Installing the Zoom 5900 Skype Adapator on Windows Home Server

I’ve been playing around with replacing my landline with either Magic Jack or Skype. It’s silly to pay the $35/month for a phone we really never use. Both my wife and I have cell phones. The only reason we have a land-line is so the sitter has a line when taking care of our kids.
This led me to the Zoom 5900. It’s a pretty cool little device – it plugs into your pc through a usb cable and allows you to use a normal phone on Skype. This also means it only works when the computer it is hooked up to is on. Since I have a Windows Home Server (also known as WHS, which besides the XBox 360 is Microsoft’s best product of the decade) there’s no problem for me there. The issue is WHS is a modified version of Server 2003, and there aren’t a ton of drivers made for it.
So, in case anyone else out there is looking to try to install the Zoom 5900 on a Windows Home Server, here are the steps I followed to get it to work. It’s not hard, but it just took some digging around the internet to find all the parts.

1. Download the old version of Skype and install it on your WHS. The new version doesn’t support some of the features through the Zoom 5900, so just trust me and get it. You’ll want to turn off the nag screen for updates and automatically download updates as well.
2. Next head over to Zoom and download the newest drivers for the Zoom 5900. Make sure Skype is running.
3. Now, here’s wehere you need to head away from the directions included with the driver. I ran into a problem where the WHS wouldn’t recognize the sound driver Zoom installed. It turns out after reading this post on the Magic Jack and WHS that my problem was how I was logged into Remote Desktop Connection while doing these installs.
   This solved the problem.
   Start–> Run–> %SystemRoot%\System32\mstsc.exe /console
   Click options –> Local Resources, and choose Leave at remote computer under Remote computer sound. Add your password and log in.

Once you logon to Remote Desktop Connection, you can set up the Zoom 5900 in Skype by following the instructions with the driver. Essentially it entails making sure Skype selects the Zoom Adapter driver as the sound source. After that, you are good to go – stored speed dial and all.
I have to say, so far it works great. I’ve only been running it for a day, but if it works this well for the next week or two it’ll be time to run the “family phone” on it for a while – and then eventually dump the main land-line.