Raf takes on HP's use of ancient device drivers in MediaSmart home serverRaf takes on HP's use of ancient device drivers in MediaSmart home server

Rafael Rivera examines HP's use of less-than-recent drivers in its Windows Home Server-based MediaSmart Server: For some time now, I’ve been having issues in which my HP MediaSmart Server (powered by Windows Home Server) would experience less-than-stellar network throughput and even fail to respond at times. Given the fragile nature of Windows Home Server and value I place on my data, I dared not deviate from the baseline HP configuration. Until now. Given this was clearly a network-related issue, I checked out the SiS191 network adapter in Device Manager. I was shocked to find HP baselined the server on drivers over a year old . I ran a benchmark using AIDA32 3.92 from my desktop to the server. According to SiS, the latest driver for SiS191 chipsets is 2.0.1039.1100 dated 03/03/2008. After ignoring all the warnings and legalese on SiS’s website, I down’ed the package, remoted into my server, installed the driver, and rebooted, fingers crossed. The server went down, flashed its cute LEDs in a multitude of scary colors (e.g. red), and came back up… without issues. I ran a second benchmark to see if there were any improvements. And there were! The newer drivers yielded an increase in average speed and a much more stable level of throughput. It appears my server-went-to-sleep syndrome has disappeared as well. I'm nervous about screwing around with my Windows Home Serer for various reasons (heck, I just used Remote Desktop to access the server directly for the first time ever the other day), but this is compelling. I might have to go for it. Obviously, this isn't for the faint of heart/typical consumers out there.