How to reset your Vista Media Center Extender media library

I recently added a Windows Home Server to my home network. This machine was intended to be my new media server, so I moved my photos (all 19,000 of 'em), music, videos and some other files onto the box. Once all the files were moved, I set out to re-point my Media Center libraries to the new locations. In order to keep things as simple as possible, I wanted to start clean. Besides, the links to just about all of the media in the library were invalid anyway.

To clear out a media center library, you need to delete the library database files (or move them to another folder if you want to back them up). These files can be found here:

C:\Users\Mcx#\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player

Replace the # sign with the number Media Center Extender user whose library you wish to reset. In this case, we'll use Mcx1, so our path will be:

C:\Users\Mcx1\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player

Sidenote: Not making any sense? A word about extenders...

Media Center Extenders work by logging onto your Media Center machine using an account created when you first set up an extender to access your Media Center. This account has its own password that is unknown to everyone except for your Media Center Extender device. A unique account is set up for each Media Center Extender device in your network, so that they can all access your Media Center at the same time. The user name is numbered based on the number of Media Center Extenders in your network, starting with 1. For example, the first Media Center Extender user is called Mcx1, the second Mcx2, and so on. Each Mcx user has it own profile, and therefore, its own media library.

Make sense now?

Make sure that your extender is not logged in, then open the folder I described above in Windows Explorer. If you want to back up your database, create a new folder in this directory called "backup". Highlight all of the files with the .wmdb extension (which should be all of them). If you're backing up the files, move them to the backup folder. If not, delete them. Don't worry. Media Center will recreate them the next time you connect your extender.

Click the image for a larger version.

Next, log into your Media Center Extender. Don't go to your music, photo or video libraries yet! Once logged in, go to Tasks > Settings > Library Setup. Since your Media Player database has just been re-created, it will likely only have your default folders. Add additional media folders as needed in Library Setup. Once you finish with the wizard, the "Adding Media" dialog should pop up. I recommend letting it run until it's finished, as this will be the fastest way to rebuild your library. The scan will continue to run if you close the dialog by clicking OK, but it will do so in the background and will take longer.



That's it! You've just rebuilt your Media Center Extender library from scratch.

An open letter to Creative Labs in response to "The Daniel_K Situation"

It's unlikely that Creative Labs cares about what I have to say, as they generally don't seem to care much about their customers as it is, but here is the text of a message I posted to Creative Labs' support forum regarding their recent efforts to stop Daniel_K from distributing vastly improved drivers for their Audigy series of sound cards.

I've been a long time Creative user, and I'm afraid that you've lost me with this one. I have used Soundblaster cards since the 8-bit Soundblaster Pro. Since then I've owned the Soundblaster 16, AWE 32, and a couple cards in the Audigy series. For over 15 years, I've used Creative's cards almost exclusively (aside from a brief stint with the Pro Audio Spectrum 16).

When Vista SP1 was released last week, I didn't see it in Windows Update because the latest driver available for my Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro was not compatible with the update (see this KB article [microsoft.com]). This driver hasn't been updated since March 2007, and didn't work all that well to boot. Analog 5.1 surround was sketchy, and the sub channel didn't even work.

Daniel_K came to the rescue in my situation. I needed to uninstall my drivers to upgrade to SP1, then install his driver package get my card working again. The installation went very smoothly, and my card is working better than it ever has on Vista. There are some quirks, but all surround channels are working as they should, and sound quality seems to be improved over the previous drivers (although this could easily be attributed to the placebo effect).

The last thing that you should be doing is going after Daniel_K. If anything, you should hire the guy to teach their driver team a thing or two.

Sadly, this is not likely a technical issue, but a marketing one. You seem to have made a deliberate decision to leave Audigy users in the cold in an effort to get us to upgrade to your new X-Fi series. Problem is, it doesn't seem to be working. You know full well that your forum here has post after post lamenting your substandard driver support with promises to avoid your cards in the future.

