
    • I can use the WHS 2011 Server backup facility for critical data, but…
    • I must use the Remote Desktop Connection application to connect to the WHS 2011 server and run SyncToy to backup my non-critical data.

    As Dorothy said: Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansa anymore.

    In an ideal world, I would have the following scenario:

    • My data is in two classes: critical and non-critical.
    • For critical data, I want to rotate external drives between the WHS 2011 server and off-site storage on a daily basis.
    • For non-critical data, I want to rotate external drives between the WHS 2011 server and off-site storage on a weekly or monthly basis.
    • Both of these tasks should be doable via the WHS 2011 server backup facility – and via a single mouse-click once set up.

    Currently, this can’t be done. I need to have fudges and workarounds that require IT knowledge. In other words, I think that WHS 2011 fails to meet the needs of the home user.

    But the story doesn’t end there. According to the online help for Windows Home Server 2011, it is possible to rotate external backup drives: “You can use multiple external storage drives for backups, and you can rotate the drives between onsite and offsite storage locations. This can improve your disaster preparedness planning by helping you recover your data if physical damage occurs to the hardware onsite”.

    So I tried to do this. At the moment, I have about 500 GB critical data that I want to store using the Server Backup facility in the Dashboard, and I have two drives; one of 1TB capacity (Drive #1) and one of 750GB capacity (Drive #2). I set these up in the WHS 2011 Server Backup Wizard.

    Day 1 went fine, two successful backups (the default setting) were made to Drive #1. On day 2, I removed Drive #1 and added Drive #2. The “Customize Server Backup” Wizard showed that Drive #2 was attached and Drive # 1 was offline.

    However, this time, the Server Backup failed, with an error 2155348020:

    WHS2011 25

    I love the way that this message simply tosses out the fact that we should view the event log for more information. I think that most Home Users presented with this message would simply think: WTF is the Event log? And they can’t view the Event log via the WHS 2011 Dashboard anyway – you have to be sufficiently IT-savvy to be able to open up a Remote Desktop Connection and then start up the Event Viewer on the server. Once you’ve done that, you will be presented with something like this:

    WHS2011 38

    It says: The shadow copy of volume \\?\Volume{21bc2a5f-85fc-11e0-a4dd-002354da5014} being created failed to install. Frankly, I have no idea what this means. I do understand that my disc drives have storage volumes created on them; but I can’t find any volume with the reference {21bc2a5f-85fc-11e0-a4dd-002354da5014} – it doesn’t seem to exist.

    Anyway, I ran the server backup again, but this time with both backup drives attached. It worked. After a few more experiments, I proved that:

    • Backup drive #1 works.
    • Backup drive #2 does not work by itself.
    • Backup drive #1 and #2 together works.

    The bottom line is that I can’t seem to be able to rotate backup drives – that is, (for example) on day 1, I attach drive #1 to the server and have drive #2 held off-site. On day 2, I attach drive #2 to the server and hold drive #1 off-site. Day 3, and it’s back to drive #1 attached to the server, with drive #2 held off-site. And so on… It would seem that I have to have either the first or both drives attached when I’m making backups. But needing to have both drives attached isn’t what I think of when I want to implement a rotating backup drive strategy…

    I want to put something like an ICY Dock MB877IK into my server and have 2 x 2TB drives that I can rotate on a daily basis. It looks as though this is not possible with WHS 2011 at the moment. According to the WHS 2011 online help, it should work. In the real world, on my system, it doesn’t.

    A word about the demise of Drive Extender.

    While I can understand why Microsoft made the decision they did, I still think that the loss of DE is a great loss for the home user. It was such a brilliant concept and it worked for me. When I was setting up my new WHS 2011 system, I found myself having to think carefully about how best to juggle my data across a number of discs, instead of just dealing with one storage pool. I ended up (after a couple of trial runs) with data distributed across my drives like so:

    WHS2011 20

    Here, the drive shown as Elements (J:) is the external drive that I’m using for SyncToy, and server backups of my critical data are being put onto the WHS Data Backup #1 drive.

    And, as already stated, the fact that I’m having to mess about with Remote Desktop Connections and running SyncToy underlines to me the fact that Microsoft have blown it – WHS 2011 is not a product suitable for the “home user”. OEMs will have to invest in addressing the brain-dead backup “feature” in order to come up with a backup and digital media storage appliance suitable for the masses… Will any of them do this? We’ll see.

