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Intro (on CMC forum) - closer to ditching WMC

General support forum for Chameleon MediaCenter (formerly MM Browser)
dsteinschneider
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Intro (on CMC forum) - closer to ditching WMC

Post by dsteinschneider » Fri Oct 09, 2020 9:41 pm

I bought MMB when Paul first released it. Then I got really busy with music stuff and it took me about a year to get around to testing it out. Then showed it to the family who voted to hang with WMC until the bitter end.

We just got a new 4K panel and nVidia GT 1030 card - apparently a Win10 upgrade will help with HDR

Since people here have made the move off WMC I'm interested in any advice before I run the Win10 Upgrade Assistant.

Thanks in advance,

Doug

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Pauven
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Re: Intro (on CMC forum) - closer to ditching WMC

Post by Pauven » Sat Oct 10, 2020 9:51 am

Hi Doug,

Welcome to the forums, and I'm happy to read that you are finally putting that CMC license to good use.
dsteinschneider wrote: Fri Oct 09, 2020 9:41 pm I bought MMB when Paul first released it.
Wow, you're not kidding! I just checked and I see you were one of the first customers, buying on December 8 of 2017, almost 3 years ago. I did remember you, since we chatted a few times years ago.
dsteinschneider wrote: Fri Oct 09, 2020 9:41 pm Then I got really busy with music stuff and it took me about a year to get around to testing it out. Then showed it to the family who voted to hang with WMC until the bitter end.
I'm guessing that was back in the 2.x versions, which seems forever ago. A lot has changed and improved since then. Also, since you're planning to migrate to Win10 and abandon WMC, I'm assuming that you've already played with CMC v3.6 enough to know it is working for your needs? One of the big changes since the 2.x days is I added a new separate program, Chameleon Metadata Exporter. CME makes it so much easier to get CMC up and running with your My Movies data, so definitely make use of CME.

Back to your question:

I've never really done a Win10 Upgrade. Perhaps once or twice to carry a Win7 license forward, back when MS was offering free upgrades, but I would always follow that up with a fresh install. Since MS stores a fingerprint of your hardware on their servers, you can do any number of fresh installs after a Win10 license key is partnered with a particular PC.

So I'm strongly in the fresh install camp.

If you do a fresh install, let me suggest doing it on a new/different harddrive. That way your current HD serves as a backup of your working Win7/8 install.

One more reason for a fresh install is some anecdotal evidence I have from supporting CMC for several years now. Occasionally a user has a PC that just doesn't work right in one aspect or another. For example, I had one user who had a PC that would never detect a disc being inserted. I helped him troubleshoot this for many months, and nothing we did resolved the issue. Finally he did a fresh install of Win10 and that resolved the issue. If I had to hazard a guess, I would estimate about 1% of my users have had an issue that was resolved by reinstalling - and these were all issues outside the scope of CMC but that affected CMC or one of the other programs like PowerDVD or MPC.

If it's not possible for you to use a different HD and you are going to do an in-place upgrade, then I would suggest making sure you have a good backup before you commence updating.

One more thing on current versions of Win10 - Microsoft tries to force you to use or setup an online Microsoft user account. The way around this is to make sure that you are not connected to the internet during the install and initial setup steps. If you are not connected then MS will show normally hidden options to create a local account. I normally get lucky and my network card drivers are missing on a fresh install, so by default I have no internet connectivity during this step. But it's easier to just make sure you don't plug in or otherwise connect to Wi-Fi until after you setup your user name.

Hopefully some other users will chime in with their advice.

Paul
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Re: Intro (on CMC forum) - closer to ditching WMC

Post by Pauven » Sat Oct 10, 2020 9:54 am

Hah, no sooner than I hit Submit did I have another tip to share.

If this PC is also running your My Movies install, be prepared for trouble in upgrading to Win10. From my recollection, the SQL Server versions typically installed by My Movies interferes with the upgrade of Win10, and also even applying seasonal updates to Win10.

This is one of the benefits of using CMC - you only need My Movies running on one PC in your house, whichever PC will be maintaining your My Movies collection. That way, you can have your HTPC running the latest Win10 and CMC, but with no My Movies installed, and it doesn't cause any upgrade problems.

