Clean Reinstall of Cablecard Media PC

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PeteS457

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Clean Reinstall of Cablecard Media PC

#1

Post by PeteS457 » Fri Jan 15, 2021 7:08 pm

Hi all. I have a homebuilt (2009, core duo E8400, 8GB) media PC with Ceton 4-tuner cablecard that I have been using to drive my cable TV service to my main viewing room and to an Xbox 360 extender in another viewing room two floors away, connected via Ethernet. I would love to have this computer upgraded to Windows 10 like all other computers in the house, but using cablecard and extenders, that's seems impossible. Other than occasionally using the PC to browse the internet, being a cablecard media PC is it's sole function. I have tried to keep the pc meticulously clean and running smoothly (easier said than done), but overall it has run well and done it's job for several years. The past couple years the only software upgrades have been using the Modern Media UI+ interface and the EPG123 guide data and I like those upgrades very much. However, in the past few months, the media center experience has become poor. WMC crashes quite often when maneuvering through the menu items. The Guide interface is often corrupted after a nightly EPG123 guide data update to the point I have to do a system restore from the day before (which seems to address the problem). Lately, when running WMC on the extender at the same time as the main media pc, the main media pc has significant lag and jitter with cable programming. Last night I noticed that it has deteriorated to the point that you can't view the same cable channel on the extender and the media pc at the same time. I can't go into the Add Extender functionality in WMC at all without WMC crashing and I haven't been able to go into the General Startup behavior functionality for a while now without it crashing. I wish I could just reinstall the WMC component of Windows 7 and start from scratch as that's the only part that doesn't seem to be working well. But considering that's 98% of the purpose of this computer, that renders the whole computer experience unsatisfactory.

Thus I'd like to consider what always used to be a good thing to do from time to time with Windows 7 - a clean reinstall. This Windows 7 installation on the media pc goes back to 2012. However, with Windows 7 being EOL, plus the fact I haven't done this in several years, I'm a bit nervous about doing a clean reinstall on the computer that runs all the cable programming throughout my home. Before I get out and find my old Windows 7 Ultimate AIO, I wanted to run my endeavor through experts here who may can give me some advice.

Should I do this at all? Will it download drivers from Microsoft after EOL or retain drivers from the old installation? How about all the windows updates up to EOL?

What if I can't find my product key? Will it retain the one from the existing installation?

Play Ready will be updated, Ceton drivers (although I probably have those), the Cisco tuning adapter - all the things to re-activate the tuners will be OK?

There's a lot of re-setup after this - firewall settings, port forwarding things I did, setting up the libraries, special folder locations (I put Documents/Pictures/Videos on different drives in the computer) - ugghh, I'm dreading this. I guess I'm asking, would you be doing the same thing I'm doing, is there a intermediate step I should be trying before doing a complete reinstall of Windows 7, can a reinstall of Windows 7 even be performed correctly in a EOL world, are there any tools that I may not be aware of that will make this go smoother. It's just been a long time (2012) since I've had to consider doing something like this.

Thanks for any help or advice.

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garyan2

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#2

Post by garyan2 » Fri Jan 15, 2021 8:00 pm

You might want to try a couple things first. You can uninstall WMC and reinstall it... I'd probably do the following before a wiping the OS and starting over.

1. Disable MMUI+ to see if that changes anything.
2. Uninstall/Reboot/Reinstall WMC. You can do this from Control Panel->Programs and Features->Turn Windows features on or off. Scroll down to Media Features \ Windows Media Center and uncheck for uninstall, recheck for install.
3. If that doesn't change anything, open the EPG123 client and click [Rebuild WMC Database] and reimport the epg123.mxf file.

