HTPC .. and the problems therein

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(I found this on Google cache, so I thought i’d post it )

UPDATE 2:
New problems:
Well its all up and running now, all except for a few random BSoD’s. Traced at least one of them down to an older version of daemon tools. So.. I’ve updated to the latest and I guess only time will tell.
UPDATE: OK… so I put 2 x Leadtek PX2300H’s in, instead of the 1xDual FusionDTV (and put that one into my machine). BAM. All my problems are solved. Not only does the Dvico one work fine in my own PC, but the problems I was having with the Leadteks (dissappearing) doesnt occur on the other machine.

Step 1) Unpack and install all hardware

Problem: Motherboard cables didn’t reach their required sockets.

Solution: Re-route all usb/firewire/audio cables through a closer hole. Time Wasted: 45 mins and FTI I had to remove 90% of the screws to take off the front panel

Step 2) Install Windows 7

Problem: USB booting failed (as usual).

Solution: Attempted with Custom x64 CD. Success. Time wasted: 10 mins

Step 3) Configure Windows 7 – install drivers

Problem: Windows doesn’t like the drivers for 1000T (compatability issues).

Solution: Goto Leadtek site, download drivers. Time wasted: 30 mins

Step 4) Install Media Center Extensions – Media Browser (+DTools), BSE, MyChannelLogos

Step 5) Configure Windows 7 Media Center

Problem: Channels not assigned to guide data correctly. Disabled OTA guide to see which worked/didnt work.

Solution: Reassign Guide data to correct channels.

Step 6) Install Win7Codecs by shark007

Problem: Media Center “Decoder Problem/Error”.

Solution: DO NOT REMOVE WINDOWS MPEG2 VIDEO CODEC; ffdshow audio works if you disable windows mpeg2 audio codec.

Notes: Discovered MC is x64 on Windows 7 x64, and x86 on x86 Windows 7 therefore, use x64 configuration for codecs

Step 7) Completed Installation – yeh right


Post-Install Issues:

Problem: Attempted to format storage HDD in linux live-cd (Parted Magic). For some reason it decided to mark a completely different drive as non-active. Thus making windows unbootable.

Solution: Re-marked as active. Ran Windows Startup Repair. Success. Time Wasted: An hour or so.

Problem: Graphics card making way too much noise, getting way too hot.

Solution: Downloaded NVIDIA System Tools, Under-clocked the card. Set to enable at boot. Also installed second case fan as one was clearly not enough.

Problem: Couldn’t start MCE wizard properly.

Solution: Discovered that my x64 custom disk doesn’t install MC properly. Reinstalled. Dumped the disk. Time Wasted: Over 2 hrs

Problem: TV Signal not found after a few minutes of TV.

Solution: Mutiple causes found. Leadtek 1000T seems not to be working full stop. Removed card. Problem persisted randomly. Discovered 1000T was still in the media center registry. Removed all entries. Guide became corrupted after that so deleted MCE database and started from scratch. Time Wasted: Better part of the day/night

Problem: Random BSOD after a bit of use.

Solution: Not really conclusive, but updated BIOS and haven’t had any problems yet

Problem: Lip Sync out on any Live TV (not on mpeg4 afaik)

Solution: Attempted to correct by changing refresh rate to 60hz (didn’t help) which made the graphical quality terrible.

Solution 2: Used FFDShow’s Delay function to re-sync. Though this will be a temporary solution till I find the root cause. (hopefully the new digital [optical] sound system will be in sync)

Problem: Network/Audio services decided to disable themselves randomly (sound cuts out completely, network didn’t cut out, but showed no connectivity and wouldn’t resolve addresses)

Solution: Not really conclusive, but updated BIOS and haven’t had any problems yet

Problem: Random BSOD 0×24 which implies a disk or NTFS failure (ntfs in this case).

Solution: Did a chkdsk. Seems to be fine now.

Problem: After bios update, despite changing the default back to the other drive, the boot configuration put the storage back to first boot device (probably caused by it being marked as non-active)

Solution: Changed it back. Simple problem, but why should it happen?

Problem: Black screen after rewinding/fast forwarding in Media Center

Solution: This thegreenbutton.com/forums/p/88321/452337.aspx did the trick. M$ at its finest as usual

damage control

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So the saga continues…

To make the things right, I acquired a program called Active@ Partition Recovery Professional.

It looks promising, and I’m currently running a scan on the HDD (NTFS only obviously) for lost partitions. As of right now, its @ 30% and has upgraded the recoverability from “Very Bad” to “Bad” … I’m not sure whether I should be encouraged by that or not, but it may be classifying it as bad because it’s thinking the old ISO versions of the movies which I deleted were still a part of the partition.

teh norm

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So, as per usual, everything has gone wrong (this time it was actually my fault -it happens :D)

After realising that there was no way in hell SmoothWall would ever accept an NTFS drive, or rather I just didn’t have the knowledge to do it, I moved on to other ideas; That’s where I came across IPFire, which is basically IPCop + SmoothWall + Awesomeness.

I know the whole idea of IPCop and SmoothWall is primarily to provide a solid firewall, but with all the mods you can get for both of them, it almost seems pointless not to be able to increase functionality to include network storage.

IPFire is essentially the same idea as the other two (in fact it’s based on IPCop I believe) except its using a newer kernel, and includes kernel modules such as NTFS-3G and FUSE so that its able to read/write NTFS without problems, and it even includes facility called ExtraHD which as far as I can tell is an fstab editor.

My favourite feature of all is Pakfire, which is a package installation system (like apt, yum, etc.). Its a highly simplified version, but its perfect. It will hopefully take away the need for command line crap. I sincerely hope I don’t ever have to open PuTTy again :D. (yeh right)

Anyways, I downloaded the ISO, burnt it and away we go right, backed up all the important stuff, plugged in the ol’ CD drive, rebooted (took ages to get into the bios to make it the boot device – damned thing gives you about 5ms to press F2 -and didn’t even tell you what button to press), and installed it. No problem right? Well not exactly, as you may have already guessed; so here goes: it installed IPFire onto …the 2TB media harddrive…. All of those movies gone, 1.2TB of entertainment obliterated… gone…

You have no idea how stupid I felt after that.

After I stopped banging my head against the wall, I unplugged the 2TB, installed IPFire on the 80GB it was supposed to.

So once again I’ve managed to make one problem into several.

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