Clean Win7 install - PlayReady update was incomplete loop part 2

[ld4west]

Please note, this is a followup to the post added on Sat Mar 2 by td4west2, who is also me. Over the weekend all login attempts to this, my existing account ld4west, failed and an email to admin@thegreenbutton,tv came back with email address not found so I created the td4west2 account to get the previous post up. This ld4west account started working again Sunday night(?) so hopefully anyone that has suggestions will feel OK replying to a post from a 2+ year site member. Going forward ld4west will be used as long as I can continue to login to it. Thanks.

Here is the workflow for the next attempt to get past the PlayReady loop. Please let me know if you see something that should be added, changed or deleted that might result in a successful install.

The actual WMC install during that workflow will be based off the ‘Guide’ found here https://drive.google.com/file/d/13-R5P4 ... Q-m49/view I’m still not sure exactly where in the process the installation of PlayReady via the standalone installer should be so for now installation of that software is staying where it is on page 49 of the ‘Guide’ and the Install PlayReady step inside the WMC Setup as shown on page 70 of the Guide is being run there by replying ‘I agree’ and clicking ‘Next’.

The difference in this attempt is all logins will be as ‘administrator’ (including when in safe mode). This attempt will not include a re-install of Windows 7 but does include steps to turn off the WMC feature, run ResetDRM and delete all files and directories that have been discussed in existing posts so that all traces of WMC are hopefully removed. Once the WMC feature is ‘turned off’ and the machine rebooted, the WMC feature will be turned back on, rebooted again and then WMC setup will be run as described.

Here’s the plan:

Part 1 - Remove WMC
1) Power up and login as administrator. The machine has been updated per this Microsoft post https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... e9454d231b so there is an option on the login screen to login as ‘Administrator’.
2) turn off the WMC feature using ’turn windows features on or off’
3) delete PlayReady PC Runtime X86 (1.3.0) from Control Panel —> Programs and Features (it will be reinstalled before WMC Setup is run per the Guide)
4) leave EPG123 1.8.2.9 installed. (the configurator and client will be started when needed as WMC Setup is being run per the Guide)
5) leave HDHomerun 20231214 installed. It is working.
6) Leave Digital Cable Advisor installed. It is working.
7) reboot in Safe Mode and login as administrator
8) run ResetDRM (only seems to work in safe mode)
9) delete ehome and PlayReady directories
10) reboot
Part 2 - Setup WMC
11) login as administrator
12) verify ehome and PlayReady directories are gone
13) turn on WMC feature using ’turn windows features on or off’’ -
14) reboot and login as administrator
15) Open the Guide and go to page 49 which is Install PlayReadyPC 1.3.0 (X86). Note that all the steps in the Guide before the PlayReadyPC install on page 49 have been completed on this machine except for any that have to do with VM.
16) After the PlayReadyPC install is complete and before going on to page 53 to start WMC, open the command prompt using ‘run as adminstrator’ and run the ‘c:\windows\ehome\mcupdate.exe -MediaCenterRecoveryTask’ command to ensure WMC setup will start when WMC is opened.
17) Continue on page 53 of the Guide, (after installation of PlayReady). Use ‘run as administrator’ to start WMC from the Startup Menu —> All Programs —> Windows Media Center line item. (Yes using ‘run as administrator’ is redundant when logged in as administrator but it can’t hurt)
18) proceed thru pages 54 through 59 of the Guide, choosing ‘Express’ setup up, etc, That part of the install has always run without incident.
19) skip the install of EPG123 and go to page 62 and launch the EPG123 Client Configurator and Client Setup. Note that configuration of the current EPG123 version is slightly different than described in the Guide. On page 75 EPG123 does not ‘auto-continue’ but rather it is necessary to exit the WMC Setup to get EPG123 to continue. Once it continues there are also some differences like needing to close and then re-open the EPG123 Client to get the line up to load so they can be matched as the WMC Guide Channels but in the end EPG123 works and the WMC Program Guide is populated correctlhy. Once EPG123 setup finishes WMC is ready to run.
20) Page 77 of the Guide shows WMC displaying a Copying Prohibited screen when a DRM protected channel like ESPN is selected and suggests a reboot which will be done regardless.
21) After the reboot the guide shows ESPN being successfully displayed. During the many attempts I’ve never gotten the ‘Copying Prohibited’ screen, it is always the Update PlayReady - The PlayReady update was incomplete’ screen with ‘Update’ as the only button which leads to the ‘Update PlayReady …cannot connect to the Internet’ screen ‘…try again’ yes / no and at that point the install is effectively over with no access to DRM channels. Note it is possible to exit the PlayReady loop by using the back arrow (and sometimes the green button) to get back to the main screen and use the Program Guide or Live TV to view and record OTA channels and the few non-DRM channels on Spectrum so except for DRM channels, WMC is ready to use.
21) Going through steps in the Guide from page 59 through page 75, the plan is to ‘agree’ to the install of PlayReady PC Runtime EULA as shown on page 70 of the Guide. That step has always worked without incident. It is during the ‘Update PlayReady’ step on page 74 when one replies ‘no’ that seems to set the stage for the PlayReady loop when trying to view a DRM channel.
22) Once the loop occurs when trying to watch a DRM channel I have tried several of the suggested workarounds like the 6 steps to stop the receiver service while WMC is open. rename mspr.hds to old etc and in addition, run the 6 commands to delete all .hdr and caches but neither of those suggested workarounds along with suggestions from several others in other posts has ever worked to get past the Update PlayReady problem.

Thats it. If you got this far thanks for reading and thanks in advance for any suggestions.

HTPC Config:
HP Pavilion 6220 desktop
Windows 7 - SP1
Asus IPIBL-LB MB
Pentium Dual Core E5200 2.5G (32 bit)
4G RAM
2TB HDD
EN210 Asus graphics card
Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1800
HDHomerun Prime
Spectrum CableCARD
Cisco STA1520

[robnitro]

I recently was upgrading the OS drive which is an old ssd and could not at all get this garbage drm working! Like you I followed that guide word for word.

DRM only keeps honest people honest.

[ld4west]

Re: DRM... Roger that! Looking at this post about DRM from 10 years ago and it makes me wonder if my situation is because of some issue with DRM/PlayReady metadata saved on the HDD? viewtopic.php?f=22&t=8110&p=84377&hilit ... ady#p82491
Having to do this rebuild because a dirty power outage/surge caused BIOS setting changes including setting HDD config to RAID. WMC restarted automatically after the outage (as it should have) with HDD access set to RAID and failed. Fixed the BIOS settings and after a couple of failed attempts to reboot just booted from the recovery DVD to restore from a system image. That image has been tested and successfully restored the box a couple of years ago. Restore completed 'successfully' and the reboot would start but then fail so I just did a full re-install which appeared to work. The part in the above post that talks about the info stored on the HDD makes me think this PlayReady loop may be because of something related to the HDD/power outage so the only option might be to swap in another HDD and try to restore the box from scratch. Thoughts?

[robnitro]

I have no idea how the crap works. I pulled my hair out years ago when I switched from hdd to ssd. The only thing that worked then was to change from win 7 pro to ultimate.
It somehow let playready work.
This time around I didn't want to try to switch it back despite having working ghost images. I don't have the energy for it right now.
I figure the old 64gb ssd will never die as most writes are done to my hdds instead.
Once it dies then I'll see if I give a crap anymore about cable TV