Hi -- New to the Home Server world here. This will be my first post.

I've just purchased my HP MediaSmart EX495 a couple of months ago. Been using it for media distribution/backups, etc. Really happy with the hardware, but not so much for HP's additional software...

Was wondering if anyone had successfully eliminated all HP specific software to get back to vanilla WHS on this machine? My motivation for doing so is the fact that I'm not using the HP media collector, firefly media server, twonky media server, or any of the HP specifics. Why in the heck does HP install two media servers in the first place? While you can disable these services from the comforts of the console, doing so does not disable the HpmssService. I find this service tends to eat a bit of CPU (not much, but around 2-3%)... and it seems to run constantly. It appears to be doing some stuff with WMI. This causes problems with the Windows Search 4.0 indexer, as it never gets a chance to run. As a work around, I disabled the indexer back-off through gpedit.msc. This allows the indexer to run even if it deems the system "busy" (Just try to add a shared folder to a Win7 library on a client machine when the indexer has no chance to index the shared folder).

But I thought maybe there is a better solution. There doesn't appear any way to do a server restore to just plain old vanilla WHS, but I thought maybe I could disable the HpmssService. When I disable HpMssService, of course then the console breaks. You get stack traces as a result of exceptions being thrown from the HP code as it is not able to connect to its service.

So... I did a little more digging. Turns out you can disable the HpmssService, then move some DLL files around in the c:\Program Files\Windows Home Server directory.

I ended up creating a new subdirectory c:\Program Files\Windows Home Server\Backup. I then moved the following files into that directory: HomeServerConsoleTab.HPConsoleTab.dll, HomeServerConsoleTab.HPSettings.dll, and HomeServerConsoleTab.HPTZO.dll to the Backup subdirectory. This makes it so the Home Server Console can't see the HP-specific DLLs. In addition, I modified the HomeServerConsole.exe.config file such that the line reading:
<add key="MediaSmart Server" value="1" />
reads:
<add key="MediaSmart Server" value="0" />

Not so sure on that one... but it just seemed to make sense. I think this line attempts to set focus to the Media Smart Server tab, or places it first or something like that. It could probably be removed altogether as well. At any rate, without the HP DLLs loaded, it is probably not even necessary.

So far, this technique seems to work. No more CPU hog that is HpmssService. And no more HP specifics in the Home Server Console... But I'll let it run for a while to see if there is any bad side-effects.

Any comments from those who know more about this stuff?

Thanks and congrats on the great website,

// Dean

The HPMSS service also performs enclosure management and the TZO DDNS agent, so as long as you aren't using a TZO domain name for remote access and don't care about the drive and health LEDs or monitoring your server's exhaust fans or temperatures, then disabling the service shouldn't hurt anything.

Basically by disabling all the HP features, the only value you're getting from the HP box vs a home-build is a fancy looking case and screwless drive trays.

_________________
Alex Kuretz
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Just an update on this...

Ended up having to move the HomeServerConsoleTab.TZO.dll to Backup as I was getting errors on this file. Could be that it is dependent on the others...

Also ended up moving HomeServerConsoleTab.TwonkyMediaServer.dll to Backup as I'm not using Twonky.

Side Note:
Some of you might be wondering what I am using for a media server. Since I'm a subscriber to Zune Pass, I needed a media server that could handle WM-DRM. The only server I know of is the one built into Win7 and the sharing service built into Windows Media Player 11. With minor tweaking of the install files for WMP11 it can be installed on Home Server (you basically extract the files out of the self-extracting EXE and run the install parts themselves, getting around the version check). Same thing goes for the Zune software. I've installed it on my Home Server as well, mostly just so my Home Server machine can be one of the 3-PCs authorized for my Zune account and all the licenses for subscribed music can be obtained...

Fun stuff...

// Dean

I figured I'd lose management of the LEDs and such. As an example, the third drive in my system is non-pooled and it now seems to be lit up as if it was in the storage pool. I wouldn't mind having the health lights work properly... it is too bad that 1) HP didn't make their software a bit more modular, and 2) the HP software, as written, interferes with normal Windows Home Server operation. Definitely they should have tested more fully. I won't even go into how out-of-the-box, HP updates got all out-of-sync where the latest patch (third one?) wouldn't install. I had to do a server restore a week after having it.

That said, I do like the HP case... The power supply is nice and quiet. And with the vovtech cable (mine should be arriving today) you can get yourself out of trouble in the case that something goes bad.

But if I had known all the troubles that come with the HP software, I would have thought twice about buying the HP product.

I do regret not looking more fully into doing my own build. Perhaps there are cases out there similar to the HP case with hot-plug SATA drawers, etc. Certainly if HP doesn't provide an upgrade path to WHS Vail, then I might be going home-build for my next one.

Definitely a bummer that you lose LED mgmt when you do this. Although when I initially stopped HPMssService I had solid lights, now when I do it (after a restart of the server), I get a blinking health LED... start HPMssService and the LED goes back solid.

I wonder what HPs response would be if I emailed them a bug report showing that their HpMssService wakes up and uses CPU so often such as to disable proper indexing by the Windows Search 4.0 Indexer... Probably goes into a giant black hole, but I guess I'll write them and see what happens...

I've not seen such behavior, what are you using to determine that Search Indexer isn't working?

