Dave Berkowitz, a Microsoft senior communication manager revealed that Vail has been improved in the four key areas “Extending media streaming outside the home or office”, “Multi-PC backup and restore”, “Simplified setup and user experience” and “Expanded development and customization tools for partners”.

Microsoft’s goal is to receive as much user feedback as possible about the Windows Home Server release

Berkowitz explained that Windows Home Server has been moved to “a new underlying server platform that will only run as a 64-bit OS” indicating that it is not recommended to run the server “on a 32-bit PC or existing Windows Home Server systems (even 64-bit Home Server systems) because there may be compatibility issues with some OEM drivers”.

He urged users to install the Home Server beta on a secondary computer as they might be experiencing a number of problems otherwise including “the inability to run WHS v1 add-in applications”. Berkowitz added that the “installation of the Vail OS on a PC will [..] require users to wipe all data from that PC or device.”

Windows Home Server Vail has relatively modest hardware requirements. A 1.4 Ghz 64-bit cpu, 1 Gigabyte of computer memory and at least a 160 Gigabyte hard drive are the minimum requirements to install and use Vail.

A Windows Home Server software development kit is available which can be downloaded from Microsoft Connect as well.

“We’re not ready to discuss delivery dates yet”, Berkowitz added

“So after you check out all of the great features in this public beta, you’ll probably want to know when the final version of Vail is going to ship. We’re not ready to discuss delivery dates yet. We want to ship the best possible product, and as that old commercial went (sort of), ‘we will ship no Windows Home Server before it’s time’,” Berkowitz added.

The Windows Home Server Power Pack 1 finally patches data corruption issue that was plaguing so many Home Server users for a long time. Computers running Windows Vista 64-bit are supported now after installing the Power Pack which was another point of criticism.

Add to that the ability to backup folder shares, improvements to remote access, performance gains and more efficient power consumption and you got a must have pack for Windows Home Server.

Users who want to read up on it can point their browser to the Knowledge Base article. (via Neowin) Everyone else can head straight to the download page to download the surprisingly (22 Megabytes, that’s half the six word dictionary update from a few days ago) small Power Pack.

The issue is caused by security changed to the Terminal Service ActiveX control in Internet Explorer which is now disabled by default. Thankfully a workaround was posted already, here are the steps to fix the problem and enable Windows Home Server Remote Access again.

Open Internet Explorer and click on Tools > Manage Add-ons > Enable or Disable Add-ons to enable the Terminal Services ActiveX control again. If you see the Terminal Services control and are able to enable it you are done. If you cannot see it or cannot enable it you need to delete two keys in the Windows Registry instead which will also enable the Terminal Services ActiveX control again.

HKCU \Software \Microsoft \Windows \CurrentVersion \Ext \Settings \{7390f3d8-0439-4c05-91e3-cf5cb290c3d0}
HKCU\ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Ext\ Settings\ {4eb89ff4-7f78-4a0f-8b8d-2bf02e94e4b2)

Once you have deleted those two keys the activeX control should be enabled again in Internet Explorer.