One of the bigger flaws of Windows Home Server is the restore process.  Not only do you have to rely on the router and other network hardware, but your experience can alo vary depending on the client computer. Even having the right drivers doesn’t mean that it will work all the time, that is, assuming you can even find the correct working drivers.  It’s point of huge frustration for many.

Wouldn’t it be great to have the ability to connect a hard drive to the server and restore any computer to it? It’s just one of those things that would make Windows Home Server just soo much better. Well, there may just be a way.

Well, on the suggestion of the forum member Shidoshi, I investigated an executable file that is installed with the Home Server Connector software and is present on the server itself too:  “clientrestorewizard.exe”.  Don’t believe me?  You can check yourself.  It runs pretty much exactly like a normal full client restore, however you need to be *very* careful about the disks you select. If you aren’t, you may be instore for another restore!

What does this mean to you?  Do you have a laptop or netbook that you need to provide drivers for to be able to restore it, but it still doesn’t work?  Do you have a backup of your friends or parent’s computer who doesn’t leave with or near you? Or you just want to do a HDD upgrade but don’t want to wait three hours for the slow network to finish?

This is not supported, for many reasons. The least of which, just mentioned above. So this is definitely an advanced “at your own risk” guide. If you have any concerns about data loss, do not follow this guide!

I only had my server available to test this one, so pictures may vary or may not be accurate. But it should work on any computer with the client Connector software installed.

There are a number of other things that you will likely need to do also, like marking the boot partition as active, or editing the boot.ini file.  I’ve verified that this does in fact work, and if you noticed above, there is a chance that you can and may wipe the wrong disk.

So, that’s how to restore a client computer without using the client restore disk!

Source Article:
How To: Restore a Client Computer Without Using the Client Restore Disk

Not satisfied with the default setting of seven rows of channels displayed in the episode guide of Windows 7 Media Center? Unfortunately, there is no option to enable an increased number of rows to appear so increasing the rows displayed requires users to do extensive editing to the Media Center DLL files. Thankfully, Bill24 has posted a guide to the editing required on the Australian Media Center Community. This guide is fairly advanced for those not familiar with editing DLL files however so we’ve created a small patch to allow users to easily make the edits to the Media Center shell file. You’ll still need to follow the beginning portion of the guide though and we’ve also included the actual edits made in the original article for those interested in the data behind the changes.

To get started decide whether you’ll be using the patch or editing your Media Center shell DLL by hand. If the patch doesn’t work you’ll likely need to edit the file by hand as updated or altered versions of the Media Center shell DLL could cause the patch to no longer work properly. If using the patch download it here, otherwise you’ll need a program to edit the file by hand such as Resource Hacker or Restorator. Also, a copy of Media Center Studio is required.

The first step is launching Media Center Studio and creating a new theme. Bill24 doesn’t mention in the guide what changes this makes to the Media Center files that makes it a required step, it may be a simple matter of setting the correct permissions on the required Media Center DLL files. Once inside Media Center Studio select the New button to create a new theme, name your new theme and save the file. Return to the main themes listing tab and select the newly created them then press the Apply button. Launch Media Center and browse to the EPG guide, unless additional edits were made inside Media Center Studio nothing should have changed.

Alternatively, if you’ve got the Take Ownership registry file applied you can take ownership of the MediaCenter.Shell.dll file to affect the same results.

Now open Windows Explorer and browse to C:Windowsehome and locate the MediaCenter.Shell.dll file. Copy the file to another location and make certain to create a backup of this file as well just incase something should go wrong during the process. Now, if using the patch method, copy the patch into the same directory as MediaCenter.Shell.dll and apply the patch to this file. Afterward copy the file back into the C:Windowsehome directory. Relaunch Windows 7 Media Center and check your EPG guide, there should now be ten rows listed.

