Data Corruption Bug - The Media Center Show Interview

Fri, Feb 22, 2008 | Terry Walsh

Just got off the phone with Ian Dixon who interviewed me regarding the data corruption bug for next week’s Media Center Show.

Whilst a few websites appear to have gone into meltdown regarding this week’s KB update, we both thought it was important to get some clarity back into the situation, as well destroy a couple of myths and misinformation circulating around.

The interview will be available next week, but follow the points on yesterday’s post and you won’t go too far wrong. Ian’s kindly invited me back on the show to talk more when we have more news to share.

This post was written by:

Terry Walsh - who has written 648 posts on We Got Served.

Hi - I'm Terry and I'm the Owner of We Got Served. The site's been covering everything to do with Windows Home Server since February 2007. I live in Silverstone, UK with my wife and when I'm not working on We Got Served, I have a career as an Innovation Consultant to contend with.

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12 Comments For This Post

DanB Says:
February 22nd, 2008 at 2:25 pm

My WHS seems to ‘eat’ folder.jpg files in my music collection - they get either totally or partially corrupted over time.

I note that KB946676 includes WMP11. Does this mean that if I have a Vista Media Center access a music library from my WHS that this could be causing this corruption? If not, then I have no idea what WHS is doing to kill these files.

Terry Walsh Says:
February 22nd, 2008 at 2:46 pm

Are you editing or saving the folder.jpg at all in WMP? (Trying to work out if there’s actually any way of doing this in WMP). The bug only hits if you’re editing or saving the file back to the home server.

Terry

GaMeR™ Says:
February 22nd, 2008 at 3:39 pm

this is what I have done:

1. read-only all shares
2. read/write upload folder to store files in
3. once in a while I move the uploads to the folders where they belong (I do this via remote desktop).

uTorrent and eMule are storing thier temp files on C:\Temp, and when they are done they move it to \\server\downloads (where nobody but me has READ access on them!)

For now, this is my solution to prevent corruption and it’s working fine.

Jon Says:
February 22nd, 2008 at 4:27 pm

WMP 11 can update MP3’s tags by looking up the information on the internet, including adding album art, etc…

I know my local hard disk music collection would be updated overtime, and even updated to how WMP 11 thought the songs should have come from. This will happen in the background so yeah, its editing files on the shares, if you’re pointing to them in the library, and have the active updates enabled, you may see this bug (given other parts of the bug are there, high server load, etc…)

Boggy Says:
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:28 pm

I’ve been trying to keep “cool” about this WHS disaster. I hope that the Microsoft bigwigs realize that these kind of blunders feed into the “reputation” of Microsoft OS being inferior to part-time developed Linux. I am more and more convinced that WHS WAS rushed into market without being properly tested. It seems that Microsoft had known about this issue for a long time, and only acknowledged it after going “live”. I can only see some lawyers getting rich out of this unfortunate situation. The users and the shareholders of Microsoft are going to get screwed.

DDanster Says:
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:34 pm

All of these corruption posts made me do some checking. I have a daily process that makes CRC32 values for every file on each of my shares, and stores it in a .sfv file. Then the next day, it compares those CRC32 values with what was stored the day before.

I’ve been running this check daily for over a month now.

Guess what - no problems whatsoever.

Wonder what all the hubub is about.

JCerna Says:
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:38 pm

Yeah I have the same problem, I was pointing windows media center, windows media player, and zune to get files directly from the server and it will edit the tags. This is bad because I had spent a lot of time setting album art and names and lyrics on some. I have a back up from before I transfered to the server but i don’t have a back up of the new media I just got. Hope they fix this soon because thats why I bought the server. Also I notice that when I leave the server on for a long time (week or more) sometimes it crashes my network. I loose all network connection and i cant connect to the home server itself. I disconnect home server (with out turning it off) from my network and it all starts working. I connect the home server and it stops working, I have the HP EX475 I have to force shutdown does anyone know the soft shutdown proccess? Then turn the server back on it it all works.

DanB Says:
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:32 pm

I’m not actively editing things, but I suppose I’m wondering whether WMP11 or VMC moves or edits those files when I’m accessing them in the library. That’s the only explanation I can come up with for these files getting corrupted.

You know the other wierd thing - sometimes it simply mixes them up! I think it gets confused with so many folder.jpg files. I find that album covers have ‘migrated’ from the correct folder to something completely different!!!!

JCerna - Are you saying you get corruption / greyed out areas of folder.jpgs too? It would be a huge relief to find someone with the same experience to prove I’m not crazy!

Outraged Says:
February 23rd, 2008 at 8:15 pm

Why shouldn’t Microsoft fix their WHS data corruption flaw? Or should everyone live with the WHS data corruption and think, “Gee, I love Microsoft” instead?

This flaw is based on WHS Drive Extender technology, which was reported about a year ago during the beta period. How could all these below applications been overlooked, when in fact, all these products are produced by Microsoft themselves.

