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How to configure an MCE Remote

Helpful advice for getting the most out of Chameleon MediaCenter
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Pauven
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How to configure an MCE Remote

Post by Pauven » Thu Sep 05, 2019 8:54 am

CMC includes the ability to program up to four buttons on an MCE compatible remote.

Three of those buttons are for launching CMC. You can configure a generic button to launch CMC in the default mode you have configured, as well as dedicated buttons to launch in Movie or Music mode, overriding your default launch mode.

The fourth button is a button to close programs. This button will perform the ALT+F4 Windows Hotkey, which closes the currently focused program. This is perfect for closing PowerDVD after watching a movie, returning you to CMC. It can close almost any program (including CMC), so it comes in handy if another Windows program pops up and tries to take focus away from CMC or your media player. And if all programs are closed, pressing it a couple more times brings up a Windows shutdown prompt.

There are 5 steps to configuring a remote, as shown in the screenshot below.
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image.png (331.37 KiB) Viewed 10613 times

To run CMC as Admin, right-click on CMC.exe in the program folder, and select 'Run as administrator'.

Steps 2 and 3 are optional if the current button config is what you want to program. But if you make any config changes, be sure to Save them before doing the Registry Update. Also, you can do Steps 2 and 3 at anytime, without running as Admin. The Admin rights are only required for Step 4.

Note that when you perform Step 3, Saving the config, you will exit the Settings screen and be returned to the main CMC desktop. You will have to re-enter the Settings to continue with Step 4, Updating the Registry.

If you are not running as Admin, then the text for Step 4 will be different, indicating that you need to Run as Admin to update. If you are running as Admin, then clicking the Update Registry button will update the Windows Registry with the button configuration you have selected, and if you configured any buttons to launch CMC then it will also create the required shortcut files to launch CMC.

The final Step 5, rebooting, is required for Windows to apply the registry changes to the remote configuration.

It has been noted that the seasonal major Windows 10 updates seem to reset the Windows registry configuration for the MCE remote back to Microsoft defaults. When that happens, the remote will stop working to launch CMC and close programs. When this happens, going to the MCE Remote Configuration screen in CMC will show that a registry update is needed because the config no longer matches the registry.

To recover your working remote config, simply repeat steps 1, 4, and 5.
President, Chameleon Consulting LLC
Author, Chameleon MediaCenter

Jamie
Posts: 957
Joined: Wed Dec 27, 2017 11:26 pm

Re: How to configure an MCE Remote

Post by Jamie » Thu Sep 05, 2019 1:52 pm

Paul,

I think that this is a great tutorial. I believe most people were skipping step 3, or doing it out of sequence. I think that after doing step 3, some people did not go into the setting and apply the changes to the registry. This tutorial should correct the confusion.

Jamie

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