Rebuild 7 or move on?

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TechLifeWeb

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Rebuild 7 or move on?

#1

Post by TechLifeWeb » Fri Aug 28, 2015 12:27 am

I'm faced with rebuilding my Windows 7 HTPC. Why is a whole other topic.
Anyway, given that I'm about to embark on that pain (and it will be as it has been a very long time since I last went through all of that). I'm sure I've blocked or forgotten all the pains of the past, lol. So, what do you think, should I just rebuild as Windows 7 and put things back the way I've had them for a long time? Or rebuild and upgrade to 10 and start exploring Kodi or one of the other alternatives?

To some extent it would depend on the learning curves associated and also how much time I have to mess around with this box but lets just say all of that is equal.

Main functions of the box are recording, playing, pausing live TV. Also serving up movies in MKV that I have on a server. I have a Hauppauge internal tuner, Silicondust tuner for OTA signals, HDPVR that pulls interfaces with my Cable Box. I haven't made the jump to cablecard. I'd stick with OTA but I only get a few signals but they are better than any of the others so I use that tuner where I can.
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Crash2009

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#2

Post by Crash2009 » Fri Aug 28, 2015 12:27 pm

Rebuild 7 or Move on.....

I would say do both, not one or the other. Re-do your 7 and start a new box for your 10. After you get the bugs ironed out of your 10, dump the 7.

TechLifeWeb

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#3

Post by TechLifeWeb » Fri Aug 28, 2015 3:55 pm

Crash2009 wrote:Rebuild 7 or Move on.....

I would say do both, not one or the other. Re-do your 7 and start a new box for your 10. After you get the bugs ironed out of your 10, dump the 7.
I agree, that probably is the best approach. Hadn't really considered it yet because I don't have extra hardware on hand. I think I'll start by rebuilding the 7 for now.
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ajhieb

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#4

Post by ajhieb » Sun Aug 30, 2015 8:23 pm

Depending on the state of your old/current Win7 install you can possibly save yourself a lot of hassle by backing up a few files and folders to move to the new install.

If it's bootable, you should be able to use a tool like GuideTool to backup your channel layout, and other WMC settings. Another example, I use MB 2.6.2 and if you backup the MediaBrowser folder in C:\AppData it saves pretty much all of your settings as well as the image/data cache (which can take quite a while to rebuild if you have a large library) I would guess that newer versions of Emby would work similarly.

Point being, before you dump the old install, save what you can.

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DavidinCT

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#5

Post by DavidinCT » Mon Aug 31, 2015 1:34 pm

If your OS drive is large enough, Dual boot for a while. Try 3rd party options if this what you want to do. This way you can have a system up, recording your shows but, when you have the time, you can really play and test other products.

I'm sticking with WMC for now due to cablecard but, I wanted to check out WMC on 8.1 to see how well it performs. So, I setup a dual boot. I disabled the boot menu, so when I want to change OS's I need to go into System, advanced and set 8.1 to boot. This so I dont get the boot menu on startup. SO the night I want to play, do some testing, I just chanage it over to 8.1 and every time I reboot it goes to 8.1 till I change it back to 7...

Just because WMC is not support from Microsoft, does not mean it's dead (the stopped working on it in 2009, so if your saying it is dead, it was then). The guide is still one of the better out of the 3rd party options, It works pretty good with 3rd party mixed tuners. So if you like it, stick with it..

These guide issues in time will resolve itself, it's a mess right now for some people but, it''s getting better one by one...
-Dave
Twitter @TheCoolDave

Windows Media Center certified and WMC MVP 2010 - 2012

TechLifeWeb

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#6

Post by TechLifeWeb » Tue Sep 01, 2015 12:18 am

Thanks for the reply. I know it's not dead, just exploring my options. So far I've rebuilt the core OS and have yet to set up the Media Center bits. Taking it slow and making it as 'appliance like' as possible to gain the most wife acceptance factor :D
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