Your strategy may work with casual customers with a sub-$50 card, but not for others who have invested over $200 for a high-end Audigy card with a breakout box. Those people, like me, are still looking for return on their investment, and will be the first to walk away from you when they get snubbed.

Hopefully this is a misunderstanding, and you will work out a deal with Daniel_K. If this doesn't happen, you stand to lose some of your most loyal customers. Given your track record so far, the outlook doesn't look good.

Please. Step up and do the right thing here. Support your customers, and the rest will follow.

Tip: Make Windows Desktop Search less CPU intensive

After installing Vista, I noticed that the CPU would peg itself at 100% for minutes at a time periodically. Using Process Explorer, I determined that the culprit was SearchFilterHost.exe, which is the part of Windows Desktop Search that indexes your documents for that zippy search you get from the Start Menu. SearchProtocolHost.exe and SearchIndexer.exe were also using more resources than normal. Stopping the "Windows Search Service" would fix the problem, but it also (obviously) stopped my documents and emails from being indexed. After getting used to using indexed searches on my emails, I was definitely not about to disable the service for good.

The problem was most prevalent when it was rebuilding a fresh index or after I modified a lot of files. It also seemed to bring my system to a crawl when running iTunes. After doing a little research on the web, I stumbled upon the answer: Disable the indexing of XML documents. It looks like the indexing XML documents is a CPU intensive process. Either that, or there's contention with other processes when they use temporary XML files. The reason I saw the issue with iTunes has to do with how iTunes manages its music library. It uses a number temporary XML files which Windows Desktop Search attempts to index.

To disable this file type, go to the Control Panel and launch the Indexing Options app. Click the Advanced button, then go to the File Types tab. Find the xml extension and uncheck the box next to it. Clicking OK will prompt you to rebuild the index. Do so.

Now, you may have your reasons for wanting to index XML files. If that's the case, you may not want to turn this file type off. In that case, consider excluding the iTunes library folder from the list of folders that will be indexed. Personally, the annoyance of having my CPU pegged more often that it should be was enough for me to turn off the XML file type for good. I may turn it back on at a later date, perhaps when Microsoft updates Windows Desktop Search.

I posted this because I thought that it might help someone else with the same issue. If you've found this via a Google search, hopefully this information will ease your pain. Keep in mind that this tip is not limited to Windows Vista users. To my knowledge, these tips work with all versions of Windows Desktop Search.

My Vista horror story

Ever since the release of Vista in January, stories of failed or expensive upgrades have been floating around the 'net. Many of these stories, however, seem to be overly dramatized versions of ho-hum "why didn't you tell me I had to upgrade my 10-year old video card?" I can understand that you're frustrated, but implying that missing device drivers for INSERT DEVICE HERE is a sign of a broken OS is, in my opinion, severely misguided. For the most part it seemed to be a relatively easy thing to do for anyone with a little tech savvy. Personally, I'm an IT consultant that has maintained more than one corporate network and have been building my own PC's for years. I'm a shoe-in for this stuff, right? Almost.

The Plan

First off, experience with every upgrade since Windows 95 has told me that a clean install is the way to go. I also heard that driver support wasn't up to snuff just yet and even that some of my hardware (like my Creative WebCam NX Ultra) would just plain not work. That, along with some application compatibility problems, prompted me to pursue a dual-boot scenario. This would allow my existing XP installation to remain untouched while I get my Vista installation set up to my liking. That would allow me take baby steps towards this brave new world.

Setting up a system for dual boot is actually much easier than it sounds like. In fact, I had already done this once before, following my own advice from an earlier post. My previous attempt with Vista RC-1 had gone off without a hitch.

Getting Started

It didn't take long for the problems to start. The first order of business involved using Symantec's Partition Magic 8.0 to resize the boot partition so that I could create another partition on that drive for the Vista install. When you do this, Partition Magic needs to reboot your machine to make the necessary changes to the partition. Like I said before, I had already done this quite a few times before so I didn't think that I had anything to worry about.

