Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 Now Available

November 24, 2009 by 13 Comments

Yes, that’s right, Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 is now available.

If you have automatic updates enabled on your Windows Home Server you should shortly be receiving the update.

If you haven’t got them enabled, and why not, you can force a download by going and clicking on the Update Now button on the Settings, General tab.

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After you have restarted your Windows Home Server, you should see a message that your Windows Home Server Connector needs upgrading:

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You will know if you have Power Pack 3 as you will see the following under the Resources area (all saying 6.0.2423.0):

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If you are already running the Power Pack 3 beta, you need to uninstall this first. To do this, remote desktop to your Windows Home Server and then run the uninstall.cmd file wherever it was you put the PP3 beta files.

We have posted a number of articles of the last few months on Power Pack 3 – why not go and remind yourself all about it:

http://connecteddigitalworld.com/2009/10/05/installing-power-pack-3-on-windows-home-server-on-a-friday-night/

http://connecteddigitalworld.com/2009/10/19/windows-media-center-connector-and-recording-tv-to-windows-home-server-on-a-friday-night/

http://connecteddigitalworld.com/2009/07/17/microsoft-announce-windows-home-server-power-pack-3-beta/

And to remind yourself of all the new features of Power Pack 3:

Here are some details on what’s new:

Windows 7 Libraries integration

When you install the Windows Home Server Connector and log on a computer running Windows 7, you can access the Windows Home Server shared folders from the Windows 7 libraries.

Windows 7 Action Center backup warning suppression

After you install the Windows Home Server Connector to enable the home server backup for your computer running Windows 7, you can suppress the Action Center warning reminding you that Windows Backup has not been set up.

Windows 7 power settings

You can configure your computer running Windows 7 to wake up at a scheduled backup time and then go back to sleep after the backup finishes.

· Console support for Windows 7

Windows 7 is properly displayed as the operating system shown in the Computers & Backup tab.

Windows Search

Windows Search 4 is included to improve query search times, indexing times, and reliability. Extended Remote Discovery increases the efficiency of searching across all your libraries running Windows Search 4. Files encrypted with EFS are now supported.

TV archive

Windows Home Server can automatically archive recorded TV by moving your recordings from a Windows Media Center computer to your home server in the format of your choice. This enables playback in the correct format for your home computers and/or portable devices.

Console view

You can view information about your home server’s storage space, hard drives, backup status, and more from Windows Media Center.

Complete details are available in the Power Pack 3 Release Documentation.

Let us know what you think of Power Pack 3.

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About Andrew Edney

This post was written by who has written 3673 posts on Connected Digital World. I am the owner and editor of this site. I have been interested in gadgets and tech since I was little. I have also written a number of books on various tech subjects. And I am honoured to be a Microsoft MVP for Windows Home Server since January 2008.
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  • http://homeservershow.com Dave

    Installed and rebooting. I guess we have to go on to something else now that this is done! Resume normal life…

    • Andrew Edney

      I know, whatever will we talk about now? :-)

      Andrew

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  • John

    Hi Andrew-

    I'm a new WHC user who has just recently replaced a (dying) Bufalo LS I 250 NAS with HP's great EX495 WHS. Just getting started learning all of the wonderful things I can do with it, but for now it's already great as a reliable backup and centralized data storage repository. Now I just need to get my personal data management plan organized and structured to eliminate a bunch of redundant data across multiple client machines (my old backup philosophy…)

    My question is related to installing the WHS Connector SW on my sole (at the moment) client machine after yesterdays PP3 upgrade. Last night when I updated PP3 on the WHS, all went well. Installed, then rebooted properly. One item of note is that before installation, my client machine was showing a gray (no connection)status box in the system tray for the WHS connector and My Network Places showed my WHS, but when I clicked on it to expand the share locations it reported back with ~~ "Windows cannot access this network location." This has happened once or twice in the past few weeks and has always been resolved with a roboot. Any idea why this occurs?

    Regardless, even in this state, I could still click on the Console and access WHS. This status persisted after the PP3 update and WHS reboot. Since the connector wasn't showing a connection (still grayed out), I never got the system tray notice to update the connector software for my client. I couldn't reboot because my wife was in the middle of online holiday shopping, but wanted to leave her cart until morning to finish. I just figured I'd wait until she was done, reboot, and then update the connector SW. However, to my surprise this morning, we woke to a freshly booted machine, no online shopping cart (DOH!!!), and no notice to update the connector. Is it possible that my connector updated without my involvement after my scheduled backup last night and rebooted the client machine? How would I know if I have the right connector installed? I don't see version information anywhere in the client side. Also, in my Software Share on the WHS, all of the client install software files are dated 10/7/2009 (I think). I don't remember what it had been previously under PP2. Are these the updated client files — I'll need them when I add my other client machines to the WHS environment.

    Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

    John

    • Andrew Edney

      John

      I think there were some client patches that Microsoft released yesterday as well so it could be your machine rebooted at 3am because of those.

      Regarding the connector, the easiest thing to do is to uninstall the connector now and then just reinstall it. That way you can be sure you have the latest version.

      If the console show PP3 on the server you are good to go.

      Andrew

    • Shawn

      since you just bought the HP ex495 the best advice I can give is to contact HP tech support, it is very easy to reach them and they are always available, and have yet to not be able to answer all my questions regarding my HP ex485.

  • iohanr

    This morning I woke up and my WHS was dead. I looked into it and power-cycled and noticed that it said "Cannot read from system drive" or something similar. Basically, it wouldn't boot into WHS. Since I had to go to work, I haven't had time to troubleshoot properly and just turned the server off. I wonder if this is related to the Power Pack 3 automatic update? It is incredibly coincidental if my system drive decided to crash about the same time that the PP3 update was rolled out.

    Just wanted to know if there are any others out there that had the same issue. I have 10 hard drives connected to my WHS, hopefully no data has been lost.

    • Andrew Edney

      Iohanr

      I have not heard anyone else with the problem.

      What is more likely is that you had a hardware problem with the drive that become apparent because the WHS would have rebooted because of the PP3 update.

      Easiest thing to try is to pull the drive and plug it into a desktop computer and see if it powers up. If it doesnt or there are errors then you know its hardware related.

      Andrew

  • Adam

    I am not sure where to look to fix this. My tv is not getting archived and is failing. When i look at the program in the extras, it has a failure count and the show never gets past 0%. I assume it may be a permission issue? anyone have any ideas?

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