Windows Home Server February Update – More Backup Fixes

By on February 24, 2009 in Windows Home Server, Windows Media Center

Microsoft today released an update for Windows Home Server, KB961030 which includes fixes to the platform’s backup and restore features, as well as improvements to how the Windows Home Server Connector is updated.

  • If the Home Server Connector shared software folder had been improperly modified or deleted then the user may have encountered problems on their home computers after an update was applied to their home server.
  • This update improves the process by which the Windows Home Server Connector Software gets updated, by repairing and replacing the Microsoft provided files in the Home Server Connector Software folder with the ones shipped by Microsoft BUT not those that are shipped by a hardware manufacturer from whom a user may have purchased their home server.
  • When restoring files and folders from a Home Computer Backup certain issues could occur. This update provides new functionality to help alleviate the Home Computer Backup process stalling when reaching 79% to 81% complete. Windows Home Server, such as the opening of a Home Computer Backup stalling at 79% to 81% complete.
  • Before running this update some users reported being unable to open a home computer backup from the Windows Home Server Console after running the backup database repair process. This update also allows the home computer backups to be opened whether the home computer backup database repair wizard has been run or not.

The update should be available on your home server in the next few hours via Windows Update,

Source: MSWHS.com


Enjoyed this post? Share it.

If you enjoyed reading this post, then why not share it with your friends and followers?

About Terry Walsh

Terry Walsh is the founding editor and owner of We Got Served. Since February 2007, the site has provided detailed coverage and analysis of the emerging home server category, and has subsequently grown into a trusted outlet for digital home news and reviews.
View all posts by Terry Walsh →

Sign Up for WGS Daily News

If you don't want to miss out on the latest news from We Got Served, why not subscribe to our daily digest? You'll get the day's headlines and a short summary of each news item delivered straight to your inbox each morning.

, , , ,

  • ViRGE

    It’s a bit late for Patch Tuesday, but I’ll take it.

  • Bastiaan

    Still no fix for the duplicte file errors? How is that possible?
    First year waiting for file corruption, second year waiting for file duplication errors? Backups make no sense when my originals gets damaged!

  • Dougie Fresh

    Too bad the update happened right in the middle of a batch update of all the ID tags inside my MP3 files in my shared music folder! D’oh!

  • Creeper

    Windows update applied this to my EX470, wanted me to shut down, not reboot. Guess what – no post boot. According to HP the BIOS recovery is corrupt, and I can try and reload the OS, but they don;t support it in cases like this. Their suggestion – send the server for us and we will fix it for a charge. Time to build a new home brew server and scrap the HP.

  • Sam

    I applied the patch to my whs tonight, which caused the connector software to automatically be updated on my XP and Vista Ultimate boxes. I was looking forward to getting past the 81% problem and finally retrieving files from my backups that I’ve saved just hoping this problem would be fixed. Reboots all around, just to make sure everyone was fresh and ready. Launched the console, selected the backup, got to 81% stopped and popped up the cannot connect to the backup service, just like it’s been doing. Both machines XP and Vista behaved exactly the same. Problem is NOT FIXED.

  • Shadowjack

    Same as Sam above.. Problem is NOT FIXED! The frustration level is going thru the roof. I’ve been trying to get into my backups since January. WHS is sold as a backup solution, but in your forums all the commentary leads to the idea that you’re a fool not to have a plan B backup solution because this product cannot be counted on. Give me a break here. Like somebody posted, “If you bought a car, and then they told you that they’re still working the bugs out of the airbag and brakes, how happy would you BE?” WE’RE still doing beta testing on a product that we paid good money for. Like somebody else said,”This is a deal-breaker.”

  • laterdaze

    @Shadowjack – I have also been waiting for the 81% problem fix and now must report that this latest update didn’t resolve it. I have four systems of various flavors and all fail at 81% as described in previous posts. Anyone who has valuable files backed up on a WHS must attempt to open the backups. You may think you’re covered when indeed your not! For warned is for armed. The kids at MS may figure this out eventually but I’m not sure I can wait…

  • http://www.wegotserved.co.uk Terry Walsh

    Guys

    Make sure you head on over to http://connect.microsoft.com/windowshomeserver and file bugs on this – we’ve got to get this nailed, and the only way we can help with this is with decent data from your machines….

