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Freaking fantastic: Microsoft updates list of apps that can cause WHS data corruption

Feb. 22, 2008 Paul Thurrott | Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows

You know, it's been two long months since Microsoft revealed a data corruption bug in Windows Home Server. And while we don't have a fix yet for this very serious problem, the company this week updated its knowledge base article about the issue, adding a list of new applications that might also cause the error.

When you use certain programs to edit files on a home computer that uses Windows Home Server, the files may become corrupted when you save them to the home server. This issue occurs if the following conditions are true:

  • You edit files that are located in a shared folder on the home server.
  • You use one of the following programs to edit the files or to save the files to the home server: Windows Vista Photo Gallery, Windows Live Photo Gallery, Microsoft Office OneNote 2007, Microsoft Office OneNote 2003, Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Microsoft Money 2007, SyncToy 2.0 Beta, Intuit QuickBooks, and uTorrent. The following programs have been reported by customers as having caused corruptions. However, we have not yet been able to reproduce corruptions: Photoshop Elements, Zune Software, Apple iTunes, TagScanner, Mozilla Thunderbird, Adobe Lightroom, Intuit Quicken, MS Digital Image Library, MP3BookHelper, ACDSee, WinAmp, Windows Media Player 11, Microsoft Office Excel, and Visual DataFlex.

Meanwhile, there's no word at all on the Windows Home Server blog, which I find kind of odd. (There's some silliness about the WHS World Cup and a mock children's book about WHS, if you'd like to keep your mind off data corruption issues, however.) Come on guys, how about some transparency here? What the heck is going on?

Discuss this Article 7

daveinla
on Feb 22, 2008
That is really freaky as you say, when you think that thing is supposed to keep your data safe... Can't be more happy with my Linkstation NAS.
JuryDuty
on Feb 22, 2008
LOL the craziest thing about it is that half those products are Microsoft products--AND the kind EVERYONE uses EVERY DAY! Seriously, you'd think they would have made sure there'd be no serious bugs with those programs...
joe-dokes
on Feb 22, 2008
What JuryDuty said... Normally when a problem crops up in an MS product the apologists say things like. Hey MS has no control over hardware, or software on the freaking machine. Computers are just too darn complex. Yet, as it turns out a huge number of the programs that have corrupted are MS own or Mainstream Applications. WTF. I don't expect MS to test every possibility and every program but Zune Software? Photoshop? Microsoft Office? com'on Waethorn where the F are you? Stick up for MS? Please? I want to hear some ramblings about how this problem is being overblown and or the fault of the user, or hardware manufacturers. Regards Joe Dokes
Mum
on Feb 22, 2008
I've grown to not ever directly save anything over a server connection anyway, as files just do become corrupted every once in a while. This has always been the case whatever the windows server version, so why is it now some sort of news? I see it as a positive thing though; maybe now it'll be fixed for the first time ever. (No idea how well other servers work, haven't tried.)
Spidubic
on Feb 23, 2008
Crazy. And not good for something billed as a dumb box you throw in the closet and forget. I am using SyncToy 2.0 Beta to back up my Favorites but that is all. So you don't know whether your data is corrupt or not until you try to access it?
DRWAM
on Feb 23, 2008
Thank god Healthvault is not on the list. What is it you ask? Just look at healthvault.com, a free site and software by MS to keep you healthy. This is pretty much I was hoping was in our future over 12 yrs ago. [I also predicted having your medical images, data, records and reports on CD media, and of course we did it daily now] "Microsoft® HealthVaultTM is designed to put you in control of your health information. A free HealthVault account helps you collect, store and share information with family members and gives you a choice of applications and devices to help manage your fitness, diet and health"
Waethorn
on Feb 25, 2008
"com'on Waethorn where the F are you? Stick up for MS? Please? I want to hear some ramblings about how this problem is being overblown and or the fault of the user, or hardware manufacturers." god, what a flamebaiter.... According to Microsoft, this affects only certain configurations of Windows Home Server. I can tell you that custom-built WHS systems that I've shipped don't experience this problem. All of the them ship with Pentium Dual-Core processors with a full gig of RAM, too (almost all manufacturers are using the baseline requirements of a Celeron with 512MB of RAM). I've tested this several times over (and just recently since the update). I can't reproduce these problems at all with systems that I've built. I've even tried loading down the server side of things by running NTBackup and Defrag in the background while working with more complicated files off the server (even a SQL Express database file for Outlook 2007's BCM), and there just is no data corruption whatsoever. I'd say that the biggest problem is that Microsoft set the requirements too low for the new redundant file system that's used for the user data.

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