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WMC on Junco

order

Purchased from Amazon $245, OptiPlex 7010, Intel I5 3470 quadcore 3.2, Hitachi 2T hard drive , 16GB memory.

Ordered 2019-02-15, delivered 2019-02-17.

Dell Optiplex 7010 Premium Business Desktop Computer, Intel Quad Core i5-3470 Processor up to 3.60 GHz, 16GB RAM, 2TB HDD, DVD, USB 3.0, Windows 7 Professional (Certified Refurbished) Sold by: SKYTECH USA LLC

H x W x D = 14.17 x 4.01 x 17.42

Tags: 

Service Tag: C86DZ12
Service Express: 26615847062
Mfg Date: 2014-08-20

initial setup

First boot tried Element TV HDMI to displayport on PC, TV said Not Support.

Tried boot with VGA monitor, first try said Windows 7 not genuine, subsequent trys said Windows Error Recovery on black screen. Only option was to load a recovery dvd, none available.

Tried boot with F8 depressed, click Advanced Boot Options, then click Repair Your Computer, but that option was not available.

Per AST support, downloaded windows 7 pro 64-bit ISO disk from https://www.heidoc.net/joomla/technology-science/microsoft/67- microsoft-windows-iso-download-tool

Changed boot sequence in Dell bios and was able to install Windows 7 pro. But did not have right drivers for several devices. Download bunch of drivers from Dell web site, many failed with "the procedure entry point could not be located...", but a couple did work including one to fix the ethernet connection.

Was able to download several more missing drivers from the internet. But Windows claims it could not find drivers for SM Bus Controller and Universal Serial Bus (USB) Controller.

Ran Windows Update, installing 172 updates.

Was able to activate Windows after typing in same key as before.

  • p2v2f-xc4dv-gkd2q-tb6hh-7jj4b

Installed 1 update, 9 optionsl updates.

Installed Security Essentials, firewall, IE safety check.

Installed windows 16 updates.

2019-03-02

Download Support Assist from Dell driver support page, found 5 updates, 4 auto, 1 manual. Whole process ran from IE11 browser. 

    Intel HD and HD 4000 Graphics Driver
    Intel Managements Engine Components Installer Driver
    ? page update, lost 2 names

Clicked link for more info on bios update, lost link to install bios update. The /Download/Dell folder has a maze of subfolders.

Ran SupportAssist, stopped with no action, rebooted, ran support assist again, had the bios install identified, clicked install to download, clicked install to install. Bios update successful. Device Manager happy after reboot. Support Assistant is nice.

Tested DisplayPort to HDMI, would not work on Element TV manufactured in May of 2007 TV said "Not Support". PC was manufactured 2014-08-20. DP to HDMI did work on Acer monitor connected to Robin. Volume was very faint through the Acer speakers (as expected).

Ran system rating, this is fasted PC in house.

Installed HDHomeRun from Silicon Dust. It installed MS Visual C++ 2017 REdistributal x64 and same thing but x86 version. The firmware in the hdhomerun unit was updated and rebooted.

Installed WMC from control panel. Went through WMC setup, got message saying PC can not run digital content. Tried to install Digital Cable Advisor, got message failed to launch, "Unable to Launch". But WMC seems to run fine, can view all channels. Recorded 3 minutes of TV.

PC wakes within a second or 2 after going into sleep mode. It boots to user login screen regardless of whether remote or mouse is used to enter sleep mode.

2019-03-03

Trying to find better power and bios settings using https://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/viewtopic.php?t=51 These appear to be bad advice, reset to default on 2019-03-07.

Use F2 to get into bios settings. Reset bios to default settings.

  • Unchecked Diskette Drive from boot sequence under General, Boot Sequence.
  • Checked Enable SMART Reporting under System Configuration.
  • Unchecked Enable Numlock LED under POST behavior.
  • Unchecked Enable Keyboard Error Detection under Post Behavior.

Booted, started WMC, displayed recordings/ schedule, pressed power off on remote, PC went to sleep and woke after 2-3 seconds, shows login screed; same as before.

powercfg /lastwake shows: 

wake source [0]
  type: device
  instance path: USB\ROOT_HUB20\4&37848636&0
  description: USB Root Hub
  Manufacturer: (Standard Usb Host Controller)

Under power options, reset balanced plan to default, then set Require a passwork on wakeup to NO. Progress, no longer shows login screen, view is same as it was upon going to sleep.

PROBLEM SOLVED?

