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Resolve iHomeServer startup problems with folder redirection

Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2014 5:24 pm
by bizmodeller
If your server is configured to redirect your user's folder profiles, iHomeServer may hang at start up with the message 'Checking iHomeServer database'. This will only happen if the user you are running iHomeServer as is subject to the folder redirection policy.

This is due to underlying issues with Microsoft’s Compact SQL libraries if the database file is located on a share. iHomeServer uses the Compact SQL libraries to manage its own configuration and cache database.

There’s two solutions for this:
1. Disable folder redirection for the user you’re running iHomeserver under, or
2. If you are running iHomeServer v3 then you can set a registry key to set the iHomeServer data directory. Normally this defaults to the user's profile directory [AppData\Roaming\iHomeServer (for iTunes)], however, you can override this to a local folder to avoid this issue. The registry key is:

Code: Select all

Key name: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\bizmodeller\iHomeServer\DataDirectory
Type: String

The value of the registry key should be the full path to a local folder that already exists that you want to use to keep your iHomeServer database, eg “d:\Media\iHomeServer”. The user you are using to run iHomeServer must have read/write access to this path.

We’ll continue to look for a permanent solution for this but hope the above helps you get iHomeServer started again.