For those editing the file by hand open the MediaCenter.Shell.dll in your resource editor and browse to the html –> EPG.MCML file. Inside search for the following lines and edit the values as described:

Name=”InitialGridPosition” Left=”FilterButton,1,1″ Right=”Parent,1,-53″ Top=”FilterButton,0, –44
Name=”InitialGridPosition” Left=”FilterButton,1,1″ Right=”Parent,1,-53″ Top=”FilterButton,0, -134

Set Target=”[FilterButtonLayout.Bottom.Offset]” Value=“493”
Set Target=”[FilterButtonLayout.Bottom.Offset]” Value=“580”

Set Target=”[Table.VisibleRowCapacity]” Value=“7”
Set Target=”[Table.VisibleRowCapacity]” Value=“10”

Font FontName=”global://comm:LightFontFace” FontSize=“48”
Font FontName=”global://comm:LightFontFace” FontSize=“0”

“2″/>
“4″/>

After changing each of these values save the MediaCenter.Shell.dll file and place it back in it’s original location. Relaunch Windows 7 Media Center and browse to the EPG guide to ensure that you’ve now got ten rows listed.

Thanks to Bill24 for sharing this information with the Windows 7 Media Center community! Be sure to check out his blog on the Australian Media Center Community website for even more great information on modifying Media Center. This certainly is a more efficient usage of screen real-estate than the original seven row display.

Source Article:
Increasing the Default Number of Rows in the EPG

Looking for a way to launch commands or programs to run in the background from the Extras Library menu? When you may be in luck, CW-Kid and Andrew Cherry have come up with a .dll and a set of direction for doing just that. The process can be a little daunting for novices but if you’re looking for a way to run cmd files in the background you’re likely able to tackle the task. This can be especially useful for those looking to run mc2xml or that have setup batch files to process WTV to DVR-MS conversion. After following this guide you’ll have a handy little icon to launch the command from right inside Windows 7 Media Center.

To get started you’ll need to download the .dll file created by Andrew Cherry and extract it to the C:Windowsehome folder. This will handle the launching of the cmd file in the background. These cmd files are simple text files with the .cmd extension that can be written to do anything you can do from a standard command line interface, also known as a batch file.

Once you’ve got the .dll file extracted to the ehome directory and a batch file ready to run create a new xml file. Again this is a simple text file which can be created in any notepad application, simply save the file with the .xml extension and it’s an xml file. Copy the following into the new XML file:

<application title=”The title text that appears below the icon in Media Center”
id=”{25e1993f-a9d8-4251-871c-0bf84c6d6e29}”>
<entrypoint id=”{58267566-672b-4b1d-812a-fc46d728d073}”
addin=”MissingRemote.AppLauncher.AddIn,     MissingRemote.AppLauncher,Culture=Neutral,Version=1.0.0.0,PublicKeyToken=391ca93ec5a00478″
title=”The title text that appears below the icon in Media Center”
description=”Description text that appears below the icon in Media Center”
context=”%ProgramFiles%\foldername\name of your.cmd”
imageUrl=”C:\Program Files\foldername\Images\your icon image.png”>
<category category=”More Programs”/>
</entrypoint>
</application>

Of course, you’ll need to alter the red text to match the title, description and location of your batch file as well as editing the location of a PNG image to use in the Extras Library as an icon. These images should be a square probably not needing to be any larger than 128px X 128px as Media Center will scale them appropriately for the resolution being used. Once you’ve got the XML file ready open an elevated command prompt (run –> cmd –> ctrl-shift-enter).

Inside the command windows change to the C:\Windows\ehome directory and enter the following command: registermceapp /allusers XMLFILE. Change XMLFile to the location that you’ve saved the XML file to and press enter to run the command. You should get a success message. If you don’t receive a success message it’s likely that you’re not inside an elevated cmd prompt, also for multiple new entries you’ll need to change the GUID and ID in the XML file (id=”{25e1993f-a9d8-4251-871c-0bf84c6d6e29}”>
<entrypoint id=”{58267566-672b-4b1d-812a-fc46d728d073}”).

Once the XML data has been successfully entered into the registry launch Windows 7 Media Center and browse to the Extras Library.

That’s all there is to it! You should now see the icon for the program set in the XML file and pressing the icon should launch the cmd file in the background executing the set of commands inside. Thanks to CW-Kid for sharing this with the Media Center community! Be sure to stop by his blog and check out his many other guides and articles on Windows Media Center.