Xbox 360 + Windows Media Center 2005 = Frustrating!

[Jason Dunn]

I've run into a very perplexing problem with trying to connect my Xbox 360 and my Media Center 2005 PC together. When I first got my Xbox 360 I was able to connect it to my MCE 2005 PC without a problem, first try. I've since reformatted my MCE 2005 PC and reinstalled everything, so I was trying to re-connect it to my Xbox 360. I've been banging my head against the wall for weeks on this without luck, so I thought I'd try going public with this and see if any Xbox 360 gurus out there might be able to help me out.

In short, the error message (http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/xbox360-vague-error.jpg) is the problem. Or, rather, the true problem is the completely vague nature of this error message. "A problem occurred during setup" - how on earth is that helpful? I've tried scouring Xbox.com, Google, even MSDN searching for this error message but have been unable to find it because it's just not specific enough.<!>

My MCE PC is essentially virgin - nothing but MCE 2005 rollup 2, all XP patches, no domain involved, just peer to peer network. The only hardware difference is I moved from an ATI to an nVidia card. No extra Firewall or antivirus software installed.

Things I've tried:

1) Disabled Firewall on the MCE PC
2) Rebooted MCE PC many, many times
3) Tried getting it to work on my MCE 2005 Fujitsu notebook, same problem
4) Rebooted Xbox (full power disconnect and re-connect)
5) Xbox 360 network settings reset to default
6) Xbox 360 network media test, it failed a few times then today started working, but the setup procedure still fails

The Xbox 360 is definitely connected to the network (I'm downloading trailers, etc.), and it can see the MCE 2005 PC because Windows Media Connect works on it with full access to music and pictures.

Any idea what this useless error means and how I can solve it?

[mace]

I have similar problems using the xbox360 with my media center. Mine appears to be mutiple problems with my the xbox360, my router (Linksys A+G), and/or my pc (Sony Vaio). Try this link it has many helpful tips: http://support.microsoft.com/search/default.aspx?query=media+center&amp;catalog=LCID%3D1033&amp;spid=7230&amp;qryWt=&amp;mode=r&amp;cus=False&amp;x=14&amp;y=11.

[jizmo]

I'm sorry for the oncoming rant, but I think media serving plain stinks.

First of all, they design a machine fast enough to run WMV-HD, which takes a high-end PC to run. Then they cripple the feature to get people to buy MCE.

Ok, they get you tricked in. You buy a $400 x360, $1400 PC, spend additional $100 for the MCE, go trough the trouble of setting up the cables, installing the software and getting the x360 communicate with the pc. It's all quality time, right? After that you've got yourself an all-around media solution that refuses to play divx, which is the biggest format around the internet.

MS is saying that they won't support Divx because it's used to distribute illegal stuff but we all know that's just their bull to promote WMV. It's not like pirated DVD's didn't exist and spread around in the internet.

So, you've got your $1900 media system ready to go, you're watching the kind of formats MS lets you and using 160W for x360 and 300W for PC to watch some damn Van Damme movie. What an environmental way to enjoy something that could've been run on most standalone 720p upconverting low-power consuming DVD players of today. That also do Divx, unlike MCE.

Sorry, but it all sounds like a raw deal. Power-consuming, difficult, error-prone, pretentious and vain kind of raw deal.

[leslietroyer]

Just a guess, but if you used the same workstation name for the MCE box when it was reloaded there is a good chance that the XBox has some sort of state table for the connection status with this box. Since you reloaded the MCE computer, this state table would be hosed. If it not too much trouble, try renaming the MCE box, then running setup on the XBOX. If that works then you could alway try and rename the MCE back to the origional name and run setup again... Again this is all a guess, I have no direct experiance setting up MCE and XBoxes.

Les

[Felix Torres]

I'm sorry for the oncoming rant, but I think media serving plain stinks.


All literally true.
To a point.
Also literally. ;-)

If *all* you seek to do is watch a movie collection (regardless of its nature) at one location and at one screen.
It is clearly overkill.

But...

A home media networks are *not* designed for single-point usage.
The minimum configuration that makes sense is one that has at least two *frequent*, maybe even simultaneous usage points.
The whole idea of a media server is based on a common content repository for access from multiple devices and locations.
The living room.
The family room/den.
The home office.
The bedroom.
The patio.

It is no accident that TiVOs and STB/DVRs and even the Sony PSP are aquiring the capability to share content over a network; the capability is *useful*. Cause all home media consumption does *not* take place at one location. Not in multi-member households.

So I would suggest the issue is *not* home media servers per se but rather the raw nature of the available implementations, of which I consider the 360 to be the first to be worthy of being considered more than just a proof of concept prototype.