Microsoft Windows Vista Photo Gallery
Microsoft Windows Live Photo Gallery
Microsoft Office OneNote 2007
Microsoft Office OneNote 2003
Microsoft Office Outlook 2007
Microsoft Money 2007
Microsoft Office Excel
Microsoft Windows Media Player 11
Microsoft Zune Software
Microsoft Virtual PC 2008
Microsoft Digital Image Library
Microsoft Project 2000

If Microsoft cannot even check it’s own software to function and work, is it any wonder why everyone is at risk to experience their data to become corrupted? Stop downplaying data corruption, and insist that Microsoft get off it’s butt and fix this flaw!

There’s no point to buy a home server from Microsoft, when it corrupts your data. Especially, when it’s suppose to backup all your data!
Total failure just waiting to occur… No way should anyone accept this crap! I’m steamed…. hot and mad!

JCerna Says:
February 26th, 2008 at 11:06 pm

DanB
Yeah I have the same problem you do, I just stop using media center, windows media player, zune, and itunes to access files on the server and the problem stopped. I am also considering removing all hard drives and leaving one only, this bug is only on servers with more than one hard drive.

DanB Says:
February 27th, 2008 at 10:42 am

I have stopped feeding the music from WHS too, and the problems have gone away. In fact, I noticed this posting today which makes this situation a lot clearer:

ComputerWorld writer Gregg Keizer has been speaking to the WHS team about the corruption bug. Todd Headrick, the product planning manager for WHS had this to say in the article:

In many cases, users might not realize that they are, in fact, “editing” a file, because an application may be appending metadata to a file’s contents. He cited the example of digital music files, such as those played by Windows Media Player 11, one of the programs on the reported-but-not-confirmed list. When you’re downloading album art, your actually changing the file, he said. If you rate a song, you’re actually editing the file.

Remember although it is a big issue this problem does not affect a lot of users and Microsoft are working on this full time and are expanding the scope of their testing.

From: http://mswhs.com/2008/02/27/more-info-on-the-whs-corruption-bug/

So that is confirmation - although it SEEMS we are only serving the information from WHS and not editing it there, WMP DOES fiddle with metadata and the like, and as such it can corrupt the data that lives in the WHS…

What a complete screwup of a situation. I hope MS can find the cure soon.

DanB Says:
March 7th, 2008 at 9:50 am

I’ll add something that occurred to me when I was listening to this interview on Ian’s podcast on my way to work this morning.

If corruption can occurr when WMP edits metadata, then I can’t see any reason why anyone who stores DVR-MS files on their WHS couldn’t have them corrupted by accessing them through Media Centre. After all, MCE and VMC are only huge WMP front ends, and when you play a DVD-MS sure it must edit the metadata in that file to record how far you’ve watched to allow the resume function. This means that the corruption bug should apply in this case…

Scary stuff - hope MS get it fixed soon…

DanB Says:
February 22nd, 2008 at 2:25 pm
My WHS seems to ‘eat’ folder.jpg files in my music collection - they get either totally or partially corrupted over time.

I note that KB946676 includes WMP11. Does this mean that if I have a Vista Media Center access a music library from my WHS that this could be causing this corruption? If not, then I have no idea what WHS is doing to kill these files.
Terry Walsh Says:
February 22nd, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Are you editing or saving the folder.jpg at all in WMP? (Trying to work out if there’s actually any way of doing this in WMP). The bug only hits if you’re editing or saving the file back to the home server.

Terry
GaMeR™ Says:
February 22nd, 2008 at 3:39 pm
this is what I have done:

1. read-only all shares
2. read/write upload folder to store files in
3. once in a while I move the uploads to the folders where they belong (I do this via remote desktop).

uTorrent and eMule are storing thier temp files on C:\Temp, and when they are done they move it to \\server\downloads (where nobody but me has READ access on them!)

For now, this is my solution to prevent corruption and it’s working fine.
Jon Says:
February 22nd, 2008 at 4:27 pm
WMP 11 can update MP3’s tags by looking up the information on the internet, including adding album art, etc…

I know my local hard disk music collection would be updated overtime, and even updated to how WMP 11 thought the songs should have come from. This will happen in the background so yeah, its editing files on the shares, if you’re pointing to them in the library, and have the active updates enabled, you may see this bug (given other parts of the bug are there, high server load, etc…)
Boggy Says:
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:28 pm
I’ve been trying to keep “cool” about this WHS disaster. I hope that the Microsoft bigwigs realize that these kind of blunders feed into the “reputation” of Microsoft OS being inferior to part-time developed Linux. I am more and more convinced that WHS WAS rushed into market without being properly tested. It seems that Microsoft had known about this issue for a long time, and only acknowledged it after going “live”. I can only see some lawyers getting rich out of this unfortunate situation. The users and the shareholders of Microsoft are going to get screwed.
DDanster Says:
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:34 pm
All of these corruption posts made me do some checking. I have a daily process that makes CRC32 values for every file on each of my shares, and stores it in a .sfv file. Then the next day, it compares those CRC32 values with what was stored the day before.

