Microsoft has warned Windows Home Server users not to edit files stored on their backup systems with several of its programs, including Vista Photo Gallery and Office's OneNote and Outlook, as well as files generated by popular finance software such as Quicken and QuickBooks.

"When you use certain programs to edit files on a home computer that uses Windows Home Server, the files may become corrupted when you save them to the home server," Microsoft said in a support document posted last week.

The document went on to list the software, which includes Windows Vista Photo Gallery, Windows Live Photo Gallery, OneNote 2003, OneNote 2007, Outlook 2007, Microsoft Money 2007 and SyncToy 2.0 Beta. Others programs, however, may also corrupt files stored on a home server powered by Microsoft's operating system.

"Additionally, there have been customer reports of issues with Torrent applications, with Intuit Quicken and with QuickBooks program files," the document said. "Until an update for Windows Home Server is available, we recommend that [you] do not use the programs that are listed to save or to edit program-specific files that are stored on a Windows Home Server-based system."

Microsoft blamed the problem on a glitch within Windows Home Server's shared folders. The company said it had reproduced the bug and would post any new information to the document tagged as KB946676.

"Our development team is working full-time through the holidays to diagnose and address this issue," claimed an anonymous posting last Thursday to the Microsoft blog dedicated to Windows Home Sever.

Windows Home Server, which was unveiled nearly a year ago by Chairman Bill Gates at the Consumer Electronics Show, is a heavily modified version of Windows Server 2003 designed for consumers and small businesses. Hewlett-Packard launched the first hardware powered by Windows Home Server, its US$599 and US$749 MediaSmart Servers, last month and is now shipping systems to customers.