    Meantime, for us, the home builders, I would say that there’s definitely a gap in the market for someone to develop a replacement Backup Add-in that uses the underlying Windows Server 2008 R2 facilities that would simplify our lives, and allow us to build WHS 2011 systems for friends and relatives that they could actually use…

    WHS 2011: definitely a Curate’s egg…

    Addendum: Update 31 March 2014: It appears as though there has been some improvement made to the Server Backup function in the Dashboard since I originally wrote this article. It remains the case that WHS 2011 continues to use the VHD format for backup, which has a maximum capacity of 2TB. However, it now appears (contrary to what Microsoft originally stated) as though the Server Backup function can now deal with multiple VHDs, providing the backup drive is big enough. So, if your backup drive is 4TB, that means you can have 2 VHDs of 2TB created on it. That, in turn, means that you can backup up to 4TB of data from your data storage drives (with a maximum of 2TB for any one drive). That’s a theoretical maximum, since Microsoft also recommend having some free space in the VHDs to handle incremental backups.

    12 responses to “My WHS 2011 Experience (Thus Far)”

    1. John Zajdler Avatar
      John Zajdler

      Nice writeup, now I know about something else I did not know.

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Thanks, John. As you can tell, I’ve got mixed feelings about WHS 2011. I can use it, and I’m fairly sure it will be OK, but I’m having to be the IT guy in the house. I just wish it could have simply been the backup/storage appliance that anyone could use…

        Reply
    2. Ethan Moie Avatar
      Ethan Moie

      Hi Geoff,

      Excellent write up- completely sums up Microsoft’s mistakes on the Home Server front. It’s funny really- when WHS v1 came out I (like most IT people) thought “WTF is the DE rubbish?” and “why on earth didn’t they just use RAID??”- again like you I had a lot of fun with data corruption prior to Power Pack 1, but I have definitely become a convert over the years and am even now enjoying the remote access features of my beloved WHS box- especially given all the amazing add-ons that are now available.

      The loss of DE will certainly be a significant hit to Microsoft’s market share in this sector; as with the corporate world they are again going from being pretty much the only player to just being one of many- and unfortunately WHS v2 just doesn’t stack up to its predecessor, never mind the competition. Having said that though, there are already add-ons in the works for WHS v2 to “bring back” DE so there is hope…

      Personally I’ll be sticking with WHS v1 for now. 🙂

      Regards,

      Ethan

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Thanks, Ethan. Yes, there’s still a lot to be said for WHS v1. Now that I’m adding media to my WHS 2011 box, I keep on having to worry about manually spreading and balancing stuff across five discs instead of just throwing it in to one big storage pool. I do rather miss DE. I may invest in one of the third party add-ins once they’ve been out and shaken about in the real world.

        Reply
        1. Jeremy Stevens Avatar
          Jeremy Stevens

          Geoff,

          I jsut got my WHS 2011 box up and running. Have you thought of just using the option of Spanning the volume? It creates a large pool of drives. I have 4 2TB drives, and one of the pools is 6 TB. Well, 5.5 TB….. Just thought I would throw it out there.
          Thanks for the article, well written indeed!

          Reply
          1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
            Geoff Coupe

            Jeremy, it’s a good point. I haven’t done this as yet. The problem, it seems to me, is that if any one drive fails (as inevitably, one day, it must), then the whole spanned volume is lost, and must be rebuilt. It’s true that I would still have all the data backed-up offsite, so it could be restored, so in that case I could restore the data.

            The thing about DE was that if any one drive failed, only the data on that drive would be lost and it would be much simpler to recover from. And for any folders that were duplicated onto other drives the data would still be preserved.

            Reply
    3. Shannon Avatar
      Shannon

      I would really like to be able to rotate internal drives as well. The closest option I have seen to that right now is setting up mirroring via the server manager’s storage manager. But I agree that is way beyond the scope of the target audience here…

      Reply
    4. Geoff Coupe Avatar
      Geoff Coupe

      Shannon, despite my problems with rotating external backup drives, I thought I’d try an ICY Dock with two 1TB drives being rotated. So far, this seems to be working. I haven’t yet had the 2155348020 error, and the drives have been rotated a couple of times. Early days yet, but perhaps it is now working.