I’ve been running this check daily for over a month now.

Guess what - no problems whatsoever.

Wonder what all the hubub is about.
JCerna Says:
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Yeah I have the same problem, I was pointing windows media center, windows media player, and zune to get files directly from the server and it will edit the tags. This is bad because I had spent a lot of time setting album art and names and lyrics on some. I have a back up from before I transfered to the server but i don’t have a back up of the new media I just got. Hope they fix this soon because thats why I bought the server. Also I notice that when I leave the server on for a long time (week or more) sometimes it crashes my network. I loose all network connection and i cant connect to the home server itself. I disconnect home server (with out turning it off) from my network and it all starts working. I connect the home server and it stops working, I have the HP EX475 I have to force shutdown does anyone know the soft shutdown proccess? Then turn the server back on it it all works.
DanB Says:
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:32 pm
I’m not actively editing things, but I suppose I’m wondering whether WMP11 or VMC moves or edits those files when I’m accessing them in the library. That’s the only explanation I can come up with for these files getting corrupted.

You know the other wierd thing - sometimes it simply mixes them up! I think it gets confused with so many folder.jpg files. I find that album covers have ‘migrated’ from the correct folder to something completely different!!!!

JCerna - Are you saying you get corruption / greyed out areas of folder.jpgs too? It would be a huge relief to find someone with the same experience to prove I’m not crazy!
Outraged Says:
February 23rd, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Why shouldn’t Microsoft fix their WHS data corruption flaw? Or should everyone live with the WHS data corruption and think, “Gee, I love Microsoft” instead?

This flaw is based on WHS Drive Extender technology, which was reported about a year ago during the beta period. How could all these below applications been overlooked, when in fact, all these products are produced by Microsoft themselves.

Microsoft Windows Vista Photo Gallery
Microsoft Windows Live Photo Gallery
Microsoft Office OneNote 2007
Microsoft Office OneNote 2003
Microsoft Office Outlook 2007
Microsoft Money 2007
Microsoft Office Excel
Microsoft Windows Media Player 11
Microsoft Zune Software
Microsoft Virtual PC 2008
Microsoft Digital Image Library
Microsoft Project 2000

If Microsoft cannot even check it’s own software to function and work, is it any wonder why everyone is at risk to experience their data to become corrupted? Stop downplaying data corruption, and insist that Microsoft get off it’s butt and fix this flaw!

There’s no point to buy a home server from Microsoft, when it corrupts your data. Especially, when it’s suppose to backup all your data!
Total failure just waiting to occur… No way should anyone accept this crap! I’m steamed…. hot and mad!
JCerna Says:
February 26th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
DanB
Yeah I have the same problem you do, I just stop using media center, windows media player, zune, and itunes to access files on the server and the problem stopped. I am also considering removing all hard drives and leaving one only, this bug is only on servers with more than one hard drive.
DanB Says:
February 27th, 2008 at 10:42 am
I have stopped feeding the music from WHS too, and the problems have gone away. In fact, I noticed this posting today which makes this situation a lot clearer:

ComputerWorld writer Gregg Keizer has been speaking to the WHS team about the corruption bug. Todd Headrick, the product planning manager for WHS had this to say in the article:

In many cases, users might not realize that they are, in fact, “editing” a file, because an application may be appending metadata to a file’s contents. He cited the example of digital music files, such as those played by Windows Media Player 11, one of the programs on the reported-but-not-confirmed list. When you’re downloading album art, your actually changing the file, he said. If you rate a song, you’re actually editing the file.

Remember although it is a big issue this problem does not affect a lot of users and Microsoft are working on this full time and are expanding the scope of their testing.

From: http://mswhs.com/2008/02/27/more-info-on-the-whs-corruption-bug/

So that is confirmation - although it SEEMS we are only serving the information from WHS and not editing it there, WMP DOES fiddle with metadata and the like, and as such it can corrupt the data that lives in the WHS…

What a complete screwup of a situation. I hope MS can find the cure soon.
DanB Says:
March 7th, 2008 at 9:50 am
I’ll add something that occurred to me when I was listening to this interview on Ian’s podcast on my way to work this morning.

If corruption can occurr when WMP edits metadata, then I can’t see any reason why anyone who stores DVR-MS files on their WHS couldn’t have them corrupted by accessing them through Media Centre. After all, MCE and VMC are only huge WMP front ends, and when you play a DVD-MS sure it must edit the metadata in that file to record how far you’ve watched to allow the resume function. This means that the corruption bug should apply in this case…

Scary stuff - hope MS get it fixed soon…

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