  • on command window do:
    • powercfg -devicequery wake_armed
    • result:
      • HID keyboard device
      • HID-complient mouse
      • Intel 82579LM Gigabyte Network Connection
      • HID-complient mouse (003)
      • HID keyboard device (002)
  • under device manager, networkadapter, properties, Power Management, unchecked Wake on Magic Packet and Wake on Pattern Match.
  • PC now sleeps well, wakes on remote (any button), mouse click, and keyboard click.

Joined HomeGroup, password is haaseh....

Installed Xplorer2, Scite, SumatraPDF.

2019-03-04

Added all schedule recordings to junco, except Victoria on Masterpiece and Madam Secretary which are not available on Sunday 3/10. Deleted recordings on PC scheduled for 3/4.

Moved junco to TV room, swapped remotes, moved ethernet cable and wireless keyboard. Swiched sound on junco from inboard speakers to hdmi.

Changed epg123 schedule update to 4:30. Tweaked guide font size and row height.

Powered down PC. Must have door open for remote. must add mouse to power down again.

While watching live tv on junco, got poor signal message. Advanced to next channel and back to original channel and signal was OK.

Fix for Weak Signal

From https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2708283/weak-tv-signal-message-is-erroneously-displayed-in-windows-7-media-cen

The download is no longer supported. 

Let me fix it myself

To resolve this issue yourself, use the following steps to modify the registry.

Exit Windows Media Center.

Click Start, type regedit in the Search box and press ENTER. If you are prompted 
with a User Account Control message, click Yes to continue.

Locate and then select the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\DirectShow\Debug

From the Registry Editor menu, click on Edit->New->Key. Change the name of 
the new key to BDA.

Click on the newly created BDA key. From the Registry Editor menu, click on 
Edit->New->Key. Change the name of the new key to MSNP.

Click on the newly created MSNP key. From the Registry Editor menu, 
click on Edit->New->DWORD (32-bit) Value. Change the name of the new value 
to WeakSignalDroppedThreshold.

Right-click on WeakSignalDroppedThreshold and then click Modify. In the Value 
data box, type 32 and click on OK. (Leave the "Base" setting at the default, 
Hexadecimal.)

On the Registry Editor menu, click on File and then Exit to exit Registry Editor.

Shut down Windows and restart your PC.

More Information

The registry value WeakSignalDroppedThreshold specifies the maximum percentage of dropped packets before Media Center displays the Weak TV Signal message. If the registry value is not set, the default value is 10%. The steps in the Resolution section specify to set it to 50% (32 hexadecimal). The side effect of setting this to a higher value is that it may in some cases prevent a valid Weak TV Signal message from appearing while watching Live TV in Media Center. However, in the case of a valid weak signal it may be obvious to the user, due to dropped frames or other video artifacts, that there is a signal strength problem for that particular channel.

Fix for Multiple Recordings

right click on the show you are recording, 
then click series info, 
then series settings, 
at the top it will say new and rerun, 
click new and save.

2019-03-05

Problem: PC awake at 8:00 AM, lastwake was scheduled recording.

Added color coding to guide.

Noisy hard drive is an Hitachi HUA722020ALA331 ATA.

Used windows update to install 8 optional patches.

Set windows update to manual.

Disabled Windows Search: start. services.msc, find WindowsSearch, right-click, properties, disable.

Unchecked box for automatic download media center data. Under tasks, general, automatic download options. Event view shows error for MCUpdate every 12 hours.

Removed all scheduled recordings from pc. Unchecked box for automatic download media center data on PC.

To see media center log, type eventviewer in start box, select mediacenter, right-click interesting events for more detail.

2019-03-06

Changed power settings.

  • turn off display: never
  • allow hybrid sleep: off
  • turn pc off: 15 minutes

Replace noisy Hitachi hard drive:

2019-03-07

Changed power settings per https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/778-power-plan-settings-change.html 

Recommended Settings for HYBRID SLEEP -

Hybrid sleep saves your open documents and programs to memory and 
to the hard drive, and then puts the computer into a low-power state. 
After the Hibernate after time you set, it will then put the 
computer into hibernation. This requires that hibernate is enabled.

CATEGORY        SETTING RECOMMENDED SETTING
Hard Disk       Turn off hard disk after        If turned on, set to at least 1 minute before the computer is set to sleep.
Sleep   Sleep after     This is for the computer. Set to at least 1 minute after Hard disk and Display is set to turn off.
Sleep   Allow hybrid sleep      Set to On.
Sleep   Hibernate after Set to at least 1 minute after Sleep after is set for.
Display Turn off display after  If turned on, set to at least 1 minute before the computer is set to sleep. Usually set this as the same as the Hard disk time.
Multimedia settings     When sharing media      Set to Allow the computer to sleep to prevent it from waking up the computer.

