Posts Tagged ‘windows 7’

4
Mar

Fixing Windows Media Center TV Setup

   Posted by: Dante    in General

Given certain circumstances, Windows Media Center will get stuck at “Downloading TV Setup Data” and do nothing else. This generally occurs after some sort of hardware change, as it happened to me on a motherboard change and on a hard drive change. YMMV.

For the sake of clarity, this entire post refers to Windows 7, but it could apply to Vista as well, given that the paths are relatively the same.

Anyway, there are a few posts around the Web that tell you to run a command line for mcupdate.exe with some switches. That’s like getting a tire patch, it’ll work for now but won’t last. Here’s the new tire solution:

1) Go to the Control Panel, Programs and Features, and click “Turn Windows Features on/off”. Uninstall Windows Media Center.

2) Reboot.

3) Empty out the folder C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\eHome\

4) Go to the features and enable Windows Media Center again.

5) Run Windows Media Center and do the TV setup.

This solution is the only one that worked across reboots and allowed me to go and reset the TV signal without hassle. Please leave a comment if something else worked for you.

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25
Apr

Windows System Image Restore and Intel RAID volumes

   Posted by: Dante    in General

Scenario:

Computer has 4 hard drives, two in RAID-0 and 2 independent disks. RAID-0 contains two partitions, C: and D:. One of the drives started failing, needing replacement, and then a backup was done using Windows System Image Backup, included with Windows 7. Recovery DVD was generated t oboot the computer.

All fine and dandy, the failing HDD was replaced. Another RAID-0 volume was created, and proceeded to boot the recovery DVD. After following the steps and making sure to exclude the independent disks from the restore process, the backup says that there are no valid volumes present. Tried downloading the latest Intel drivers, no go. Tried going with all independent disks, the DVD wouldn’t even boot. After some time playing around and fearing for the data, here’s a few tips to have a successful experience:

  1. Make sure to label the new RAID-0 volume *exactly* as it was before. The default is Volume0, and it *has* to be the same for the restore to work;
  2. Disconnect any and all hard drives that you don’t need. In this procedure, there were two independent disks, one had the image backups, the other was for regular data storage. Had to disconnect the second independent disk for the restore to work.

In a nutshell, the procedure works fine, despite the majority of people going to Acronis (I agree it’s a much more reliable solution) for this image backup. Following the 2 simple tips mentionded before, the backup will restore and the drives will be the same as before. As always, make sure to have regular data backups in place!

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