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 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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
My W10 installed updates last night and WMC does not start anymore (KB5016616 & KB5015730). Does anyone have any idea what it breaks?
Hi Guys, thanks to all for the hard work and suggestions to keep media center alive.. I have a bug (not strictly with media center) Just built a new lounge machine, running on Windows 11 12th gen Intel with UHD710 graphics. When media center loads you get about 5 seconds and MC freezes. I have tried disabling any fancy graphics features I can find, also tried 5 different driver versions with no luck. If i fit a Nvidia board its smooth as silk (the point is to have it working without and extra card..) Has anyone seen this and better still fixed it.. Thanks Sid.
Try to install "Actual Multiple Monitors" (no matter if you have multiple monitors or not), it's known since the early days for fixing a lot of graphical glitches with WMC. No need to configure anything, just install and launch it, then (optionally) you can take advantage of one or more of its very useful features, starting from replacing the useless W11 taskbar, with a sane W10 style one.
Thanks for the suggestion, no luck! But I have found that its the full screen lockup thing, the fact that is seem to be only with the Intel graphics through me. I have done all the usual things, removed graphics acceleration, run ehshell as admin. edit registry to include DisableHWAcceleration and placed ehome in Program Files folder. So far the only thing that works is the Nvidia graphics card.. Any fixes I have missed? thanks Sid