Jing is a free screen capture utility put out by the makers of Snagit. I’m a big fan of Snagit and it’s feature rich screen capture capabilities. Jing is like it’s little brother, it doesn’t have all the features and power of Snagit, but I think it more than makes up for it in ease of use and the ability to upload and share your content directly to FTP site,  Flicker, YouTube and Screencast.com (Screencast.com is TechSmiths own content management system) as well as a local folder or network drive.

One cool feature of Jing is the so called Sun Launcher that resides on the edge of your desktop.

When you hover over the Sun Launcher it expands and presents you with the option to capture a screen image.

Jing also allows basic annotes features such as text box, arrow, highlight, or rectangle.

Here is a tip that may seem obvious but I just haven’t fully appreciated until recently. Do you want more screen real estate, why not hide your windows taskbar. If you’re like me and have increased your taskbar double fold then hiding it  adds about an inch more to your screen real estate after it’s hidden. Now It really feels like I have a 19 inch monitor Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Here’s how to turn on the Auto-hide option:

 1. Right-click on the taskbar and select “Properties” from the context menu. The “Taskbar and Start menu Properties” window should open.
 2. With the “Taskbar” tab open, put a check in the box labeled “Auto-hide the taskbar”.
 3. Also make sure there is a check in the box labeled “Keep the taskbar on top of other windows”.
 4. Click “OK” to save the changes and exit the properties window.

The Taskbar should now disappear. To make the taskbar visible, simply move your mouse cursor right to the bottom of the screen.

1. Right click on your desktop and choose New -> Shortcut.

2. Type “RunDll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll” for the location. After that, change the name of the shortcut. I had renamed it to “Remove USB Drive“.

3. You should have a USB icon on your desktop. You can click it and now choose which device to remove.

For those of you who still like to use Internet Explorer over Firefox, I know there must be a few of you still out there,  There is a application called Maxthon that runs off of IE’s core program and adds many cool and useful features that you only wish IE or Firefox had.

Tabbed Browsing 

Tabs aren’t new and other browsers have them but Maxthon in my opinion does the best job of implementing them in there browser.

Groups

You no doubt have heard of favorites but have you heard of groups? Groups makes it easier for you to save groups of favorites and instantly bring all them up with a click of a button. This really saves time when I want to look at all of my geeky websites, I just go to my geeky website group and one click brings them all up.

Magic Fill

Magic fill is a spin off to IE’s remember your password, it allows you to easily manage your passwords and edit them as you change passwords.

Screen Capture

We all know Snagit rules the screen capture scene but if you need to quickly capture something there is no beating Maxthon’s screen capture tool for ease of use.

Ad Hunter

Enough with those pesky ad’s and popus, Maxthon stops them cold and easily allows you to edit any website where you find the ad to irresistible to resist.

Built in RSS Reader

If you haven’t discovered RSS then your wasting a lot of time on the internet. See here for more info on what RSS is. Maxthon has it’s own built in RSS reader to display your favorite feed’s all in one place, albeit it doesn’t have all the features as the big boys but its convenient to have all of them in one place to look at while your still browsing.

These are just a few features that make Maxthon the best browser in my opinion.

 I discovered this useful utility that allows you to map a drive letter to your FTP site. For those of you who don’t know, FTP stands for File Transfer protocol. An FTP site usually resides on your website host providers computer. For example if I want to upload files to my site at gnetsolutions.info I would connect using FTP and upload or download files. If I wasn’t’ using NetDrive I would have to use a program like Filezilla which allows me to connect to an FTP site. NetDrive now allows me to facilitate connecting to my FTP site and treat that connection like a drive letter on my local PC.  Now when I start my PC NetDrive auto maps to my FTP site which I can access through Windows Explorer. Try it out and let me know what you think.

1. Choosing  your Components - A list of efficient, stable components for building a Windows Home Server.

2. Assembling your Components - Steps on assembling your components.

3. Installation, Bios Tweaks and Software Additions - Installation of WHS, Bios tweaks and software additions.

4. Final Thoughts, Recommendations - After thoughts on the process of setting up Windows Home Server. 

If you have any questions regarding this topic you can post them at the Windows Home Server Forum or search in the KnowledgeBase section for any troubleshooting articles related to Windows Home Server.