Things will get better.
Vista/ViiV sound like they'll solve most of the issues still lurking in the MCE media network architecture.
But it is worth remembering that other players will have a say in the evolution of home media networks: Dish/Archos, DirecTV, Cisco/Scientific Atlanta (their new STB/dvd-burner has network features), Sony, and (if they ever get serious and move beyond the pod, maybe even Apple.

In fact, judging by the announcements at CES, we're actually starting to see some real interoperability standards starting to emerge.

But for now, the raw truth is that the most advanced media network architecture, MCE, is barely at the Windows 3.1 stage of development; useful but finicky and glitchy.
The Win95-equivalent explosion is a minimum of 6 months in the future, to say nothing of an XP-reliable architecture. That is still years away.

Now, if *all* you want is a single point media archive, a connected DVD-player with external usb hard drive will do you just fine.

And it will handle your DiVX d/ls if you have any...

[Filip Norrgard]

Jason, have you tried this (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/909163/en-us):

2. If you have installed the Media Center Extender software on the Windows XP Media Center-based computer, disconnect the console from the computer and then reconnect the console to the computer.
a. In the Xbox Dashboard, move to the System section.
b. Select Computers, and then select the option to disconnect the console from the Windows XP Media Center-based computer.
c. In the System section, select Memory.
d. Select the appropriate gamer profile, and then select Xbox Dashboard.
e. Delete the entry for Windows Media Center.
f. Reinstall the Media Center Extender software to reconnect the Xbox 360 console to the Windows XP Media Center-based computer.

Or is that the way the network settings are reset on the Xbox 360? :?

Jizmo: I'm also thinking about the power usage of things today (dang those rising power costs), but when I build my own house in the middle of nowhere (to avoid the bird flu pandemic) I will be sure to build my own hygrid before using those power hungry things! :lol:

[Jason Dunn]

Just a guess, but if you used the same workstation name for the MCE box when it was reloaded there is a good chance that the XBox has some sort of state table for the connection status with this box.

You know, I was thinking about the same thing last night, but didn't want to reboot and miss recording any TV shows...so right now I've just renamed the machine and rebooted it. I'll let you know what happens! The nix on this theory was that I also tried setting up my MCE 2005 laptop, which had never been connected to the Xbox 360 before, and it still failed with the same obscure error message. :?

[jizmo]

It is clearly overkill.

It is. I like the idea of centralized media serving, but in too many cases it just boils down to PC doing the work of 9V external HD. Which is a waste, naturally.

But my beef isn't about media centers and media serving per se. It's more about my x360, its processing power and supposedly great abilities to work as a standalone media player - which were then intentionally crippled to force people use MCE. I hate the whole concept and the self-satisfied thinking behind that. Not giving people what they want, but more like telling people what they should want, what kind of media files to watch and so on.

I do understand that the whole MCE concept is pretty half-baked atm and that better solutions are to come. I'll be surely looking into those when they're a bit more mature and not so restrictive, but atm I don't find it worth the efford and money.

[Jason Dunn]

In the System section, select Memory.
d. Select the appropriate gamer profile, and then select Xbox Dashboard. e. Delete the entry for Windows Media Center.

What's bizarre is that I don't seem to have that option. I select memory, then I can choose between the hard drive and "one attached device" (so, the same thing), and I then select Gamer Profile and get taken to a screen with three gamer profiles. When I select one (my profile), my ONLY options are Move and Delete. Nothing about Xbox Dashboard. If I press the "X" to bring up the profile, no special options appear. So this SOUNDS like it might be helpful, but I just can't get it to work...!? :x

[Jason Dunn]

I'm sorry for the oncoming rant, but I think media serving plain stinks...After that you've got yourself an all-around media solution that refuses to play divx, which is the biggest format around the internet...What an environmental way to enjoy something that could've been run on most standalone 720p upconverting low-power consuming DVD players of today. That also do Divx, unlike MCE.

You're welcome to your opinion, but it's very narrowly focused. The Divx DVD player you speak of, does it happen to have 300 GB of storage for TV shows, 200 GB of storage for all my music and photos, a ten foot UI, a local connection for a LCD TV as well as support for streaming over a network to my main DLP TV, decent for games, and is capable of recording TV shows?

The scenario you're talking about seems to be (and correct me if I'm wrong here) "I download a movie from bittorrent in DivX format on my main PC, and now I want to watch it on my TV". If that's all you want to to, then yes, a DivX DVD player would suit you just fine. But that's not my scenario at all, and thus I need the flexibility of an MCE and Xbox 360.

[jizmo]

The scenario you're talking about seems to be (and correct me if I'm wrong here) "I download a movie from bittorrent in DivX format on my main PC, and now I want to watch it on my TV"
No, I have a HDTV LCD TV and HDTV projector equipment back home and playing low-quality divx DVD rips doesn't fit into that equation. It's a bit narrow minded of you to label everyone mentioning Divx to as warez people, though. And when I say a bit, I mean a lot. :roll:

Thanks though for bringing up this inane point of view. When you really take time think about it through, stating that Divx equals warez makes pretty as much sense as no Divx equals no warez. You know, the same inept stance that MS has taken on this issue just to promote WMV.

