[DISCUSSION] Patch WMC to run on Windows 10 final & possible alternatives

Discussion in 'Windows 10' started by ricktendo64, May 8, 2015.

  1. acer-5100

    acer-5100 MDL Guru

    Dec 8, 2018
    3,645
    2,620
    120
    That shouldn't be a problem, If you ran the "media center recovery task" the old data form 7/8.x shouldn't be a problem

    Ok, let us know what happens



    I assume 1507/10240 has the same result, right?

    That said I'm on the other side of the ocean, so I never touched a cable card tuner in my life, so it's hard to guess what the problem could be, but I would start trying to replace MSVidCtl.dll with the one taken from w8.1.

    In the worst case you loose the OTA tuner as well, if you are lucky CC start working or at least will be listed as available tuner.


    Whatever....

    Remember that W7/8.1 will be supported for years trough ESU so if your HTPC is just an HTPC there is really no point using W10

    W10 makes sense on situations (like mine) where my home server isn't just an HTPC, but also a router, a VM Host, deduplicated SMB server, and so on. Some of those things works way better in W10, or were unavailable at all on older Windows, or when WMC is used on client machines that needs to be updated for other reasons.

    Obviously I have no idea about your usage pattern...
     
  2. acer-5100

    acer-5100 MDL Guru

    Dec 8, 2018
    3,645
    2,620
    120
    #10502 acer-5100, Aug 4, 2022
    Last edited: Aug 4, 2022
    Tath makes sense as well.

    V12 (by Abbodi) is the closest thing to an official installation, being DISM based, although the cleaner method backfired when W10 evolved and diverged over older releases

    V.8.8.1 by T-S (and derivatives) proved to be way more practical and resilient to Window updates, but may be missing some bits given both Abbodi and T-S (AFAIK) are both non US citizens, so their (official) test installations may have lacked few registry entries or alike.
     
  3. acer-5100

    acer-5100 MDL Guru

    Dec 8, 2018
    3,645
    2,620
    120
    T-S is from Italy. But that's not really relevant to my point, given the last time I checked both Sweden and Italy weren't part of the US :p


    What I mean is that I'm sure that T-S and abbodi were both very careful trying to imitate what DISM does.

    My hypothesis is that something could be different (on the source official installation from w8.1) depending the location setting. Something that may be not exported to the installation scripts (just because was not there, in European installations).

    Just a guess on what you told about 12 working 8.x not working.

    I hope my point is clear(er) now.
     
  4. technodevotee

    technodevotee MDL Senior Member

    Sep 18, 2015
    492
    91
    10
    I sit corrected.

    I believe there are a few things that didn't make it into 8x or became broken in all the changes that were made after the fact.

    I'm actually still running V13 on my Windows 10 (21H2) and Windows 11 boxes because of them.
     
  5. acer-5100

    acer-5100 MDL Guru

    Dec 8, 2018
    3,645
    2,620
    120

    Sure. 1607 broke the DRM, 1803 broke some things (essentially msvctl32.dll) further versions broke sql bits.

    But all of this has nothing to do with Eddie's problem, nor with my guess.

    At the time of 1511, theoretically, V12 and V8.8.1 were perfectly equivalent (although V12 was more picky/problematic on non fresh installations)

    They were equivalent also practically for anyone outside the US.

    The doubt you raised is: were they equivalent for US users as well?
     
  6. CZ Eddie

    CZ Eddie MDL Novice

    Mar 20, 2016
    49
    8
    0
    SUCCESS!
    Activation of digital cable still works!

    So, I ran into a problem when I installed Win7 on the physical box.
    Windows complained about the key.
    I called and did the product activation thing over the phone where you tell the automated system all 60 of the digits you see on the screen, and then it gives you a code to use.
    NOPE.... it said I'd activated too many times. Man, I bought that key like 20 years ago from Fry's Electronics. It's MY key.

    I found Daz's hack and used that successfully to activate Windows.

    And I changed up my routine on setting up WMC.
    And this time the digital key activated!!!

    Thanks, everyone!

    I'll test that same method on my VM later today to see if it's just VM's that are now having issues.
    I've had WMC+Cablecard working fine on VM a couple VM versions ago. Wish I hadn't killed that VM.
     
  7. CZ Eddie

    CZ Eddie MDL Novice

    Mar 20, 2016
    49
    8
    0
    Yeah, this 1511 ISO does not detect my CableCard tuner (HDHomeRun Prime) in a VM.
    No updates were applied.
    The good (old) driver was used: hdhomerun_windows_20150826.exe
    WMC V13 was used
    VMware Workstation Player 16 is the hardware version of my VM.

    I may or may not try the physical box with 1511.
    I don't see any reason to destroy my now-working Win7 install and have to go through all that again.

    • 10586.0.151029-1700.TH2_RELEASE_CLIENTENTERPRISEEVAL_OEMRET_X64FRE_EN-US.ISO

    upload_2022-8-4_16-7-4.png
     
  8. acer-5100

    acer-5100 MDL Guru

    Dec 8, 2018
    3,645
    2,620
    120

    Although the misleading name, V13 is not an improved V12, but rather a small mod to V8.8.1 to make it working past 1803. (and a bunch of unneeded duplication of files, that wastes a lot of space both in the installer and the windows installation itself).

    So if you are 100% sure, the idea that V12 does something that is missing on V8.x (and derivatives) is disproven.
     