I was wrong. During this process, Partition Magic halted with error #1552. At this point my system rebooted, and I was greeted with a blue screen of death. My stomach dropped.

"No problem," I tried to tell myself. "These things happen from time to time. Let's just reboot and hope that this is a one-off deal."

This, and all subsequent reboots halted with the same stop error 0x0000007b: INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE. Initially, I tried running a number of the tools on the Ultimate Boot CD (if you don't already have this, stop reading. Download it. Burn it. File it away for a rainy day. Go ahead, I'll wait). Sadly, none of the tools fit the bill. In fact, most of them wouldn't even recognize the volume. After doing some research, it appeared that simply running chkdsk would take care of it. Since I had no XP boot disk, I booted into the XP install disc and ran the Recovery Console. Unfortunately, chkdsk consistently failed, complaining that it couldn't read the volume.

Moving On

At this point, I'm ready to give up. I had backed up most of my data, but I still had some documents and photos that would be lost. With my dual-boot dreams dashed, I figured that it was time to move on. Having resigned losing them, I decided to install Vista over my damaged volume. Thankfully, my boot volume was in a RAID 1 configuration, so it was mirrored onto another drive. If there was any chance that I could save data on the drive, it was by breaking the mirror. I'd install Vista on one, then try to salvage the other later.

After breaking the mirror, I installed Vista. The install progressed quickly, and it went smoothly. On its final reboot Vista recognized the other half of my broken mirror and decided that it had a problem and ran chkdsk on it. After rebuilding a few indexes, my newly repaired disk appeared fully intact in Explorer!

Post Mortem

Why did this happen? Apparently, the problem resulted from the fact that the disk that I wanted to repartition was RAID 1. What I didn't know at the time was that Partition Magic 8.x doesn't support RAID 1. What I should have done was break the mirror, repartition, then set up the RAID once again. Had Partition Magic detected my RAID configuration and warned me of this, I would have been saved a lot of time.

The irony of this is that with all of the Vista horror stories floating around, my problems weren't caused by Vista itself. In fact, Vista ended up bringing my data back from the void. Thankfully, short of losing my shot at a dual-boot configuration (and a few years of my life...it was a long night), I'm not too much worse for wear. I've been happily running the latest version of Vista for the past couple of months with all of my data in tact.

Hopefully, when your time comes your Vista install will go to plan. If not, maybe you'll find something in my story that will help. Failing that, know that there are others out there that feel your pain. It probably won't give you much solace but...there you have it.

MS to give holiday computer buyers coupons for free Vista upgrades?

Some news leaked out regarding an alleged incentive program offered by Microsoft to entice potential holiday PC buyers into sealing the deal. A number of computer manufacturers and retailers were a little peeved at the news that Vista will be missing the 2006 holiday buying season. This would have a major impact on their business since so many consumers would rather wait for Vista before buying a new PC.

Apparently, Microsoft is attempting to alleviate that pain by offering consumers coupons for a free Vista upgrade once it comes out (whenever that is). While Microsoft isn't confirming this, they aren't denying it either. From Ars Technica:

The coupon offer will begin in October, and is a result of a joint effort between Microsoft and a group of leading PC vendors worldwide. According to the anonymous sources, Microsoft actually reached an agreement with these PC companies back in July, but decided not to reveal their plans so as to protect PC sales in the third quarter.

Will this be enough to keep PC sales strong through the holiday season?

Link

How to dual boot Windows XP and Vista Beta 2

Lifehacker has a straightforward how-to on how to create a partition on your system drive for a dual-boot XP/Vista Beta 2 install. The Vista installer makes this process a breeze as long as you have Symantec's Partition Magic (a product that I'd recommend anyway). I was a little trepidacious about trying this at first, but it worked out perfectly.

If you're interested in giving Vista a try but aren't willing to trash your current XP install (which is wise, IMHO), this may work for you. Just make sure that you've got about 20 GB on your system drive to devote to the install.

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