Like I said earlier, more than anything I hate the crippled features in x360 that promote people to use the power-consuming PC to stream that data to x360 instead of just playing it off another medias. I can't understand how is it worse to anyone (except MS and their MCE) to be able to play WMV from a disc inserted to x360 than being able to play it from MCE?

I'm not a Divx fan by any means, but the reason I'd like to be able to play it, is because it's a format among others. For the same reason why I want to look TIFF pictures from time to time when you and MS could tell me that I shouldn't be able and that JPG should do just fine for a chump like me.

So basically it's about the freedom of choise and all those nice things that follow that kind of open-minded idealogy.

Finally, the 200gb for music, multiple tuners, thousand hours for recording tv programmes and all that sound good, but considering the work, problems, power consumption, real usability etc, its fun-for-a-dollar ratio doesn't seem that great to me.

I'll be saving my money for a better solution.

[Filip Norrgard]

What's bizarre is that I don't seem to have that option. I select memory, then I can choose between the hard drive and "one attached device" (so, the same thing), and I then select Gamer Profile and get taken to a screen with three gamer profiles. When I select one (my profile), my ONLY options are Move and Delete. Nothing about Xbox Dashboard. If I press the "X" to bring up the profile, no special options appear. So this SOUNDS like it might be helpful, but I just can't get it to work...!? :x
So... It's an easter egg... ? :D

No, kidding aside, here's an interesting thread over at Windows Media Center newsgroup (http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.windows.mediacenter/browse_thread/thread/bdd568c31871972b/dbb3abf06378e817?q=%22xbox+360%22+%22windows+media+center%22+In+the+System+section%2C+select+Memory.+d.+Select+the+appropriate+gamer+profile%2C&amp;hl=en&amp;). Some ways that might help are:
Disable all firewalls between your computer and X360 including Windows Firewall (radical way is to uninstall third party firewalls if disabling doesn't help)
Make sure your router has gotten the latest firmware version and that it is on the Xbox 360 compatability list
(Obvius) Make sure the X360 and your PC are on the same subnet
This might be risky, but when you gotta go... [list:3f564a25d0]1) At a command prompt, run: "regsvr32 %windir%\system32\rsaenh.dll"
2) Reboot
3) Attempt to connect to Xbox 360[/list:u:3f564a25d0]
Good luck with getting it to work! ;)

[brian_r_baker]

Have you tried 1-800-4MY-XBOX? ;)

[cmorris]

Try the following for DivX through MCX:

http://forums.xbox.com/1235568/ShowPost.aspx

[Jason Dunn]

It's a bit narrow minded of you to label everyone mentioning Divx to as warez people, though. And when I say a bit, I mean a lot.

Whoa there trigger! Man, you sure do have a temper! 8O I made an assumption, but asked you to correct me if I was wrong, and you did - but there's no need to get nasty about it. You and I know full well that the vast majority of requests for DivX are from people who download movies illegally. The portion of use that use Divx (I just coverted a few files myself today) for our own legal content is very small compared to the masses of people that really need to see King Kong for free, right away. I made an assumption, and it was wrong - I apologize for offending you.

I can't understand how is it worse to anyone (except MS and their MCE) to be able to play WMV from a disc inserted to x360 than being able to play it from MCE?

I agree 110% that the Xbox 360 needs to support video beyond just working with an MCE. You ABSOLUTELY should be able to play more video files than it supports, or heck, even just WMV over Windows Media Connect (right now WMC supports zero video). I think it's super lame that you need MCE to play ANY video other than what you download off Xbox Marketplace.

But I also realize that for the Xbox to be a real DVR it would need a TV tuner, a big hard drive, and would be much more expensive. Microsoft is also really "iffy" about supporting codecs other than their own, which I do find frustrating, but I also understand some of the business reasons behind it. It's not like most of those DivX DVD players also play back WMV - each company is pushing their own media platform, and sometimes consumers get stuck in the middle. :-(

Finally, the 200gb for music, multiple tuners, thousand hours for recording tv programmes and all that sound good, but considering the work, problems, power consumption, real usability etc, its fun-for-a-dollar ratio doesn't seem that great to me.

It's certainly your right to buy the products you think are best suited for your needs, but don't think you it's a bit rude to come slamming into a thread about how much a product sucks when I'm asking for help, not for your opinion on it? If you're the same Jizmo from Pocket PC Thoughts, think of how you'd feel if you posted a question about a Pocket PC and someone came into the thread and told you Pocket PCs suck and that you should get a Palm. Not very helpful, right?