  9. CZ Eddie

    CZ Eddie MDL Novice

    Mar 20, 2016
    49
    8
    0
    Thank you. Thanks, everyone!

    Just tried a VM again using same basic method & files as with the physical box.
    It didn't work. Back to it not being able to connect to the server to activate the digital key.
    This all worked about three years ago with a previous VM setup.
    I think that was on ESXi 6.7 though. An older VM hardware version.

    If I get super motivated, I may give ESXi 6.7 a shot.
    Or at least create a 6.7 hardware version VM.
    Just because I recently updated my server's CPU & GPU specifically to run a WMC VM again.
    I've got some time & money invested in trying to get this working.
     
  10. acer-5100

    acer-5100 MDL Guru

    Dec 8, 2018
    3,645
    2,620
    120

    VM HW has little to do with WMC, and (in vmware) you can downgrade it to whatever version you like. Even VMware Workstation 10 level should be enough for the purpose.

    Although I think is unlikely, the version of the hypervisor may matter. Say running a machine inside VMware workstation 12 and running a machine inside VMware workstation 16, with HW level set to 12 is not exactly the same thing (it should in theory).

    That said in 2022 Hyper-V is surely a better choice than VMware for testing purposes. In 2015 Hyper-V was out of question, vmware was the only option.

    But now you can run a VM while sitting in front of your PC and doing something else w/o any additional SW, but most importantly the .vhdx virtual disk used can be booted directly on baremetal w/o having to do the work twice when you reach the intended result. (even better the mounted .vhdx can be used even by vmware workstation/player.

    I don't get this. WMC is still a SW basically unchanged since 2009, it's an incredibly light SW by today's standard, my home server (today) is a 3rd generation core w/o any external GPU and is already overkill to run WMC locally while serving other instances of WMC (and kodi and mediaportal and ...) over the network, but I did the same thing with way weaker machines like the HP microserver N54L few years ago....

    Now, to end the bit OT digression, I have another guess about what happened to you with 1511.

    You said it was once a w7 machine, you possibly got the CC activation from W7 then you upgraded to W10.

    Is possible that the CC activation was retained and you never had to activate it inside 1511. Maybe you lost the WMC settings but (as far as I can understand) the CC activation is done by the general windows software protection platform (the same used to activate windows itself, office and so on) which is outside the wmc settings.

    So if I were you I would try to repeat the process, just keep a copy of the W7 VM, in case the upgrade fails.
     
  11. technodevotee

    technodevotee MDL Senior Member

    Sep 18, 2015
    492
    91
    10
    #10512 technodevotee, Aug 5, 2022
    Last edited: Aug 5, 2022
    I never claimed that V13 was an improved version of V12 but I did make it to keep V12 working in 1803 and beyond by using a modified V8 installation script.

    I didn't like the changes that were made in V8.8.1 so I extracted the files from V12 cab files and added the workarounds that had been developed.

    While the majority of the files are the same in V13 and V8.8.1, there are 7 files that are not the same.

    I'll take that on the chin but the package was created for my own use and was never intended to be made public. People were having the same problems I was and kept asking for it so I sent it to them. I just never got round to removing the unneeded files.

    Maybe not something missing but something is different for sure - otherwise, why would V13 work for people when V8 wouldn't?
     
  12. acer-5100

    acer-5100 MDL Guru

    Dec 8, 2018
    3,645
    2,620
    120
  13. technodevotee

    technodevotee MDL Senior Member

    Sep 18, 2015
    492
    91
    10
    I made a mistake and I'll own up to it but on the back of that you seem to be making assumptions about me when you don't know anything about my background.

    Since I have nothing further to add to this conversation, I'll leave it to the experts from now on.
     
  14. acer-5100

    acer-5100 MDL Guru

    Dec 8, 2018
    3,645
    2,620
    120
    You are trying (for unknown reasons) to put something in my mouth that I never pronounced.

    Where I was supposed to call any of your work "a mistake" ?

    Something that works but can be improved is not a mistake.

    Aside that everyone makes assumptions, I just said that is common for windows people to not understand something that was once relegated to unix world.

    And I can wrote it in bold font, if you prefer. Where is the problem? I think that after 40 years spent dealing with users, coders, sysadmins I can make the assumptions I like, based on my experience. If you have any stats that disprove that assumption I'm all ears.

    It's always nice to have such elementary school level reply in return to a useful suggestion, and time employed to kindly explain something.

    Have a nice day.
     
  15. Joni

    Joni MDL Junior Member

    May 28, 2009
    55
    7
    0
    My W10 installed updates last night and WMC does not start anymore (KB5016616 & KB5015730). Does anyone have any idea what it breaks?
     
  16. Joni

    Joni MDL Junior Member

    May 28, 2009
    55
    7
    0
    Nm, i forgot i edited one dll yesterday and this was because of that.
     
  17. Brainsuck

    Brainsuck MDL Addicted

    Oct 9, 2009
    676
    157
    30
    Stop hovering to collapse... Click to collapse... Hover to expand... Click to expand...
  18. Brainsuck

    Brainsuck MDL Addicted

    Oct 9, 2009
    676
    157
    30
    I try what you saided and it work great all channel are working drm and everything Thanks
     
    Stop hovering to collapse... Click to collapse... Hover to expand... Click to expand...