If you're upgrading your My Movies PC, let us know and we can share some advice on how to do this.
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dsteinschneider
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Re: Intro (on CMC forum) - closer to ditching WMC

Post by dsteinschneider » Sat Oct 10, 2020 10:37 am

Hi Paul,

Thanks for all the tips. Not many people know that there is still a legitimate free upgrade path from Windows 7 to Windows 10 if you download the Windows 10 Upgrade Assistant, a small exe on Microsoft's website. Here are some tips on this:

0. Paul has a good idea of using a replacement drive, preferably an SSD. I would add that you should dupe your existing OS drive to the new SSD using the free version of Macrium Reflect. Then put the SSD in and run the upgrade assistant. All the following upgrade steps will happen much faster. Also the old drive will be your backup.
1. If your OS is 32 bit just go ahead and run the Upgrade Assistant with out any prep steps. After the in place upgrade is activated your computer will activate a clean new install of Windows 10 (Next step with a downloaded 64bit Windows 10 installer loaded onto a USB stick using The "Windows USB/DVD Download Tool" you can download from Microsoft.)
2. If you're already 64bit I uninstall things like SQL server, codecs, programs known not to work in (although the Win10 upgrade process will disable those and let you know when it's finished - WMC is an example). I uninstall anything easy to reinstall. If you have some program you've lost the install for or whatever just leave it in place - almost everything will continue run in the new instance.

I agree that a long in the tooth Windows 7 WMC machine is probably not the best candidate for an in place upgrade. I'm starting it now - I'll report back how it goes.

Paul is right following an in place upgrade, if anything the least bit wierd is going on, we wipe the machine and do the fresh install . Maybe I will do just do that now come to think of it :D
Last edited by dsteinschneider on Sat Oct 10, 2020 10:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Intro (on CMC forum) - closer to ditching WMC

Post by Pauven » Sat Oct 10, 2020 12:02 pm

Good tips, thanks for sharing. I had heard that free upgrades were still possible, but I not longer have a need to upgrade any. I bought 5 Win10 Pro licenses for about $60 total a few years ago (gray market Windows and Office licenses are awesome!!!) and at $12 a license I find that I'd rather start fresh than go through the upgrade hassle.

If you have My Movies installed on this PC (and I'm assuming you do since you're using WMC+MM on it), you may need to uninstall it first before the upgrade will work. Definitely try without uninstalling first, but if you run into some weird failures during the upgrade process, the likely culprit is the old SQL Server version installed by My Movies. This tip will save you hours/days of troubleshooting (several of us have gone through this) if you do encounter issues.

Hopefully this PC is not your main My Movies Collection Management PC. Some users have had trouble recently getting MM reinstalled and working.
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dsteinschneider
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Re: Intro (on CMC forum) - closer to ditching WMC

Post by dsteinschneider » Sat Oct 10, 2020 12:34 pm

I have an old Dell Vostro 420 running Win7 Pro dedicated to Drive Pool and MyMovies. It has two Mediasonic 4 drive ProBox units connected by a Mediasonic SATA card (also drives connected to the motherboard SATA ports). I tried upgrading it to Win10 a few years ago but couldn't resolve a slow data transfer issue between it and the Win7 WMC machines. MyMovies and Drive Pool worked fine - perhaps after I get off Win7 WMC I can go back to Win10 on the "server".

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Re: Intro (on CMC forum) - closer to ditching WMC

Post by Pauven » Sat Oct 10, 2020 1:02 pm

For a PC that only runs My Movies and your drive pool, I see little to no benefit from upgrading to Win10. If it's working, my advice is to leave it alone... ;)
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dsteinschneider
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Re: Intro (on CMC forum) - closer to ditching WMC

Post by dsteinschneider » Sat Oct 10, 2020 4:15 pm

I appreciate that advice to leave the MyMovies and DrivePool box as is. Will do.

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Re: Intro (on CMC forum) - closer to ditching WMC

Post by dsteinschneider » Sat Oct 10, 2020 4:17 pm

I've followed all the steps for the initial export. I'm successfully testing it on one of the WMC 7 machines I happen to use for Collection Management. I've been kind of stickler for good TV Series folder management - the test looks good.

Should I install MyMovies on the new Win10 HTPC install and run it from there?

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Re: Intro (on CMC forum) - closer to ditching WMC

Post by Pauven » Sat Oct 10, 2020 4:26 pm

dsteinschneider wrote: Sat Oct 10, 2020 4:17 pm Should I install MyMovies on the new Win10 HTPC install and run it from there?

No, you only need MM installed on a single PC, and you've already got that covered.

For CME, you can either install it on your MM PC, or the new Win10 PC. It's probably best to install on your MM PC, as it has to read from MM via the API, and write to your drive pool. Installing it on your Win10 PC would make all that reading and writing occur over your network.

Did that give you the answer you needed?
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