So far I’m loving my WHS. I don’t have to worry about manually backing up my PC’s. WHS will backup my PC’s during a predetermined schedule and if the PC is sleeping or in hibernation mode it will wake them up.

The temp has been averaging around 23.C. and benchmark test conclude that it’s respectable to other similar systems. (will post tests soon)

Hardware additions

Since the putting the system together, I added two additional hard drives. One internal SATA drive to add to the storage pool and one External ESATA drive for backing up my WHS. I choose ESATA because the transfer rates are much faster than USB 2.0, up to 3Gpbs W/ eSATA.

Resources:

Learn more about Windows Home Server

• Windows Home Server Getting Started Guide 
• Windows Home Server Release Documentation 
• User Accounts and Shared Folders (new) 
• Home Computer Backup 
• Drive Extender 
• Media Sharing 
• Home Networking 
• Windows Home Server [Troubleshooting] Connector Installation
   

Next… Part 4: Table of Contents
Index: all posts in this series

If you have any questions regarding this topic you can post them at the Windows Home Server Forum or search in the Knowledgebase section for any troubleshooting articles related to Windows Home Server.

The installation of WHS went as planned with no major hiccups. After WHS was installed I added the second hard drive and turned on the duplication feature so the files in my shared folders where duplicated in case one of my hard drives failed I would still have a backup copy. Now that I had WHS up and running  I added the connection software to my home PC’s.

 REMARK: Install the Home Server Connector Software from the server location  \\Server\Software\Home Server Connector this will guarantee that you have the latest version. When windows update kicks off on your server it will place the latest update in this location. The one that comes with the DVD is out of date.

Windows Server Console is the heart of Windows Home Server and where you will be doing all your administration and configuring.

Bios Setup 

There where a couple Bios tweaks that needed adjusting to maximize the health of my Server.

1. On the PC Health Status > Smart Fan Option screen change the CPU Smart Fan to 4 Pin (depending on how many pins your CPU fan has) and then press enter on the Smart Fan Calibration option to calibrate the fan.

2. On the PC Health Status screen set the Shutdown Temperature. I choose 60C (the minimum).

Software Additions

Hardware Monitor

This tool is useful for monitoring the speed of your CPU and System fan.

AMD Power Monitor Version and AMD Processor Driver

The AMD processer that I bought comes with AMD Cool’ n’ Quiet technology that helps the processer run more efficiently by running processer at a reduced clock speed and voltage, when not being used heavily. In order to enable this this technology and test that it is working you will need to install AMD Power Monitor Version 1.2.3 and AMD Processor Driver 1.3.2.0053 from AMD. You can download the utilities here.

After you install the utilities go into WHS Control Panel > Power Settings and change the Power scheme to “Server Balanced Processor Power and Performance”.

Add-Ins

Antivirus

Even though I have Antivirus on each of my home PC’s, I still wouldn’t want this Server to be without protection. If a virus slips past one of my other PC’s it’s nice to know my WHS is protected as well. I chose Avast Antivirus  mainly because it’s the only WHS antivirus solution I could find at a reasonable cost.

Windows Home Server Disk Management Add-In

This Add-in is useful because it gives you more detail about your WHS Hard Drives. You can learn more about it here.

Next… Part 4: Final Thoughts and Recommendations
Index: all posts in this series

If you have any questions regarding this topic you can post them at the Windows Home Server Forum or search in the Knowledgebase section for any troubleshooting articles related to Windows Home Server.

 
I recommend the fist step be to  install the Power supply. Apparently size is a factor here in that the power supply must not exceed 140mm, do to case limitations. Unless you can determine the size of your power supply it’s trial and error as to which one will fit. I choose Seasonic because I read that it would fit the case. I also replaced the stock case fan with fan by Antec because it’s reputed to be quieter.

Motherboard, CPU, Ram

IMPORTANT If you’re not familiar with Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) then before you do anything else read up on it here. Taking the necessary steps to prevent static build up is essential if you don’t want to fry your components.

Given the tight constraints of the case I choose to assemble the components on the motherboard outside the case. Install the CPU fist and follow the supplied guide that comes with your CPU.  The CPU heat sink is a personal choice, you can use the stock one that comes with the CPU however there are much better solutions out there that are quieter and will better cool your CPU. When installing the Arctic Cooling heat sink you must remove the black attachment that is attached to the fan, see here for directions to install the cooler. Installing the Ram was next and is fairly straightforward. 

