Windows 7 - It just works!!!

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mattie47

79 posts

Master Geek

#33975 15-May-2009 00:08

Installed Win 7 RC1 on my "failed" Media Center tonight...I can not believe it!!! It actually works!! and faaarr better than XP and Vista...My HTPC has actually sat in the corner most of the year doing nothing as I've had nothing but problems with XP and Vista. Thought I'd give Win 7 ago and everything is working so smoothly!!!

My set up:
Silverstone LC17 case with 430w PSU
AMD 5200 Brisbane 2.7Ghz Dual core cpu
Albatron K8SLI-AM2 Motherboard
Asus 9400GT Silent
1.5gb ram
600gb WD Sata 2 HDD

Tuners:
Huappagge HVR-3000 (Have spent many hours trying to get it to work in MediaPortal, will work then just fail next reboot,rather depressing....)
Skystar 2 Sat Tuner (Was using for Sat TV in MP as MP would lock up when switching the HVR-3000's tuners)
Pinnacle Bt878 Tuner (for HVC+ in XP ;-) )

Can now take the Skystar 2 out and put it back in my other pc =) I'm also very impressed with MediaCenter actually working! The HVR-3000 changes channel almost instantly even when changing from dvb-t to dvb-s or to analauge.

Overall I'm so far very impressed with Win 7, only hiccup has been that it would BSOD in setup on my gaming pc so unfortunely back to XP on that...Other than that Well Done Microsoft!

Are there any cool plugins you can get with Media Center? Like can you do PIP or anything? =)

Dingbatt

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#215104 15-May-2009 17:18

Yep, it's good. If I can only figure out how to get it to hibernate and wake successfully for recordings it is a replacement option for the dog that is Vista.

“We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. Carl Sagan 1996

Nety

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#215150 15-May-2009 22:14

Dingbatt: Yep, it's good. If I can only figure out how to get it to hibernate and wake successfully for recordings it is a replacement option for the dog that is Vista.

I have found the sleep to be somewhat random. Sometimes it works some times it does not go to sleep. Not sure why. It does always wakeup though and I can put it to sleep if it does not do so itself.

Media centre PC - Case Silverstone LC16M with 2 X 80mm AcoustiFan DustPROOF, MOBO Gigabyte MA785GT-UD3H, CPU AMD X2 240 under volted, RAM 4 Gig DDR3 1033, HDD 120Gig System/512Gig data, Tuners 2 X Hauppauge HVR-3000, 1 X HVR-2200, Video Palit GT 220, Sound Realtek 886A HD (onboard), Optical LiteOn DH-401S Blue-ray using TotalMedia Theatre Power Corsair VX Series, 450W ATX PSU OS Windows 7 x64

chiefie

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#215198 16-May-2009 10:09

Nety, check your Wake on LAN. I had this issue and by disabling the Wake on LAN then it is fine. I also went a bit further buy disabling the Wake on Mouse (in the Device Manager).

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Nety

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#215256 16-May-2009 16:11

chiefie: Nety, check your Wake on LAN. I had this issue and by disabling the Wake on LAN then it is fine. I also went a bit further buy disabling the Wake on Mouse (in the Device Manager).

Thanks for the suggestion however been there done that. Infact have worked my way though a very good guide that had helped before when I was running vista.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/63567-power-options-sleep-mode-problems.html

It now works 80% of the time and if it does not then putting it to sleep works for the other 20%.

mikehayton

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#215557 18-May-2009 11:07

In win7 there's a few more options on the powercfg command including ones to see what caused the machine to wake up and what's causing its to stay awake (and not go back to sleep).

I've seen some postings around of a problem with homegroup causing machines not going back to sleep. The post said the problem was fixed (but not in RC).

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Asmodeus

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#215559 18-May-2009 11:21

For guys having sleep issues, try MCE Standby Tool, I dont think it officialy supports win7 but it works on my machine. I've had no standby issues (sleep or wake) since I installed it and have tried it on more than one OS

http://slicksolutions.eu/mst.shtml

mattie47

79 posts

Master Geek

#215594 18-May-2009 14:14

Asmodeus: For guys having sleep issues, try MCE Standby Tool, I dont think it officialy supports win7 but it works on my machine. I've had no standby issues (sleep or wake) since I installed it and have tried it on more than one OS

http://slicksolutions.eu/mst.shtml

Wow that software looks awesome! Just what I'm after! Just hope it actually works on my Win7 though =)

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Dingbatt

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#215654 18-May-2009 17:52

mattie47:
Asmodeus: For guys having sleep issues, try MCE Standby Tool, I dont think it officialy supports win7 but it works on my machine. I've had no standby issues (sleep or wake) since I installed it and have tried it on more than one OS

http://slicksolutions.eu/mst.shtml

Wow that software looks awesome! Just what I'm after! Just hope it actually works on my Win7 though =)

Yes I have tried MCE Standby Tool. However either I didn't configure it properly or it doesn't like my Win7 installation which is not on the primary partition and not the default boot OS.

“We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. Carl Sagan 1996

mattie47

79 posts

Master Geek

#215789 19-May-2009 00:03

Okay so a couple of hiccups so far...Firstly anything on the Mediaworks dvb-t transponder doesn't seem to work after going to like TV2 etc. I can only get TV3, C4 and TV3+ on DVB-T If I switch over to DVB-S and then back onto either of those 3 channels. As mentioned earlier my tuner is the HVR-3000 so it does DVB-T,S and Analuoge in one.

Another thing, which is prob unrelated to win 7 is my MS MCE Remote, I find after a few days of using the Media center (rebooting, standby, off etc) the remote starts selecting things twice. Like pressing the down key does two keystrokes etc. Changing the batterys or taking them out for a bit has possibly slightly solved this but then the prob comes back again...This also happened in Vista and after doing a google im still stumped.

Another thing I need to improve on is keeping it quiet. The mobo: http://tinyurl.com/paon3j as seen there has a fan on it which makes so much noise. The CPU fan (Stock AMD) is also kinda loud. What would be my best and cheapest option? I don't think I have space to put a heatsink where the mobo fan is as the gfx card sticks out quite a bit but yeah. I tried speedfan and put fans 1-3 down to 50% but the fans RPM speed didn't change at all. Is there a way I can slow that Mobo fan down? as I think its Video card related if your using SLI or Crossfire which I am not...

Also couldn't get MCE Standby Tool to work :-/ I did try to change some settings in the BIOS but when going into standby all power is gone. It's strange cos its like its in hybernate but its in standby (never had a machine do power downs like this one...anyhow =))

All help is appreciated =)

Nety

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#215806 19-May-2009 06:29

mattie47:
Another thing I need to improve on is keeping it quiet. The mobo: http://tinyurl.com/paon3j as seen there has a fan on it which makes so much noise. The CPU fan (Stock AMD) is also kinda loud. What would be my best and cheapest option?

I used
http://www.ascent.co.nz/productspecification.aspx?ItemID=348285

They also make one for SLI which may help in moving it away from the video card.

http://www.ascent.co.nz/productspecification.aspx?ItemID=360303

They will both work very well. You can also turn them 90 deg to get them out of the way. Your right the stock chipset fans run at something like 8000rpm and make a din. That is why they have all but gone now, replaced by passive heatsinks.