One of the first tasks on my to-do list after buying a new computer with Vista Home Premium edition was setting up Media Center Extender for Xbox 360 along with Transcode 360 to make my Xbox 360 a true multimedia device.

Unfortunately the problems started immediately after setting up the Media Center Extender on my PC. (At this point I’d like to mention that the required 8-digit setup key can be acquired by starting Media Center on Xbox 360. I spent more time than I should, figuring this out.) Browsing pictures worked fine, also music and WMV streaming. On the other hand MPEG streaming resulted in errors.

I quickly dismissed a few probable causes for the problem:

• After noticing that Windows Media Player couldn’t properly play MPEG2 files (but strangely DVDs worked just fine) I installed FFDShow with MPEG2 playback option turned on. It fixed the playback in WMP 11 but the problem on the Xbox 360 side remained.
• Just to be sure I temporarily disabled the firewall although the required ports have already been opened and WMV streaming worked just fine. No surprises there – MPEG streaming still didn’t work.
• The last desperate act was completely disabling my antivirus solution in case it would be causing problems. It didn’t help either.

The weekend was coming to its end so I decided to try out the alternative media server solution TVersity. It worked out of the box without problems, even transcoding of unsupported formats to WMV. But during the following week I was growingly unsatisfied with it:

• Fast forwarding and rewinding of transcoded videos didn’t work until they were played back for the first time and cached.
• To make the matters worse even pausing had its problems causing the playback to stop early for the amount of time it was paused in between. Once again the problem only appeared for directly transcoded videos not yet in the cache.
• While music list was properly organized by albums and authors the video list was completely flat making it a real pain scrolling through a few hundred alphabetically sorted files.

All of that convinced me to revisit the Media Center problem. Not wanting to reinstall my machine being otherwise already quite nicely setup by that time I decided to uninstall PC-cillin Internet Security 2007 just to be sure after reading in a few forums that both  McAfee and Norton can prevent streaming altogether even if they are disabled. It actually solved my MPEG streaming problem although I thought it highly unlikely since WMV streaming worked all the time. I still can’t explain why only MPEG streaming was affected but since then I’m using NOD32 and still waiting for the first problem it would cause. Not to mention that it also uses far less system resources than PC-cillin.

The last of my problems was that the default Transcode 360 installation had problems with UAC therefore I had to manually remove it (uninstall didn’t work) and reinstall it in the unsupported service mode.

Now that all problems are solved, my Xbox 360 really is the universal home entertainment system. Being properly connected to my HD LCD TV and surround sound system I am now using it for watching DVDs, streaming videos from my computer, listening to music and watching photos. Even the user interface is very intuitive and easy to use. Only my music collection still needs some reorganization for all the different views in the Media Center to work as intended.

There seems to be a problem with updating Windows Defender when using Microsoft Update instead of Windows Update in Windows Vista. The problem becomes apparent when Windows Defender puts up a warning in the system tray that its signatures are not up to date. This of course shouldn’t happen at all with Automatic Updates turned on. Manual attempts to update Windows Defender result in an error, while Microsoft Update insists that the system is up to date and no new updates are available.

According to the list of Windows Update 5 errors the above error code is 0x80240029 – WU E INVALID PRODUCT LICENCE: A product with an invalid license was found on the system. This is just plain silly (in my case it was happening on an OEM Vista Home Premium edition that came with my new computer) though a look in the WindowsUpdate.log file sheds some light on it:

2007-03-10 07:30:30:258 1144 1308 Report REPORT EVENT: {3B3B2164-091C-4856-9FBC-9D99EDAE3198} 2007-03-10 07:30:25:259+0100 1 154 101 {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000} 0 0 Windows Defender Failure Software Synchronization Client has an invalid Pid.

Looking at this record you can quickly stop wondering why the Pid is invalid. An empty value instead of an actual one is used. Fortunately the solution is quite simple (once you know what it is): disabling the Use Microsoft Update checkbox in the Turn automatic updating on or off section of the Control Panel.

Once you do that Windows Defender will successfully update itself. Windows Update will also find its updates now and maybe even some other updates that didn’t show up when Microsoft Update service was used.

The functionality of the Run as context menu item is often an invaluable tool. The following two scenarios are probably the most common.

• If you’re using a LUA account (which you always should) you can use it to run specific applications with administrative privileges.
• If you’re a developer you can use it to test how you’re application behaves with different credentials.

The downside of this command is that unless you want to use the administrator’s account, you have to enter the desired username every single time which quickly becomes tedious.

You can work around that if use the Runas command. Its /user parameter allows you to set your desired username in advance. To avoid typing you can create a shortcut pointing to the following location:

C:\Windows\System32\runas.exe /user:MYCOMPUTER\MyUser MyApplication.exe

Apart from opening a command prompt for password instead of a nice GUI this should be a perfect solution, as long as you don’t want to run too many applications this way. Creating shortcuts for all of them can once again get tedious.

But fear not, there’s a solution for this as well; create your own context menu command by adding the following entry into the registry:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\exefile\shell\Run as MyUser...\command]
@="C:\\Windows\\system32\\runas.exe /user:MYCOMPUTER\\MyUser \"%L\""

Of course you should replace MYCOMPUTER\MyUser with your desired username in both above examples; and MyApplication.exe in the shortcut with the path to your application. Use HKEY_LOCALMACHINE instead of HKEY_CURRENT_USER to add the command for all users not only for you.

Microsoft Office 2007 applications (at least Outlook and OneNote in particular) require Windows Desktop Search 3.0 to be installed for their built-in search capabilities to work fully. Since out of the box this version of WDS doesn’t support the indexing of files on network shares you also have to install the WDS Add-in for Files on Microsoft Networks. You still have to map the network drives to be indexed but at least you can select them in the WDS options window afterwards.

In Windows Vista WDS 3.0 is already built-in but you still have to install the add-in for the indexing of files on network shares to work.

I’ve recently passed the MCP exam 70-536: TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 – Application Development Foundation. My overall experience has been very positive. Although there are a few not so relevant topics I think that most of them are a must-know if you’re a .NET developer. I found the exam quite easy with only a few really nitpicking questions. Maybe I was just lucky but it was a pleasant surprise for me.

I used the Microsoft Self-Paced Training Kit as the study guide. In spite of the mistakes it contains (see errata) I still find it a useful overview of the topics covered by the exam. I even think of it as a great overview of .NET framework for every developer even if he’s not considering taking the exam. On the other hand it really shouldn’t be your only resource, more of a starting point to direct you to the topics you realize you don’t know enough about. MSDN or a more specialized book can help you from there on.

If you’re interested, I’m selling my own copy of the book at a reduced price. It is in mint condition, I’ve even left the 15% off voucher unused. On a side note: here you can always see the list of items I am selling. The link is listed among my other sites in the left column of this page.