Next attach the spacers that came with the case securely to case at locations marked with the letter A. Attach I/O Shield that came with motherboard to case and make sure it aligns with motherboard layout.( I always align the I/O Shield to the motherboard before I put the motherboard into case to make sure the ports align perfectly. With such confined space you don’t want to have to pull the motherboard in and out of the case. Once everything is attached to the motherboard, very carefully align motherboard onto spacers and tighten screws. The next step is to attach all the cables to your motherboard, see the documentation that is specific to your motherboard.

DVD-Player

I installed the DVD player only to facilitate the installation of WHS. Reportedly you can install it off of a USB thumb drive but to save time I opted for the sure fire way and installed a DVD player.

Hard Drive

Attach hard drive to drive bay. Their wasn’t a whole lot of room to attach the cables to the back of the hard drive, I would of liked to have L shaped SATA cables. I choose just install one hard drive to get WHS up and running. I had 3 more SATA ports to install 3 more internal SATA drives if I wanted to.

  REMARK: In order to attach more then two internal SATA hard drives to this system you will need to purchase two 3.5 brackets so the hard drives will fit into the 5.25 drive bays.  

To test to see if everything was functional, I powered the PC up. Everything looked like it worked so I proceeded to close up the case and install WHS.

Next… Part 3: WHS Installation, Bios Tweaks and Software Additions
Index: all posts in this series

If you have any questions regarding this topic you can post them at the Windows Home Server Forum or search in the KnowledgeBase section for any troubleshooting articles related to Windows Home Server.

Introduction

With the saturation of PC’s in the market place, it’s becoming more common to have more than one PC in the home. With multiple PC’s in the home, the question arises how to go about backing up all the data on so many different PC’s?

We won’t go into detail about all the available options for backing up your PC’s, that’s another topic and you can read some possible solutions here.

Another option that I recently implemented at home for myself is Windows Home Server which in addition to backing up all your PC’s at home to a central location, has the ability to stream  your media files across your home network and provide access to these files from a remote location.

You can purchase a complete PC with WHS from a vendor or you can build yourself one from scratch like I did. Building from scratch gives you the option of choosing your own components best suited to your needs.

Albeit this is not the first article on this subject, everybody has their own unique experience to share in building a WHS. My hope is someone will become inspired by my article to build their own WHS and learn something in the process.

Choosing your components

The requirements for WHS are fairly low on the scale, see here for Microsoft requirements. Their is no reason to go out and buy the fastest and greatest components. WHS is considered a headless Operating System which means there is no need to have a permanent Monitor, Keyboard or Mouse attached to the device. You will be doing all your administration and configuring remotely from one of your other PC’s in your home. The only time you will need a Monitor, Keyboard and Mouse is during installation of WHS.

My requirment recommendations

CPU: 2GHz
RAM: 1GB
Hard Drives: One 500GB hard drive for Windows Home Server and at least two 300GB drives (or larger) for the storage.
DVD drive that is bootable
Monitor for the installation
Keyboard and mouse. For installation only.
Network Interface Card (NIC) 1Gbps Ethernet preferably 

A WHS machine is meant to be left on so I wasn’t too concerned with performance as much as stability and energy efficiency. So with that in mind, the components here are reputed to be stable and efficient on the green scale.

• AeroCool M40 MicroATX Cube Case $74.99
• BIOSTAR MCP6P-M2 AM2 GF6150 AMD motherboard $44.99
• AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 45W Dual-Core Processor  $64.99
• Kingston ValueRAM 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel - $30.49
• 1 x 1.TB Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EACS SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive – OEM  $129.99
• 1 x 640 GB Western Digital Caviar Green WD6400AACS 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s - OEM $74.99
• Seasonic SS-330GB 330W power supply $48.99
• ARCTIC COOLING ALPINE 7 92mm CPU Cooler   $13.99
• Antec 761345-75024-0 120mm Blue LED Case Fan - $14.99
• 2 x I-Star 3.5? bracket for 5.25? bay $2.98
• Microsoft Windows Home Server OEM $149.99

        Total   $651.38

Next… Part 2: assembling components
Index: all posts in this series

If you have any questions regarding this topic you can post them at the Windows Home Server Forum or search in the KnowledgeBase section for any troubleshooting articles related to Windows Home Server.