Epg123 WMC and Extenders

[John Barnet]

Hi

After many years running WMC with 3 xbox extenders I found deprecated usability when the program guide was withdrawn. I have since installed EPG123 - what a great improvement - but now my extenders dont work.

They load up, photos can be viewed but recorded, music or live tv when clicked causes the extender to disconnect and reconnect to the WMC. WMC is working fine. Does anyone have any experience why previously working extenders should now be non functional?

[dkrom]

I have one xbox360 and two dma2100 extenders that work better since my switch to epg123. The guide data downloaded by epg123 is specific to the channels I get so the guide loads much faster. My first instinct would be to say reinstall one extender and see if that helps, but you may want to wait for Gary to respond (creator of epg123). He is on here often and may know of a different fix.

[John Barnet]

Did all that - no improvement.

[technodevotee]

I have a testbed PC with WMC installed on it. It has never had EPG123 installed on it but as a result of your post, I installed the latest version this morning, configured it and did a guide download.

Apart from populating the empty guide, nothing has changed on the system and my Xbox 360 is still playing Recorded TV just fine. The only thing I noticed was that the PC was a bit slow because it was very busy for half an hour or so but after that it settled down and went back to normal.

As far as I know, installing EPG123 doesn't change anything in Windows or the configuration of WMC except to add itself as a source then download and import guide data. It certainly should not affect Live or Recorded TV or Video in any way - even on an extender.

[adam1991]

Hi

After many years running WMC with 3 xbox extenders I found deprecated usability when the program guide was withdrawn. I have since installed EPG123 - what a great improvement - but now my extenders dont work.

They load up, photos can be viewed but recorded, music or live tv when clicked causes the extender to disconnect and reconnect to the WMC. WMC is working fine. Does anyone have any experience why previously working extenders should now be non functional?

My first thought is that simultaneous with you installing EPG123, you also made some other change. Could be logical, could be physical.

The usual reason for extenders not to work is some issue inside your network infrastructure, from the WMC box NIC itself through the drivers to the patch cable to the switch to the...you get the idea, all the way through the patch cable connected to the extender.

Or maybe the extenders glitched. Maybe you had a power glitch that hit each extender the same way and caused something. (Not likely, but still.)

I can say with incredible confidence that EPG123 in and of itself had absolutely nothing to do with this.

Can you set these extenders up fresh inside WMC?

Story: on a car forum recently, somebody came in and said "I just changed my transmission fluid and now the car bucks and stalls and won't go out of first gear. I also changed out to a new cold air intake." Everyone focused on his transmission oil change process, did he do it wrong, use the wrong fluid, etc. Only one guy suggested "take off the cold air intake". Everyone laughed at him--how could that be the problem?--but what he was really saying was, undo everything you did and go back to the very beginning. And in fact, it turned out that he left a foam packing piece inside one end of the new intake pipe and the engine wasn't getting any air!

So pardon me when I suggest that you look at everything you did as part of this EPG123 install. All too often we don't hear the whole story (in fact, there's an entire thread here from someone else about how EPG123 ruined his whole system, then we found out the whole story later, similar to my story above), and frequently it's because you're thinking that "the other things I did" weren't important. They all too frequently are.

[John Barnet]

The extenders were re-installed - no luck.

Your advice makes plenty of sense - I'll look at the WMC again to see what might have changed.

I'd have thought that someone on the forum might have clues as to what might have changed.

thx

[technodevotee]

Without specifics, its hard to say but my guess would be a windows update or a codec change.

I had a system that was working perfectly until it was rebooted and it turned out that an update had changed something but because the system hadn't been rebooted since the update, it didn't come to light until I restarted it for some completely unrelated problem.

[adam1991]

Yes, codec change is also top on the list for extenders not working. We've heard plenty of extender stories that got resolved by uninstalling a third party codec pack.

[John Barnet]

Hi

A windows update is likely but where would a codec change come from. There is nothing I'm aware of that I have installed/updated in the last few months.

thx

[adam1991]

then it's not a codec. You would have had to install a third party package for this to be a problem.

[technodevotee]

Windows updates sometimes change codecs.

It happens all the time on Windows 10 and it breaks WMC but because WMC isn't supported, Microsoft don't check for that.

The testbed I mentioned stopped playing Recorded TV locally a week or so ago even though the Xbox was working fine. I checked the logs and found that an update had been installed the day before.

A day or so later, it started working again even though I hadn't done anything.

Who knows why? Not me.