I intend to follow these instructions to the letter because I've had so many problems making a working machine. I've built plenty of standard XP/Win2k/9x etc machines and thought MCE would be a breeze! It simply doesn't work building a MCE PC in this way.
Thanks for taking the time to do this.
It never ceases to amaze me that there are so many people out there willing to share their expertese.
Is the most recent document available to download in a printable format? 

No, thats the only copy of it.  Just print from IE.

a few people have pm'd me saying its really helped them also.

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Bryan Socha
Media Center MVP

Can you explain why it is so important to disconnect the remote reciever during install ?

It has to do with the sequence of what installs when during inital setup.  Having it connected will get its drivers before power management is set for your needs.  Usually results in a lot of standby and power management problems because those drivers are a mix of different ones.  Just leaving it unplugged will sort underlying driver and management problems out for you.

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Bryan Socha
Media Center MVP

@accident

I thank you very much for your Tuturiol on how to reinstall (or first installation) MCE.   I had a very big problem with my system about 2 weeks ago. Unfortuntally i did not find your page until now, and now i hope that my system ist running good.

I have a question ...

1. Sound- I have a Aueron Soundcard 5.1 Fun..with this hardware is also a Software with control panel. Do i have to set these settings too? Or is it enough when i set the values in PureVideo ? Is it absolutly necassary to install the Software Control Pnael from the Company?

 

sorry about my english , but i have been living in Germany a long time and dont have the Pratice anymore ...

Your english was great.  Excellent question.

Generally the way windows works is the control panel is to setup the sound for windows itself.  This would including any codec's (decoders) that microsoft releases themselves.  A lot of times you don't need your sound cards control panel and the settings from windows are enough.  but a lot of specific items that you can adjust in the sound card may not be available this way.  Its really a per sound card thing.  My general recommendation is if you can get away without the extra software, don't install it.  If it doesn't work or you can't adjust things you need to then install it.

 Also not everything uses the windows settings for similar reasons.  a lot of times individually tweaking different programs will provide the best results.  Purevideo decoder is one of these things.  It has its own sound settings that are different from the windows settings.  So the control panel for sound would cover microsoft video formats, your individual decoder for mpeg2 may have its own settings that also need to be adjusted.  So yes, normally you need to make the changes in both.  Now this isn't limited to just purevideo decoder.  other decoders, different codecs for other formats (divx, quicktime, 3g, etc might also have their own settings.

General rule of thumb.  Setup windows for your sound setup.  Don't assume this sets everything and check all the different software running your system (games, other video/audio formats, etc).  anything you install that makes noises.  Its safe to assume if the product is from microsoft it will follow the sound settings but everything else is probably seperate.

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Bryan Socha
Media Center MVP

@Accident,

thank you very much for the compliment on my English. but now lets get back to the Subject

I asked this question because i have a small problem (or big depending on how you see it ) everytime when I installed MCE new on my system.  The problem always occurs when i want to send the 5.1 DD signal to my Reciever.  I have tried the Control Panel which came with the Soundcard and i have tried the settings from PureVideo, without any luck. I cannot send the DD signal through the SPDIF. I thought maybe it had something to do with the 2 Control Panels , maybe they got in each others way.

Right now i am thinking loud so if im not right please tell me...the PureVideo is a Decoder for MPEG2 (DVD DD Sound) or ? Then when i watch a DVD from out of the MCE Framework i need this Decoder!? When i watch a film which i downloaded also over the MCE Framework then i need the Soundcard Control Panel in order to make the settings?! Or kann i delete the Soundcard Control Panel and just use the PureVideo?

Thanks alot for taking the time to answer my question. Greetings out of Germany

Purevideo decoder has a very short list of supported audio cards.  Theres a chance yours is not, I don't reconize the name.  There are some that do work not on the list but it isn't many.

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Bryan Socha
Media Center MVP

Multimedia audio controller.  C-Media Electronics Inc.

Chipsatz CM8738

It is from the company Terratec. 

I will add that the only way I could get my audigy2NX to pass DTS was to install creatives "device control" control panel applet.

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http://www.spore.com/view/profile/Vengence_IRL

Bryan (accident) your guide works great, a friend just recently setup MCE for the first time and he was honestly calling me while I was working approximately every 20 or 30 minutes, and as you know as a Network Engineer you don't have time to sit and conversate while troubleshooting WAN issues, so I sent him to you link, and didn't here from him again until he had completed the setup and was playing with Media Center.

Much appreciated, the guide is very helpful

 

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System Specs:
Pentium 4 Processor 3.06GHz
2 GB RAM
GForce 8500 GT 512Mb
Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1800
Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer
42 inch Samsung Series 5 HDMI
Windows 7 System Rating 4.0

I will be reinstalling MCE2005, get another year out of it while I wait for Vista to settle down.

 

Any add'l updates to this article?

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E8400
GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L
SAPPHIRE HD 2600XT 512MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16
Hauppauge 1800
2 gig Crucial ram
LG combo HD drive
LC-03 case
320gig SATA hd
Vista Home premium
WHS 4x1TB drives

nope

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Bryan Socha
Media Center MVP

Thanks so much for the tutorial, Bryan. I only wish I'd had that when I struggled for two weeks to get my MCE working properly a couple of years ago when I built my machine... ...and again last year when an automatic update crashed my sound card and I totally screwed up everything with my inept attempts to "fix" the problem. (about a month later a new update came out to update the bad update). I installed Pinnacle's Studio 10 a few days ago, and the update they required totally disabled my computer. I'm in the process of doing a clean install and found I'd forgotten how to do it right. (now I find that I never did know how to do it right). I have one question: My software came with three disks (one is evidently an update disk). In what order do I use these, and at what point do I use the third (update) disk? It's been so long since I did my last install that I've completely forgotten the order; I only rember that the order was not what the install called for. Thanks again for the help. Buz

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Asus A8N5X, Athlon 64 3800x2, 3GB ram,
EVGA 8600GT, PVR 150, TVHD MCE A180, 1.8 terabyte HD’s, MCE 2005v2 Rollup2, WinDVD7

Thanks so much !!  Reformatting my PC was a nightmare until I was pointed to this post. It frustrated me to no end that after I recieved my PC I reformatted it twice with no problems and then all of a sudden a update for windows was released and my nightmares began.  I normally reformat my PC every 6 months just to keep it running smooth (because I hate a slow running PC...I have a USB drive with everything important on it but I reformat MCE every 6  months)
It got to the point that I was putting up with a slow machine because I didn't want to mess with trying to make MCE work.  I have a internal drive on my C drive that reformats my PC so I just ignored all the insert disc 1 and 2 items and skipped to the part where Windows would boot up after I had restored my PC to factory settings.
Once I started there everything went like clock work.  I no longer have to edit my registry to get it to work or fight with the MCE restore tool and hope it fixes the issue. 
Thanks so much!