Tag Archive for 'Mods'

Vista Sidebar for XP

Published
by
Chris
on June 11, 2007
in Software
. 0 Comments

Please note that some info in this post may be out of date. Please use this post for reference purposes and a point in the right direction.

Ever since I first used the Vista back in the early days of when it was still in Beta, I fell in love with the Sidebar that it had. Sure enough it’s not a feature rich as Desktop Sidebar, but I but I still like it.

For the last little while, I’ve been looking for a sidebar project that is able to use the gadgets for the Vista Sidebar, but I was starting to think that this didn’t exist. The closest that I’ve found is a sidebar project from thoosje.com, but it has it’s own library of gadgets, so I was still out of luck. Then I stumbled upon this post over at joejoe.org.

Vista Sidebar in XP

As you can see from this screenshot, I’ve got it working, and it works great. Adding gadgets isn’t the same as in Vista, you have to add them manually, but the how to is in the read me in the download.

If you’d like to try this out, head on over to the post at joejoe.org (linked above), and click on the big green image at the bottom of the first post. It says something like “Vista RTM Sidebar for Windows XP”. For anyone that is confused or doesn’t understand what’s going on, all you need to do is install VIAOXP/2003, make sure you have IE7, WMP11 and KB918997 installed, and follow the rest of the instructions.

Convert XP Pro to MCE

Published
by
Chris
on April 2, 2007
in Software
. 7 Comments

Since the 2007 Fall Update, I no longer have a need to run MCE on my PC. The main reason I done this was to get Transcode 360 to convert video files so they would play on my big TV.

Yesterday I helped a friend of mine, Daz, set up Windows Media Center Edition 2005 to work with his Xbox360. After a bit of stuffing around thanks to Microsoft doing such a outstanding job as they always do, we managed to get it all working after a few hours.

There were 2 main issues that we came across. The first was that when installing MCE, it would ask for the WindowsXP Service Pack 2 CD, but what it really wanted was Disc 1 from the install disc set. We finally worked that one out only to find that Update Rollup 2 wouldn’t install cause it wanted MCE 2005 which we had. A quick google search found a registry hack to fix that. After that it was pretty much all fine an dandy, except for a few network tweaks.

I must say that I’m pretty impressed with the Media Center feature on the Xbox360. So much that I’ve decided to have a go myself, so today, I went on a hunt to find a *cough* copy *cough* to experiment with.

Well, I didn’t think it was possible to convert WindowsXP Pro to Media Center Edition 2005. Not an upgrade, but more like installing a program. Basically what I found was a disc image which basically does a few hacks to WindowsXP Pro so that it thinks that it’s MCE, and then you install the MCE software and the updates, and if your lucky, you should have MCE on your PC.

I gave this a go and installed it on an old hard drive I had laying around that still had an install of WinXP. I went through all the steps and done everything exactly as the instructions say (it’s pretty strict), and after about an hour I had MCE on my PC. Pretty simply. I then proceeded to install Update Rollup 2 (required for the Xbox360) and there I started to run into a few issues. Pretty much the same error as Daz was getting, though the solution wasn’t the same. I had a browse through the UPDATE.INF file with the rollup and made sure that all the required registry settings were the same. I found a few for the .NET framwork that weren’t the same, so I fixed them up, and away we went, Update Rollup 2 was installing. I was pretty happy then.

I added the Xbox360 extender software and now my 360 has MCE working on it.

Since I done this on an old HDD, now I have to go and do it on my main hard drive. Though I will backup all my data just in case something does happen to go wrong. I read about a few people that have lost everything due to a bad burn of a disc and things like that.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I am still using my legit Windows product key. This was one of the main factors of this task.

If any one is interested in this, let me know either by leaving a comment here (make sure you leave your email address), or via my contact page.

Please do not ask me for info about this. The site that had the links is no longer online. Here is a possible source that may do the same, but I haven’t tried this so I cannot confirm. If this source has worked for you, would you please mind leaving a comment below.