Windows Home Server is Borking Files
Microsoft’s flagship server product for home and small business users is currently troubled by a file corruption bug.
Redmond has issued a warning to users of Windows Home Server, telling them not to edit certain types of files stored on their WHS machines. According to a blog post on the Windows Home Server team’s blog, users are reporting data corruption when saving files to shared folders on the machines.
Microsoft says its actively working through the holidays to deliver a fix, but there’s no expected release date yet. For now, we have a knowledge base article.
So far, the problem appears to be limited to files saved using Windows Vista Photo Gallery, Windows Live Photo Gallery, Microsoft Office OneNote 2007, Microsoft Office OneNote 2003, Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Microsoft Money 2007 and SyncToy 2.0 Beta. When a user saves a file to the Home Server using one of these programs, the files may become corrupted.
Some of those are obscure applications, but data corruption in Outlook, Microsoft Money and Windows Vista Photo Gallery could seriously ruin a few peoples’ holiday weekends. Also, that list is just the software Microsoft has been able to reproduce the bug on. The team is also experimenting with torrents, Quicken and QuickBook files, which users have also reported problems with.
Windows Home Server, a file server installation aimed at consumers, was introduced at the beginning of 2007 and began shipping on OEM machines this fall. It makes it easy for users with several Windows PCs in their home to share data like photos, music, movies and other digital assets. The software — usually sold on "headless" boxes and simply connected to a LAN as a shared hard drive — has received largely favorable reviews for performance and ease of use.
