Windows Home server was supposed to deliver something that was sorely needed by many home users, which was an easy to use, expandable network storage server that could deliver files to all of the PCs in a consumer’s home. Built upon Microsoft’s Windows 2003 Server platform, Windows Home Server does seem to be quite an excellent product on the surface, but for some reason it continues to be plagued by a variety of problems, with the most serious being a major problem with file and data corruption when users try to access files or data on Home Server from a variety of programs.

It seemed at first that the problems were limited to Outlook 2007, OneNote 2003/2007, Quicken, QuickBooks, and a variety of bit torrent clients. While Microsoft has admitted that they do have an issue, they have also indicated that they were working hard to resolve the issue, but it seems almost two months have gone by and they have been unable to track down the issue or replicate the problem in their labs.

Now it seems that Microsoft is admitting that the problem is a bit deeper than they first anticipated, and they are still working to resolve the issues. Microsoft has added the following programs to the initial list of programs that users may experience problems with using Home Server to now include Visual Dataflex, Mozilla Thunderbird, iTunes, Microsoft Excel, WinAmp, Photoshop Elements and Microsoft’s own Zune software.

Microsoft continues to study the problems in an effort to track down the root cause of the issue, but right now it appears they are no closer to being able to offer a fix or solution to the problem. Right now the only solution we can suggest is that you steer clear of using Windows Home Server until the issue is resolved. Some bugs like this can take some time to track down, but it is difficult to understand with all of the experience Microsoft has with the Windows 2003 Server platform why they can’t resolve the issue. If you are currently using Windows Home Server with any of the programs mentioned above, we suggest that you be careful, as data corruption is a very real possibility.