Hands on: Create your own Windows Home Server

This was a lot newer than the first one, so the software loaded fine on the second PC and I soon had what looked like a working Home Server. On closer inspection, however, I found that the installer hadn’t been able to identify the network adapter, so I couldn’t connect to the Lan (a real problem on a server). Neither could the PC work out what video card was being used, so it was using a default. Nor could it identify the soundcard, although that wasn’t so important.

Fortunately, these problems were very easy to fix. The PC was a Dell Dimension, so I visited the Dell website, tapped in the service tag and there were all the drivers waiting to be downloaded. They all worked, even though they were for a desktop PC running Windows XP, not a Windows 2003 Server.

On others I might not have been so lucky and could have spent fruitless hours chasing non-existent software. That’s definitely something worth bearing in mind if you’re interested in Home Server. Indeed, if driver hunting doesn’t appeal to you, you’ll be much better off going for a ready-made server.

So let me in
My PC had its own monitor, keyboard and mouse, but Home Server is really designed to run ‘headless’, with no local user interface and with everything managed remotely. You can manage it from a local console, but a stark message is displayed warning what can happen if you stray outside the user-friendly management console.

Therefore the next step was to configure a client PC with the custom connector needed to both fully use the Home Server and run the console. That meant running the setup program from the client installation CD, although the connector software is also to be found on the server, in network shares that can be browsed in the conventional manner, even without the client software installed.

A minimum of Windows XP with SP2 is required here ­ Home, Professional, Media Center or Tablet editions. You can also install the connect software on any of the Vista releases, apart from 64-bit versions, for which you need the Power Pack 1 update. Still in beta at the time of writing, I’ll look at what that has to offer in a future Hands On.

In my case, I chose a virtual PC running XP Pro, the installation taking just a couple of minutes and leaving me with a desktop shortcut to the server’s shared folders, plus a Home Server tray icon containing links to a number of tools, including the management console.

A number of tasks need to be performed here, one of the most important being to configure user accounts and passwords. For seamless operation, these should match the credentials used to log on to the client PCs, otherwise you’ll be asked to log on again every time you try to access a server share.