At this point, your WMC is "fresh". If still having problems, then I'd be looking at a fresh install of Win7. I use Simplix Update Pack 7 which has all the updates in a single package. I actually integrate this pack into an Win7 ISO so I can do a fresh install with all the updates already integrated, but the package to download can run standalone as well.
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

PeteS457

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#3

Post by PeteS457 » Fri Jan 15, 2021 9:03 pm

Wow....excellent suggestions. I think I'll wait until Monday to try them out because I don't want to take any chances with the media pc before a weekend when viewing (sports, etc.) is at a premium. But I will do them one by one as you suggested. (I knew about the Windows features on/off, but never thought to check to see if I could uninstall/reinstall just the WMC component to make it "fresh". Definitely worth trying first.)

Thanks Gary (especially for the epg123). There has been something going on with the epg updates nightly at 4am. The logs say it completed with no errors, but I'll turn on the TV first thing in the morning and the Guide will not be populated and each channel on the left hand side will have three empty strips for each of the channel numbers. At this point, the only thing I can do to fix it is do a system restore from the day before, which solves the problem. This has started happening about once every couple weeks. Just FYI...

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garyan2

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#4

Post by garyan2 » Fri Jan 15, 2021 11:00 pm

Actually, that sounds like you have a corrupted database and when epg123 attempts to perform a garbage collection, the database crashes. You may want to just jump to #3 above, do a recovery and import the mxf file. Takes but a few minutes and you may be good to go after that.
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

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StinkyImp

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#5

Post by StinkyImp » Sat Jan 16, 2021 2:52 pm

PeteS457 wrote: Fri Jan 15, 2021 7:08 pmWhat if I can't find my product key? Will it retain the one from the existing installation?
My .02 cents...

I use Josh Cell's "Advanced Tokens Manager" to restore my Windows 7 activation if I have to do a fresh install. As long as you don't make significant hardware changes to your system, this will restore your previous activation without having to call Microsoft or perform an online activation.

His website is no longer active, but the version I use is located in the "Third Party Programs" folder here.

This is the copy I've used multiple times on multiple Win 7 computers since 2013. Josh also included a readme.txt file with additional information.

PeteS457

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#6

Post by PeteS457 » Sun Jan 17, 2021 3:50 pm

Thanks very much for the suggestion. Every bit of info helps me fix my current problem and will strengthen my knowledgebase for maintaining this aging Windows 7 machine going forward.

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DavidinCT

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#7

Post by DavidinCT » Wed Jan 20, 2021 1:46 pm

If you have a WMC database that is damaged, you could possibly roll back. This saved by butt a few times...

http://web.archive.org/web/201207022133 ... k-fix.aspx

I did this on my old website that i needed to take down because it was bombed by spam.

Anyway, find the Database in WMC, right click on it and go to "previous versions" tab, find a version that was before your issue and try to restore it...
-Dave
Twitter @TheCoolDave

Windows Media Center certified and WMC MVP 2010 - 2012

unclebun

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#8

Post by unclebun » Wed Jan 20, 2021 3:05 pm

If you haven't already thought of it, one of the best things to do would be to buy a new hard drive or SSD. They are cheap. Do your new installation on that and then you have time to build it up and test it the way you want. You can spend an hour or two each evening and work on it, and when you run out of time, reconnect the old hard drive and you still have your system to use until the new installation is up and running.

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#9

Post by captain_video » Thu Jan 28, 2021 3:52 pm

I just did a complete fresh install of Windows 7 Ultimate using the Update Pack that Gary pointed me to here: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=13398. Check posts #8, 10, and 11 in that thread for details on what I did to get all Windows updates installed and fix a few problems I encountered. I installed Win 7 on a spare SSD that I had lying around along with the aforementioned updates and all drivers. I did a barebones installation with just the necessary apps and hardware drivers to get WMC up and running. I have a Ceton InfiniTV 6 installed in the HTPC along with a couple of SiliconDust HDHomeRun Quatro ATSC tuners. Once I got everything set up and working I cloned the drive to the original drive in my HTPC using the free version of AOMEI Backupper and kept the other SSD as a backup. I'm also using EPG123 so in the event that I ever need to restore the backup to another drive I will obviously have to update that to the current version and run it to update the guide data.

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