Try 2:

Downloaded MCE Standby Tool from http://slicksolutions.eu/ Copied to junco Downloads but did not run.

Found junco in hibernation state that would wake only by power button. Checked power configs, hibernation and hybrid were both off although I had left them on. Changed back to allow hybrid, disallow hibernation, hard drive to never sleep. Rebooted, started wmc, powered off with remote. Blinking power light at 10 AM.

Try 3:

Junco was in hibernation at 10:30 AM. Reset power setting on basic play back to default. Set sleep timer to 10 minutes, hd off, removed wake from mouse and keyboard.

Try 4:

12:05 PM Tested wake from sleep with remote, worked OK but woke to login screen. Set power options: Require a passwork on wakeup to NO. Discovered windows update was back to automatic and had 9 updates pluse 1 optional update, updated all, set windows update to never check for updates. Rebooted, verified to never check, put junco to sleep.

Edit after 5 days: I think I set wmc settings, general, guide to uncheck guide download automatically. And this may have caused guide to not update beyond 3/28.

useful commands

Many of these say invalid syntax. From: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/device-experiences/powercfg-command-line-options 

powercfg /lastwake
powercfg /availablesleepstates (or /A)
powercfg /waketimers
powercfg /requests
powercfg /sleepstudy
powercfg /devicequery wake_from_any
powercfg /devicequery wake_programmable
powercfg /devicequery wake_armed

powercfg /sleepstudy /output "sleepstudy.html"
powercfg /systemsleepdiagnostics  /output  "sleepdiagnostics.html"
powercfg /systempowerreport /output "sleepstudy.html"

2019-03-08

Woke Junco after 3 remote power button clicks. Left junco idle to see if it would sleep by itself (did not hit remote power button). TV off. It did not sleep after 30 minutes.

Changed advanced power settings to not allow hybrid sleep. Sleep timer still set to 10 minutes. Left TV on with wmc displaying schedule. PC did go to sleep after ~12 minutes. Woke PC successfully after about 10 minutes. Set wmc to display recordings. Turned TV off. PC went to sleep after 10+ minutes.

2019-03-09

PC awake at 7 AM. Installed MCE Standby Tool, Set sleep state to S3, change sleep timeout to 10 minutes. Has lots of confusing options. See manual at http://slicksolutions.eu/ Rebooted, started wmc, pc went to sleep in about 10 minutes.

2019-03-11

PC in sleep mode at 6 AM for last 2 days, thanks to MCE Standby Tool.

2019-03-12

Fixed All-in-one to record only at 5 PM. Recording schedule for TRMS and Meet the Press seemed OK.EPG123 log seems to say scheduled guide download is working every day. There are 99 scheduled recordings, last one on 03-28.

Changed WMC settings, General, schedule to automatically download schedule at 4:30 PM, reverting 03-07 change..

2019-03-14

There are 97 programs scheduled, last one on 03-31. Per Schedules Direct, there are 20 days of programming available in JSON format (used by EPG123). I seem to get 17 or 18 days.

Edited wmc to add channel 1333.

2019-05-21

Have had several truncated recordings due to weak signal. Updated hdhomerun firmware from 20180817 to 20190417.

Changed weaksignaldroppedthreshold from 32 to 60 to 64 to 48. Had No Signal failure on 60 and 64. The failure does seem to happen soon after changing channel as described in the bug report. But changing threshold value seems to have no effect.

2019-07-23

Had event where spouse turned on TV and junco had blank display. Rebooted, tried stuff, display eventually came back, not sure if was pc or tv problem. Suspect pc. PC will not wake on power button, receiver shows steady red light. Must press power button on pc to wake.

2019-07-27

Installed window updates, fiddled with setting. On device manager set second device under Human Interface Devices to Allow this device to wake computer. Power button on remote now wakes computer again.

future

Change wmc again to not automatically download rovi schedule.

Add 1333 weahd when schedules direct fixes epg.

Evaluate and remove never watched channels or learn how to create and use lineup 2.

Unresolved Problems

EPG123 shows channel 1333 is present, but not present in wmc guide.

RogerHaase/Windows7WMC-Junco (last edited 2019-07-27 17:12:50 by RogerHaase)

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