The WHS Journey Begins......

drcdean · **16th September 2007, 12:53 PM**

I have been wanting to get started on a new Vista Media Centre build (currently running MCE on an off the shelf HP) but due to lack of apealing HTPC cases on offer at the moment (waiting for the OrigenAE S range) I thought I would start with my WHS build. I am in no way a computer expert and decided the best way to learn was "jump in". I did a bit of research on the internet including these forums which I find invaluable and went and purchased the following hardware

Thermaltake Eureka Server Case
Silverstone Strider 560 watt power supply
MSI K9 plaatinum AM2 board
AMD dual core X2 5200 CPU
XpertVision 7200 GS VIdeo
2x Samsung 500GB drives
Pioneer DVR 112 DVD
2 x 1gig DDR2 Ram

Maybe a little heavy in some areas for Home Server according to some opinions but who knows where WHS will go and for the sake of a few extra dollars thought it was worth it. The install went without a hitch which pleasantly surprised me. The only issue I had was the driver for the LAN connections. I tried to load up the MSI CD and got an error that the operating system was not recognised. So I ended up leaving the CD in the drive and manually found them through the device manager....working perfectly now.

The set up on the home PC's was very simple and within a few hours had backed up 3 PC's with no problems. I ended up buying a Belkin N1 wireless router/modem which has sped up the wireless connections significantly. Again installed and set up with great ease.

My challenge now is to point all my picture, music and video folders directly to the server where everything will be stored. I thought I would start with my pictures and have still not found a simple solution (I am sure there is one). I have downloaded MCE customiser, TweakMCE and have not found a setting to change the my pictures folder destination. I was able to add the server shared photo file to my pictures in MCE and access them but I really want my pictures folder to point directly to the shared server folder rather than having to go to my pictures and then server photos (I hope this makes sense). I would appreciate some feedback on the best way to achieve this (in laymans terms please). Once I have this sorted I will then tackle my music and TV recordings etc.

Thanks

Dean

Lester_Burnham · **17th September 2007, 09:51 AM**

Hi,

If you right click on your My Pictures folder, look under the tabs and you should find change location or something like that.

One warning though. If your server is off or not connectable, when you start Vista it will throw up errors to do with recycle bins. You might just be better off mapping the drive to Z: or something like that and adding the folders inside Media Centre.

Lester

drcdean · **17th September 2007, 02:35 PM**

Hey Lester

Thanks for your reply.

I cannot find any options in the folder properties to change location (I am running MCE not Vista).

This drive mapping thing is something I have no idea about. Could someone explain to me in a bit more detail or point me in a direction to get my head around it.

Thanks

Dean

Lester_Burnham · **17th September 2007, 03:30 PM**

Hi,

Sorry about the Vista references, I was taking it for granted most people these days were moving in that direction.

From what I remember, If you open Windows Explorer and right click on My Documents at the top, you should see a target tab at the top and the path further down. I'm on XP Pro at the moment and it doesn't seem like you can change the path of My Pictures or My Music the same way.

I don't think I'd want to create a My Documents structure on your server, as when you add or change other peoples location to the same area, it asks to move files over. So I'd be cautious about overwriting what's already there. As I said earlier, I'd just map a drive as I'll show you below.

Do you have the shared folders from Windows connector software on the desktop. Can you right click on it and Map Network Drive? If not.

Open Windows Explorer and go to the bottom and select My Network Places, right click on it and explore, then workgroup (or whatever your workgroup is called). You should see the shares here under the server name (WHS computer name). Right click on shares or each folder if you wish and select Map Network Drive, then select a drive letter (it will normally be Z: and work back up the alphabet from there) and make sure re-connect on login or whatever is ticked.

As long as you have your pictures etc. backed up, you can play and see what happens. I'm sure you could change the path of My Videos & My Music with Tweak XP or in the registry, which is all Tweak XP does anyway really.

Lester

EDIT: Link for TweakUI and where to find My Pictures etc.

drcdean · **18th September 2007, 12:37 PM**

Just to update....

I downloaded TweakUI as suggested. I started trying to change the destination for "Shared Pictures" in MCE as that is where my media centre pictures appear. After no luck with that I changed the destination of "my pictures" and success. Now when i go to my pictures in media centre it goes straight to my server photos folder. Thanks for your imput Lester.

hmm....might tackle my music tonight