Windows Home Server

[Steve]

You can, Steve, but for some reason it didn't want to work on mine as I'd tried that first, but booting from and running the recovery cd it couldn't find my Server and trying to find it using the manual option came up with the infamous "unknown Network error". 

Possibly an issue with the driver for the NIC on the restore CD, did you try the "oem"  NIC xp\vista driver via a usb stick?

[Ray]

Possibly an issue with the driver for the NIC on the restore CD, did you try the "oem"  NIC xp\vista driver via a usb stick?

Yes that's what I was thinking, Steve, I'm going to try it again later today and if the same happens I'll try loading the Nic drivers from a usb stick and see if that cures it.

[Steve]

There is an updated version of the WHS Home computer restore CD here

[Ray]

There is an updated version of the WHS Home computer restore CD here

Thanks, Steve, that's the version I'm using, I had the problem with the cd that comes with WHS but since I upgraded to the new version I hadn't had any issues with it until yesterday.

[Ray]

My test restore on my main PC didn't work when I tried it even after loading all my XP drivers on to a USB stick and allowing the recovery CD programme to scan for drivers I was still getting the can't find server and a network error has occurred message.

Well after several hours of investigation and much pulling out of hair I've discovered that the problem seems to be with the recovery software and the NIC embedded on the MB (Realtek RTL8168 PCIE Gigabit Ethernet NIC) looking at WGS forum others are having the same problem with this NIC.

I have however solved the problem by installing a spare Netgear Gigabit PCI NIC card from another PC the restore works fine with this card and finds and logs on to the WHS with no problem, strangely if the recovery scan is to be believed this card appears to use a Realtek chip as well but is an RTL8169 PCI chip. I'm now heaving a huge sigh of relief that I can restore this PC, had no problem with my spare PC or Laptop they seem to use Marvel Yukon and Broadcom NICs. 

[Simon]

Well done, Ray! 

[Ray]

Well done, Ray! 

Simon.

[Steve]

Glad you solved it Ray. I have read of similar problems with Realtek NIC (netbooks) obviously it doesn't like the 8168 version. I wonder did you try vista drivers (if their different?)as the recovery CD uses WinPE 2 which I believe is vista related.

http://forum.wegotserved.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=1916 Post #11 (Had to laugh at the name and picture)

[Ray]

Glad you solved it Ray. I have read of similar problems with Realtek NIC (netbooks) obviously it doesn't like the 8168 version. I wonder did you try vista drivers (if their different?)as the recovery CD uses WinPE 2 which I believe is vista related.

Yes, Steve I did try the Vista drivers without success though.

http://forum.wegotserved.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=1916 Post #11 (Had to laugh at the name and picture)

[Inactive]

http://forum.wegotserved.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=1916 Post #11 (Had to laugh at the name and picture)

Send her a Bill.

[Ray]

Send her a Bill.

I thought she'd already had one, In. 

[Inactive]

 

[Rik]

Well after several hours of investigation and much pulling out of hair

Showoff.

[Steve]

Poor dog you mean!

[Rik]

 

I only have a beard to pull out, Steve.

[Ray]

Showoff.

It's going slowly, Rik, my forehead is getting wider by the month. 

[Rik]

Meantime, we spend ages trimming our nasal hair.

[Simon]

...and ears.   

[Inactive]

....and eyebrows.

[Rik]

Oh yes... Now we finally know why people sell 'hygienic nasal hair trimmers'.

[Steve]

Useful addition to WHS is to run uTorrent as a service with web access enabled. Excellent guide here. Might as well use this machine to do some work whilst it's idle. Managed to get it to work as per instructions.

Obviously with web access enabled for uTorrent you can access it anywhere.

[Sebby]

Excellent idea, Steve.

[Steve]

Another goodie from wegotserved. If using a Vista PC is to create a small restore partition with all relevant drivers and a copy of the WHS restore cd. I presume it should hasten the restore process as your not waiting for the cd to load the software into memory.

It uses a bootloader called EasyBCD has anyone any experience of it's use?

[Steve]

If you not seen it there is a new version of the toolkit here (32bit)

[Ray]

If you not seen it there is a new version of the toolkit here (32bit)

Thanks, Steve, I hadn't seen that, now updated.