In my efforts to get my company’s demo rooms up and running with the solutions we offer to our customers, I have been faced with numerous Windows errors and issues.  The one I have been faced with today was an error message stating “The system administrator has set policies to prevent this installation.”  However, I am the administrator and I haven’t set any policies on this machine yet! Read more…

I don’t understand why things just can’t seem to work seamlessly.  Especially when you are talking about Microsoft Products.  You would think that one Microsoft product would work without issue with another, and you would think that you are pretty much guaranteed that this would be the case when the Microsoft Product in question is installed through Windows Update.  Enough of the babbling and on to the point… When installing updates for Windows Server 2003, I was pimp slapped with another error “The Requested Lookup Key Was Not Found In Any Active Activation Context”.  Read more…

It was a dark and stormy night, May 5th; it was intense, my dog was hiding in the bathtub, the wind was blowing like a child with a new kazoo, the rain was coming down in sheets (11 x 17), and my PC was left to fend for itself.  Suddenly, the ground shook and my home felt epileptic.  The phone rings, the same quake is hitting China, the U.K, Japan, Canada… this is a worldwide earthquake? This wasn’t a typical earthquake, this was a digital earthquake; at least that’s how Matousec.com describes it.  They named it KHOBE! Read more…

There has been great anticipation for Verizon Wireless customers to have an iPhone competitor in their pocket.  With the release of DROID, they will have a new love for WHS as well.  The DROID phone runs Google’s Android OS and with the new release of SubSonic, they now have an app that can stream music to your phone… for free.  Still waiting on iPhone support. Read more…

In my efforts to keep my production server separate from these articles I write here on C.O.D., I have implemented a test server.  With that said, this box is my playpen.  During the initial configuration, I was prompted with a mysterious error while trying to configure the box for remote access. The error comes in a dialogue box and displays the confusing error: Windows Home Server Could Not Find an Installed Website Gateway Provider. Read more…

I have been playing with my home server for more than a year now and I have always just dealt with the slow transfer speeds to and from my server, until now.  I have a gigabit switch (Linksys EG005W) and I am running Cat6 to all my machines that host gigabit adapters. With that said, I would consistently only get 20-30 % throughput on my network.  Now I get 40-50% throughput and sustain transfer speeds of around 60+MB/s by simply enabling Jumbo Frames! Read more…

I am always looking for new and better ways to do things with my Windows Home Server.  Lately, it has been pretty stale… finding new things that is.  Then, when not looking for something, I found something; Sockso Music Server. Read more…

I have been looking for a way to stream music from my Windows Home Server without using some intermediary service for some time now.  Most of the applications require some third party service to stream your media, that is, until I stumbled upon Subsonic.

Subsonic promises to deliver the solution to streaming my music without using any third party service and claims to be an easy to install solution. Read more…

Most of us have heard about Comcast’s new bandwidth restrictions.  Comcast has set a hard limit, finally, to their bandwidth usage for customers at a static 250GB per month.  These are limits that were previously not in place and there is an easy way to keep an eye on your usage. Read more…

There are more uses for your WHS then you can shake a stick at; whatever that may mean.  The latest endeavor is using your Windows Home Server as an Internet Proxy.  I personally use my Windows Home Server as a proxy to be able to view sites that my company blocks access to.  Setting up a proxy can also allow you to control web content served in your home.  If you have a child, you can block sites or even keywords to keep pages from being served. Read more…