So I’ve been home sick the past few days, and I figured since I have some spare time, I’d set up my new Acer Aspire H340 Windows Home Server machine. Initial installation of the server is a little different – since it’s a “headless” server, you need to use another client computer to set it up.
I run the Acer install utility on my notebook, and it seems to work fine until it tries to connect to the server for the first time. It says that it’s downloading software from the server ASPIREHOME, hangs at 0% for a few mintues, then errors out saying “the operation cannot be completed at this time.” After a couple of failures, I figure OK, this is a Windows 7 64bit client, so it must be incompatible. No problem, I’ll run the install from a Windows XP machine. Same. exact. problem.
I try googling for a solution, but no help – everything I find says I shouldn’t be having install problems. I try reseting the server, installing from an Ubuntu client under Wine, I even try taking the hard drive from the server and installing it in another computer to configure – same result. I’m starting to go crazy …
After clicking on one of the myriad help pages that come up during the install, I notice that one of the pages tries to open in a web browser, using a address similar to \\ASPIREHOME\some\help\page.html. Well, instead of a normal web page, I get a search page from OpenDNS (I use OpenDNS on my home router). Could it be a DNS conflict? Pinging ASPIREHOME from the command line give me an outside internet address, not a NAT address inside my network.
I reset the DNS settings on my router to use my cable company’s default settings. Then, after rebooting my client to clear the network settings, I try pinging ASPIREHOME again. Now, it’s an internal IP address, just like it should be. Then, I try the ACER install again. SUCCESS! I’m running the install right now
I’m not sure if I can go back to my OpenDNS settings again, but I’m going to try it after my install finishes. In the meantime, if you can’t install your server software from your client, try disabling your third party DNS – it worked for me!



