I purchased a HP Mediasmart Ex490 back in the fall and until late last week have loved it. Then late last week I tried to remote into it and found the server ran glacially slow. I then used Remote Desktop to directly connect to the desktop (the Windows Home Server Console is really just a remote desktop than runs a single application. When you remote desktop in normally a shortcut to that application is on the desktop) and saw the CPU was pegged to 100% and the guilty application was the Twonky Media server. This software lets me stream the music and video files from my server out to other devices on the network.
Some research confirmed this was the culprit as a few other people were complaining about it. It turns out a patch had installed the problem version of the application. For the short term I just stopped the TwonkyMedia service (Start –> All Programs –> Administrative Tools –> Services). This accomplishes the same thing as using the Stop Sharing button in the Media Server tab of the Console, but was much faster to bring up. Once I did this the server load returned to normal.
I finally had a chance to come back to this tonight and found a way to get the server back to normal at http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2010/03/04/how-to-fix-twonky-issues-in-3-0-patch-2/. The only thing I’d add to it is that stopping and starting Twonky through Services works to move the offending file and responds much faster than the Console does with the CPU pegged.
Now HP, how about getting a fix out soon?