windows home server 2011 troubleshooting

Even when I copied the drivers from the 'Windows Home Server Drivers for Restore' folder, I was still missing Ethernet and storage controller drivers.

I was trying to restore a Dell Inspiron laptop that would no longer boot. This method has worked for me 100% of the time until last week. It will then scan your USB drive and it SHOULD find all of the proper hardware drivers. When it gets to the screen were it detects your hardware, you'll need to hit the button to tell it to scan your drives for additional drivers. Then boot into the WHS environment again. You copy all of these files to a USB flash drive and then put it into your PC that you are trying to restore. On each partition, you'll find a special folder that WHS has created called 'Windows Home Server Drivers for Restore'. Typically you can just go to another PC on your WHS network, open the WHS console, go to Computer & Backups, select the PC that you are trying to restore, right-click and select View Backups, select one of the recent backups and hit 'Open'., select a partition, and let it open the backup so you can see the files. Sometimes it will be missing the Ethernet controller so you'll need to provide drivers for that. Most of the time it seems to find all of my hardware without any issues. If it can't talk to your network card, it won't be able to find your WHS server, if it can't talk to your disk drives, you won't see any drives available when you try to select the drive mapping during the restore process.

The only real tricky part of this process is making sure that the WHS boot environment recognizes your hardware drivers - network cards, hard drives, disk controllers, etc. You just boot from a CD, connect to your WHS box and select the image that you want to restore and sit back and relax while it completely restores your PC. The full PC restore feature has come in handy on several occasions. I've deployed several HP MediaSmart servers for small businesses and home offices. I'm a big fan of the Windows Home Server (WHS) product - specifically the earlier versions prior to WHS 2011 before they removed the Drive Extender feature.

Windows home server 2011 troubleshooting