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Alex Kuretz
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Well, the first sign was that when I tried to add a newly created shared folder on the WHS to one of a client machine's Win7 libraries, it wouldn't add because the folder wasn't indexed. Checked that it was indeed included for indexing, and in fact it was... Then RDP into the server and go to Control Panel -> Indexing Options and there it is "Indexing speed is reduced due to user activity." or "Indexer is waiting for the computer to be idle" (or some such... I may have the wording wrong). Hmmm... ok... maybe if I take a "coffee break" and come back later it will be finished. After all, there is only one client on at the time, with no burden on the server. Come back a bit later, and nope... search indexer is still crawling along trying to stay out of the way of "more important" things...

So... then I fire up Process Explorer from sysinternals.com and there HpmssService is... constantly waking up and appearing to trigger something on the WMI service. Not sure what it is doing, but it is definitely waking up very often... such that it tends to use 1-3% CPU pretty regularly. If I suspend it... right soon... the indexer kicks in.

I have pretty much every HP specific feature disabled, except automatic HP updates... No collector, no remote access (not really HP specific, except the HP console complains if you don't enable it), no twonky, no firefly, no media converter, no photo-publisher whatever, etc. At this point, I'm not sure what in the heck the HpmssService could be so busy with...

The WMI querying is for the System Status tab in the Server Console, where they get the network, cpu, and memory load metrics.

I'll humbly suggest that your experience is not the common one, there are many users who do not experience the problem you describe, here's my EX495 that has been running for about 6 months now. It's got 5TB of storage with about 1TB free, and duplication enabled on everything. I've got all the HP features enabled. I'm happy to help you troubleshoot if you'd like. My first question would be around the hardware in your server, any connected USB or eSATA devices, and any add-ins you may have installed.

_________________
Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
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It is good to know that what I'm seeing is not normal -- gives me hope I can eliminate it. I will do some more investigation and see what I can come up with.

Hardware:
- original 1.5TB Seagate system drive
- added Western Digital 1.5TB AV-GP WD15EVDS
- added Western Digital 1.5TB Caviar Black WD1501FASS
(both drives are in the SATA bays)

No USB devices.

Add-ons:
- WHS BDBB
- Tentacle's Disk Mgmt (saw this one popping in the task list every so often... so I uninstalled it)

Looking at it here, it could be that there is some interaction between the WMPNetworkSvc (wmpnetwk.exe) and HpMssService. They seem to wake up together.

I will see if WMPNetworkSvc ever calms down. Looking at the handles in Process Explorer, it appears to be scanning files in d:\shares\Music. Guess I'll look at it in the morning.

Is the lack of the search indexer being able to index your primary concern, or is there just a general dissatisfaction with the server spending CPU cycles doing stuff you aren't sure about?

_________________
Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
Have you tried our Add-Ins?

The main issue was that I had to enable the "disable indexer back-off" option such that the indexer always runs full speed regardless of how busy the server is, because if I didn't it would take forever to have the index up-to-date. In fact, during this same time, I did a couple of searches of the server files from my laptop and clearly it was showing bad data (files that once were present, but since deleted, showing up in the search results... and the opposite... files that had since been created, not showing up in search results). The situation where it really bugged me was where I couldn't add a shared folder just created on the server to a Win7 library (on the client) because it wasn't indexed (and, of course the folder was empty so there wasn't much of anything to index). In the future, I see that I might be able to right-click on the search-indexer tray icon (via RDP) and choose "Index Now" option as a way to kick the indexer in the pants and make it start working.

But sure, there is also the general problem of the server being busy doing stuff you can't explain.

At any rate, I've got more information... After I let wmpnetwk.exe calm down (overnight), hpmssservice.exe also calmed down. It now wakes up only every 30s or so and does some I/O to \Device\MQAC (not sure what that is... message queue related?). That I/O blip usually uses less than 1% CPU as measured by taskmgr.exe or procexp.exe.

I guess that is acceptable and is probably expected (I gather it is checking health info, updating LEDs and such). Is that about what you see for HpMssService resource usage when idle?

Follow the link to my skydrive photos for a screen capture showing the regular heartbeat of HpmssService when the system is in a calm state:

http://cid-e9cc6427eb3090ad.skydrive.li ... rtbeat.jpg

The big spike is about 27s apart. As you can see there are some smaller IO surges that occur about twice as often... those don't usually impact the CPU enough to be measured. This situation is obviously much better than were HpMssService is waking up multiple times per second.

One other thing I noticed during this investigation is that the HomeServerConsole.exe process is left running when you use the tray icon on the client to get to it. This can be good and bad... Good in that when you come back to it, you might return right where you left off. Bad in that whatever you leave running there is still running after you go... I think from now on, I'll generally opt for using remote desktop, such that I can shutdown the console before I leave for good. It seems that when I do admin tasks on the server, I almost always need to go somewhere that the console won't take me anyway...

I will probably go back to enabling the rest of the HP console DLLs... maybe... the console sure does start up a lot faster without the HP specific DLLs...

Thanks for your help,

// Dean

edit: Attached the file just in case the link to skydrive doesn't work...

The Console is an RDP application, as you've observed it stays running on the server when you close it on the clients.

I'm glad to hear that things are settling down with your server. I've not monitored IO like that but it seems pretty benign from the graphs. I did do a writeup of the monitoring I perform on my server, you may find it interesting.
http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2010/03 ... ith-munin/

_________________
Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
Have you tried our Add-Ins?

That's pretty cool... Makes me almost want to allocate a machine to run Linux.
But it's not like I have the time to learn Linux...

Too bad there is no Windows master...