      I’ve no idea why the USB-connected drives were causing problems…

      Reply
    5. Server Backups in Windows Home Server 2011 | Geoff Coupe's Blog

      […] Notice that it’s given me an error code 2155348020, and, as I’ve written before: […]

      Reply
    6. Matt Avatar
      Matt

      I don’t care about DE too much as never had a WHSv1 (well for about one week then I found I purchased something old and got WHS2011).

      Now this WHS2011 goes slow when it shouldn’t, the hardware is quite fast (using windows 7 it is fine to transfer files on the network) with WHS2011 it is useless…..

      I can’t seem to get past the first Server Backup at all, and client backups are of the same nature.
      The drive is all well connected and internal, the system even says both items where successful but overall it says it’s unsuccessful….

      Reply
    7. Matt Auckland (@mattauckland) Avatar
      Matt Auckland (@mattauckland)

      The biggest issue I’ve found with WHS 2011 so far, is remote desktop doesn’t seem to work outside of the LAN. In other words if I login in using IE to the web control panel, then attempt to access the servers remote desktop connection, it runs through the initial connection, but fails on some odd certificate issue, asking me to login to the web url of the WHS I just logged into. In effect putting me in a loop.

      Haven’t found a solution yet, but I’m trying.

      Reply
    8. john salazar Avatar
      john salazar

      Hi hasd anyone tried using the original WHS to do a full backup of 2011? I have about 6tb of data has anyone figured out how to do a full backup of that large a collection of files?

      Reply

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  • My Heart Bleeds…

    I see that Adele is complaining that she has to pay 50% Income Tax on her earnings of, apparently, £8 million for last year.

    I pay more tax (52%) on my earnings that, last year, amounted to less than 1% of her income. Somehow, if I were in her shoes, I think that I would be able to struggle by on an after-tax income of four million quid.

    Feet of clay, feet of clay…

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  • Favourite Does Not Necessarily Equal Best

    To celebrate the opening of an exhibition (Out of this World) at the British Library later this month, today’s Guardian has asked leading SF writers to pick their favourite novel or author in the genre. However, the Guardian’s sub-editors have given the piece the title: The stars of modern SF pick the best science fiction. That adjective “best” doesn’t quite ring true for me. I’m always wary of lists that claim to be a compilation of the “best”: best books, best films, best paintings and so on. “Personal favourites” is a much better description, and makes no claims for absolute rankings, which is, to my mind, quite impossible for art.

    I’m pleased to see that some of my own personal favourites appear in the list, and many more are popping up in the lots of comments from people adding their suggestions.

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  • The History of the User Interface

    Here’s a video of Bill Buxton talking about the history of (some of the) user interfaces in computing.

    http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/Show-Us-Your-Tech/Bill-Buxton-Shows-Us-His-Favorite-Tech/player?w=512&h=288

    An interview with a researcher who has passion and whose passion shines through to teach important lessons. And the basic lesson is that history is important. Those who forget their history are condemned to repeat it.

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  • Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” Bill

    The appalling David Bahati is still pushing on with his abhorrent piece of anti-gay legislation in the Ugandan parliament. It would seem that it is now reaching a crucial point. This travesty has been going on since 2009. Perhaps it’s always useful to have scapegoats ready in order to deflect the population from the real problems at hand.

    Update 14 May 2011: the current Ugandan parliament ran out of time to debate the bill, so it’s been shelved. Unfortunately, that probably means that Baharti will try and re-introduce it in the next parliament.

    2 responses to “Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” Bill”

    1. lilyandtom Avatar
      lilyandtom

      Hi Geoff,

      Lovely blog you got here. I stumbled upon your blog while i was browsing WLW album features on tecnogran’s blog (super awesome eh!).

      Can i ask, do you still use WLW? and if so, where are your pictures being saved? on the Sky Drive automatically when you “insert picture”? I just started on wordpress and not sure where the best way to store the pictures cos i find the wordpress media library quite messy!

      Thanks a lot and i hope you will reply!

      Reply
      1. Geoff Coupe Avatar
        Geoff Coupe

        Hi lilyandtom,

        Yes, I use WLW for my blog. All the images in my blog will be saved in WordPress’ Media Library. They get saved when I publish an entry. When we had Windows Live Spaces, then publishing to Spaces would automatically save the images to Sky Drive, but now that we’re using WordPress, the publishing process uses the WordPress Media Library instead. Same process, different destination…

        I rarely look at the Media Library directly – and then only to check that I’ve still got plenty of room.

        Cheers,

        Geoff

        Reply

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