It's great that you guys continue to wave the flag and like me continue to support WMC.
I decided to do a clean install (just this month) to tidy up a fairly abused i3/gigabyte machine, also to track down and archive all those bespoke drivers and utilities that have held it all together and given me so much pleasure. I did think of moving across to W10 but as the machine has no real need to connect to the web and W7 just works, I stayed with it.
I have a full original copy of W7 Home Premium so having swapped my existing SSD for a new replacement one (120gb) I put the 64 bit disk in and started the clean install. Two major issues I came up against: you can't get anywhere without SP1 and I had a feeling I needed Explorer 11. SP1 I initially got from a murky download site but later got a clean copy from my brother along with Explorer 11 installer. He also gave me a source of the windows stand alone installer.
SP1 installed no problem and Explorer 11 announced it needed to get some updates before installing but otherwise worked flawlessly. I then left windows updates running and although there were a couple of failures eventually it announced my machine was up to date.
After tracking down the driver for my blackgold tv terestrial tuner, WMC found all the usual tv and radio channels and in the background, downloaded from the tv transmissions, most of the programme guides for 7 days.
After setting the library locations, it found my music and photos on my network drive and previous tv recordings on the local hard drive. Just in case, I installed a commercial free internet security package.
I had hoped that the new installation would go in and out of standby quicker but at the end of the day it is a Microsoft product
I still have an occasional problem with an on-screen message that audio drivers are missing inspite of the fact that its an hdmi output and the video is working! This I overcome with a restart. The other issue is that sometimes WMC opens in a small window but closing and re-opening fixes that.
I still continue to marvel that there are features in WMC that have still not found their way into mainstream pvrs and visitors continue to be impressed. WMC, a product way ahead of its time and yet another market leader killed off by Microsoft.