    Cheers
    Terry

  • Pingback: The Home Server Show 36 - Before you Build Follow Up

  • Aircooled

    This is a joke! promised secure backups in the marketing, and we sure do get secure backups, As I am unable to get to them, If I can’t then no-one else can? I have had three units, HP are a joke too, customer service is awfull, talk to you as if you are an idiot them pass you onto some outside contractor who send you back to Hp. After three Units the “WHS” is still not working correctly and still under warranty, BTW. if you need to send back under warranty you do not get a new replacement but a refurbished unit “condition of the warranty” if you are a solicitor and care to read the warranty after you have unpacked and installed the product. I’m off over to Apple and buy products and acessories that work, rite out of the box, no tweaking, no sitting up for hours on telephone on premium rates. Get it sorted Microsoft and HP!
    Cheers all

  • DSJonz

    I’m unhappy to hear users still have the 81% problem, and I don’t blame them for considering ditching the WHS platform because of it. I encountered the 81% problem with my homebuilt WHS v1.0 box, and it fortunately was easily resolved by uninstalling and reinstalling the Connector on the client PC in question. However, I would have abandoned WHS if the 81% problem persisted. The WHS backup feature is overwhelmingly important to me.

    I’ve since moved on to WHS Power Pack 1, but I have not encountered the 81% problem again on my mixed XP & Vista network. I did have a persistent Connector update issue that was resolved when I reinstalled WHS over the previous install, and later I suffered an instance of data corruption because I stupidly “upgraded” with some bad DRAM — but no more 81% problem.

    One important difference between my WHS setup today and my original WHS setup: Today, I run WHS without *any* add-ons whatsoever. Eliminating multiple WHS add-ons also seemed to eliminate mysterious WHS problems. Further, I found the most effective way to fix WHS and Connector issues was simply reinstalling the entire WHS OS and client PC connectors. A WHS reinstall is limited to the boot & OS partition, and does *not* affect the data partitions or data integrity. Seems that WHS rewards a fresh install and Power Pack 1 update, instead of trying to fix it “piecemeal” with incremental fixes and patches.

  • Marko

    09/09 – I have this same problem and cannot seem to resolve it. All the articles I have found date to back to the beginning of the year so it seems that I am the only one with this problem. I am running XP SP3 on the my PC and WHS SP2 on the server. So I thought that I would be up to date. I have tried just about everything. Can anyone help me with this?

  • http://annarborcomputerservice.info Ann PC

    Saw this during my Thursday night web searches. Amazing what stuff you can find doing a search XP repair ideas.
    Kind of caught me off guard.

    Thanks for posting.

  • Paul Moorhead

    You're not alone. I have this problem on every PC across a mix of XP, Vista and Windows 7 machines, which is a terrifying thought given I've been relying on WHS for almost two years now. I've installed the latest beta which is claimed to fix many of the causes of the 81% failure, but it hasn't made any difference. If I can't find a fix for this in a few days I'm going to have to abandon WHS and sadly, having been recommending it to people for a long time, I'll have to reverse my position and advise people not to trust it.
    Current symptoms – take any machine which has been on the network for more than a couple of months and backed up nightly – no matter which machine I try to open the backup on (XP, Vista or 7) it fails @ 81%. The only machine whose backups can be opened is a couple of weeks old. Feels like the problem is in the backups themselves i.e. the database has somehow become corrupted for the older machines.

  • WHS Frustrated

    I am tempted to try the WHS reinstall, assuming the data will still be there but I am not sure how to go about doing this. Can you recommend the simplest way to figure this out?

    Luckily I was also using Carbonite as my Level1 backup, however the file restore process is slow for large database files… Its worth the insurance in my mind.

  • David

    This worked for me;
    Repair backupdatabase
    clean database
    open a backup from a XP machine, NOT a windows 7 machine

    The problem for me was the windows 7 machine in my network, it did "something" to the database. Hope this will at least help someone :)

  • NickGebbett

    I have had WHS since it came out and it has saved my bacon several times.
    However, I now have some WIn7 machines and I can't open any backup past 1% – but these backups do open fine in Windows XP – so there is clearly a problem with Win7 and WHS – which may be fixed by powerpack 3 – who wants to risk finding out though!