I’ve had the home server for about a month. It was extremely easy to setup, in my opinion. I think I might have done one thing differently during setup and that would be to skip updating the software via Windows Update until after all of my PC’s were working.
Here’s the reason why. My main PC is my XP Media Center 2005. It is a desktop and records all of my TV shows, etc. I set this PC up with the software that comes with the server right away. Did all the updates before using it. No hitches, no errors. Went smoothly and got my first backup that night.
The server was fairly easy to work with. I am a computer guy and don’t consider myself a typical user but there didn’t seem to be anything that technical about the setup and use. Advanced features such as remote desktop worked easily and right away.
The problem occurred when I went to backup my wife’s Vista Premium laptop a couple days after setting up the desktop. I installed the laptop from the CD and updated it with Windows Update. No matter what I have done since, including turning off the firewall, reinstalling the connector and anything that could be related to Home Server, did nothing to fix the issue. I contacted support and got frustrated that they told me to do all of the things that I already have done. I have a XP Home machine and it is working fine. I’ve got all the functionality I wanted out of it in regards to my XP machines but little in regards to the Vista machine.
I haven’t given up on getting the Vista laptop to work but I haven’t had that much time and I’m irritated. It feels like a MS error, either with Vista or with WHS but either way I wonder whether or not it would have worked before I did updates to the WHS while I was setting it up.