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Page History: Troubleshooting My Movies for Windows Home Server

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Page Revision: 2009/06/07 12:49


Problem uninstalling

When the Windows Home Server console install or uninstalls an add-in, it looks for the installers exit code to determine if it was uninstalled or not, but in some situations, an installer may have installed or uninstall, but sends a different exit code than what the console expects, such as in situations where files are locked and requires a reboot or similar. This causes the console to be confused, and therefore list add-ins as installed, even though they are not.

Because of this, if you get a message such as "Uninstall failed", this may likely be because the program is already uninstalled, but the console is unaware of that. To correct this issue, use Remote Desktop to connect to your Windows Home Server, log in with your primary administrative user, and open the Control Panel - from the Add/Remove programs section, check if "My Movies for Windows Home Server" is listed - if it is, uninstall it from this area.

After uninstalling, or if "My Movies for Windows Home Server" was not listed in Add/Remove programs, you must edit the registry to remove the My Movies entry from the list of installed add-ins, which is the one causing the console to see the add-in as installed. Still being connected to the home server from Remote Desktop, in the start menu's run area, type "regedit", and locate the key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Home Server\RegisteredAdditions" - delete the subkey "{7f264f08-78fa-484e-aac8-4a6ea7ece7d1}", which contains My Movies.

You can now re-open the home server console to confirm that the program is no longer listed as installed. If you were trying to upgrade to a newer version of My Movies for Windows Home Server, you should now be able to install the new version.

Problem copying Blu-ray titles

If you find that DVD's copy as expected, but Blu-ray or HD DVD's is not detected when inserting, there is very likely an issue with the UDF 2.5 file system driver that My Movies for Windows Home Server ships with.

Since Windows Home Server unlike Windows Vista does not native support the UDF 2.5 file system, an UDF 2.5 file system driver is shipped with My Movies to read Blu-ray and HD DVD's, however in some situations on some machines, this driver at some point have stopped working.

To confirm if this is the issue you have, use Remote Desktop to connect to your Windows Home Server, and open "My Computer". Insert a Blu-ray disc into your Blu-ray drive and see if the disc becomes available in the drive within one minute. If the disc does not become available, and the drive keeps spinning like it is trying to read the disc, you very likely have this issue.

The solution is delete the two files "C:\WINDOWS\inf\thdudf.inf" and "C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\thdudf.sys", and reboot your Windows Home Server. After that, uninstall My Movies from the home server console, and reinstall it. Reboot your home server again, and if the UDF driver was the cause of the problem, you should now be able to see a Blu-ray disc in "My Computer" after inserting it into the drive.

Copying is slow on USB attached external drive

If you do not get the expected speeds when copying a disc, there can be various reasons. In rare situations, devices connected to Windows Home Servers USB ports reverts to USB 1.1, and using USB 1.1 the copy speeds are very, very slow.

To determine if this is the issue you are having, first make sure that you get slow speeds on any disc that you copy - recommendation is to try three discs to ensure that it is not due to scratches or similar on a single disc.

Secondly, notice the speeds - a DVD will if the USB is reverted to USB 1.1 take more than an hour, and Blu-ray discs will take more than three hours. If your copy speeds are less than this, the USB 1.1 issue is not the reason.

Having determined if the USB 1.1 issue is the possible cause of your problems, disconnect all your USB devices from the system. Use "Remote Desktop Connection" to connect to your Windows Home Server. In the Control Panel, choose "System", choose the "Hardware" tab, and click the "Device Manager" button. In the bottom of the hardware list, expand the "Universal Serial Bus Controllers", and right click each item, and choose "Uninstall". Having uninstalled ALL the items in this list, reboot your Windows Home Server.

After the reboot, re-connect your USB devices and try copying a disc again. If your issue was caused by a USB 1.1 connection your copy speed should now increase dramatically.