[jizmo]

The portion of use that use Divx (I just coverted a few files myself today) for our own legal content is very small compared to the masses of people that really need to see King Kong for free, right away. I made an assumption, and it was wrong - I apologize for offending you.
Then I got the wrong impression of you being a snobby hifist that's a bit presumptuous with the whole Divx thing. I was a bit annoyed to MS for making such unrightful statement about Divx' illegal nature, but having you - a guy who runs a credible Digital Media site - to echo the same inane generalization annoyed me even beyond that.

Unlike MS represents it, it's clear to all of us that it's not Divx' fault it's being used to distribute illegal content. If it wasn't for Divx and Xvid, people would be using MPEG1, MPEG2, WMV etc to do the same content.

I agree 110% that the Xbox 360 needs to support video beyond just working with an MCE. You ABSOLUTELY should be able to play more video files than it supports

I understand that many people here have a good use for the MCE, but MS isn't being fair about it, like you said. Most people would need a normal car, but MS is trying to sell them a minibus as the only option with the x360.

don't think you it's a bit rude to come slamming into a thread about how much a product sucks
It is, and for that I apologise. It was my sheer frustration with the whole x360 MCE situation and had an uncalled outburst in the wrong thread.

[iand]

If you're unhappy with MS about this, I'm *really* unhappy. The media player situation is just about enough to make me not want to buy a 360 in the first place. I've built a system around BeyondTV. I have a HTPC running BeyondTV, and 3 systems running BTV Link, their client. I'd love to get a 360 and use it to play recorded video from my HTPC, instead of a clunky old PC sitting around as a client, but I can't, not because of any hardware limitations, but because of this decision by microsoft to only support MCE for video. And the divx situation is inexcusable too. Who made them the video piracy police? I would have thought their goal is to sell XBoxes. The more XBoxes sold, the more games and other accessories will be sold. By coming out of the gate with no support for non-MCE or divX, they're telling quite a few people "thanks, but go play with your non-microsoft friends over in the corner there. We're saving XBoxes for our customers that kiss our a** and like it".

/rant off

[Felix Torres]

About the 360 only doing video from MCE PCs: its worth remembering that come Windows VISTA, later this year, all home PCs will come with the MCE server (and app) standard. And considering how flaky WMC is, there might be a valid technical reason for it. Now, *not* playing video off USB Mass storage, yes, that is *very* annoying. Especially since MS breaks even on the 360 core, so people buying cores solely to use as dedicated media centers isn't hurting the MS agenda as much as it does competitors...
Long term, though, it may not matter.

As for DiVX support? &lt;shrug> MS doesn't support Quicktime or MPEG4 either. Or any of the other oddball MPEG variants out there. And Apple and Sony (and other MPEG4 backers) don't support WMV. Seems like a simple case of tit-for-tat. Childish, but nobody whines over Sony or Apple's lack of support for competing standards. Its only evil MS that gets slammed. Since DiVX offers no functionality that WMV doesn't offer and no major content provider is using it to sell d/ls, there is nothing lost for the average buyer.

Don't like it? Don't buy it.
Its *your* money after all.

If enough people did that, things *might* change.
If enough people buy it *anyway*, then it likely wasn't needed and MS did the right thing. Its called market reality.
(MS is actually pretty responsive to market realities; witness the 360 support for PSP and Pod).

So, DiVX?
I'm betting MS won't even notice any lost sales over that.
("Lots of sound and fury...signifying nothing.")
Or does anybody expect Sony to support DiVX on the PSP or PS3?

[kenjancef]

If I'm not mistaken, didn't Microsoft just release an update to MCE 2005 that would help it interact better with the XBox 360???

Thought I read that somewhere yesterday, and that it was just a 25MB (plus or minus) download....


Ken

[Snayber]

Jason,
I have seen reports about the same error message during setup in other forums.

In one case the user was seeing the following error message in the c:\windows\dvcsetup.log file.


4:23:34 PM : Creating MCRD users group.

************************************************** *********
ERROR
************************************************** *********
Failed to create MCRD Users Group.

Do you see this error message in your log file?

[Jason Dunn]

************************************************** *********
ERROR
************************************************** *********
Failed to create MCRD Users Group.

Do you see this error message in your log file?

Why YES, I actually I do! 8O What does that mean? Google was unhelpful in my first search...

[Jason Dunn]

Un-freaking-believable. Here's what solved my problem:

"Goto your Administrative Tools, Computer Management. Then go to Computer Management (Local), System Tools, Local Users and Groups,
Groups. Then create a group called "MCRD Users"."
- Jason Tsang - Microsoft MVP

Once I did that, the process worked 100% as it should have worked from the beginning. On one hand I'm thrilled beyond words that everything is now working as it should, on the other hand, I'm livid that I wasted so much time on something that had such a simple solution, and that the Microsoft programmer didn't put in a USEFUL error message to tell me that this was my problem. :evil: