My 'solution' to the AiW problem

H3X4D3C1M4L

This is how I plan on using my AiW and getting it to work.

Take it for what its worth, its free... suggestions I welcome but complaints, don't bother. If you think you can do it better go ahead and fix whatever you want to fix but if you do I can't say it will work as well for you

I noticed that as I put more stuff into Windows things get more complicated and stuff starts to fight, and MMC is especially bad like this. So, logically, why not separate the TV stuff from the main O/S? Yes, its more hassle to dual boot when you can try to get it to work on 1 O/S but if you're reading this chances are you're fed up with trying to get things to work on 1 O/S.

I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOU MALFING UP YOUR SYSTEM OR FOR WHATEVER FREAK ACCIDENT MAY OCCUR DURING THIS PROCESS! I can ***highly*** reccomend having a current back up of all your data, especially because we're fooling with partitions and such, however I did it all without a backup and I didn't screw anything up... then again I am more experienced and have done these kinds of things 1000x over. You take your own risks here. I didn't write this guide with the intention of screwing stuff up and I have tried it and found it to work without messing stuff up... but stuff happens. You stand warned!

What you'll need other than the time you put into it...
1. A partitioning utility like PQMagic et. all, the Windows one will not suffice, we can't be doing this in Windows
2. Some familiarity with dual booting. If you know how to get 2 XP's to boot on the same drive you're good... if not see this
3. A USB Key or external hard drive if you don't want to be downloading things from each O/S.... not needed but handy
4. A CD of the operating system(s) you'll be using. I just have my nLited XP SP2 on a disk and thats all I use but in theory this can work with Windows 2000 and XP, XP & XP, 2000 & 2000. I reccomend using NT based O/Ses only just because they play nicer together and have the same file system and this makes life easier. Plus they're more stable than 9.x
5. A copy of nLite
6. The front end for our second 'AiW O/S'. I'm buying something like SnapStream's BeyondTV for the nicer PVR, but if you're cool with MMC or Dscaler (free apps) go ahead and use those. You could even use Windows XP MCE but that sort of defeats the purpose of this so I don't reccomend it unless that's all you have.
7. A CD/DVD burner and a blank CD-RW (or a CD-R if you can spare one)
8. A copy of Norton Ghost or some other imaging program and a place to store said image (10GB is preferable)
9. A good CD and a boom box to keep you going I find Slayer to be suitable for this kind of work but whatever turns your crank

Now that we've got our supplies, we can begin work.

1. The foundation

The first thing we have to do is separate out the O/S'es. I have it set up as such...

You can boot XP from an extended logical partition, whatever works easiest for your setup. The key is to separate the two XP's and your storage. I would probably allocate 10GB, no more, for the AiW XP and put the PVR/time shift files somewhere else to simplify things. You can get away with 5GB too if you're low on HDD space or as you see fit but 10GB leaves room for expansion.

Once you've made your partitions, check that you can boot still from your main O/S and move on to the next step.

2. Preparing the AiW O/S

This is where you'll need nLite. Run nLite and have it copy the O/S to a temporary spot here. Once done copying, select ALL the options except Hotfixes and Update Packs. (You can skip Integrate Drivers if you don't need a SATA/SCSI controller driver, and skip the Integrate Service Pack if you already have SP2 integrated). Make sure to include SP2! When you get to the remove components section, make SURE to remove as much as you can live without. I personally would remove EVERYTHING except stuff needed for the TV tuner and sound device support since we don't plan on gaming here. It is critical that you select the "Display Drivers" and "Old Display Drivers" for removal, we don't want those. Continue on to integrate your serial number for easier setup (also disable system restore...useless here). The rest is straight forward.... customize things as you see fit, then create your bootable ISO and burn it to the CD/RW.

3. Installing the AiW O/S

Boot from the new disk and install to the partition you've set aside for your AiW O/S. Install should go fast since you've removed most of the stuff out of the stock XP install. After the setup is done, make sure you can boot both O/Ses now before continuing. If all is sucessful, move on to the next step.

4. Set up the AiW O/S

This is the fun part. Install your motherboard chipset drivers first. If you've found a WDM driver set you like and works, make sure you use it here. I would install the Catalyst package that came with that WDM set. The good part is that you're not gaming so you can keep the same old, outdated but working driver here and never have to change it! Also install your soundcard and any other utilities related to that at this point. Install any Remote Wonder drivers/plugins here too.

After getting the drivers working, install your TV viewing/recording programs and configure them and test them out. Get things set up the way you want it when you're watching TV. Also set up your monitors/TV screens like you'd typically have it. Make sure to test Nintendo/Console games, recording from the TV, flipping through channels, DVD playback, etc. Get it ALL working now. Do anything you have to such that it works and can be used JUST for TV watching/recording.

5. Clone wars

Once you've got it all working, clone it with the drive image program and save it somewhere safe. This is the reason I reccomended different partitions for the video files and the O/S stuff that doesn't change. If something goes wrong or you malf up the settings, you can just restore it and all your videos are there as you left them and you haven't lost anything. It makes life easier, but if you feel you're fine without it, you can skip this step.

6. Enjoy!

My favorite step . Now you can boot in at any time to a WORKING TV / DVD set up and just enjoy. After a hard day of working, overclocking, meetings, drinking beer, etc... you can just sit down and use the damn thing like you're supposed to instead of having to perform a ritual sacrifice to the gods of Working Computers. Now you can watch movies and listen to music and play Play Station and keep all that away from your constantly changing/updated main O/S. The good thing about this, in my opinion is that I can now update my 3D Drivers whenever I feel like it and not worry that my MMC/TV is going to go haywire just because there was some small change ATI deemed necessary to make. This also prevents me from wanting to smash my $600 video card and tearing my hair out. The other great thing is not having to dick with monitor settings. My main O/S has my dual CRT setup, then my AIW O/S has my TV setup with my monitor so I can watch TV in theatre mode. I've even gone a step further and had my video card underclock itself and lower fan speeds since I'm not gaming, and I'll soon get my CPU doing the same thing. This way I can run the system nearly passive because I don't need the extra speed for watching TV and thus can save power and noise and heat generation.

Yes, there are some cons to this.... dual booting is sometimes confusing to get working, it wastes some space... its unecessary, my product SHOULD work out of the box with one O/S... but look at the pros: I can use my product as advertised, its kind of fun and gives newer PC users some experience with things like partitioning, it saves me hassles of driver cleaning, update, clean, retry, update ad nauseum, I can stop taking my high blood pressure pills, I can wake up without being pissed off, I've cut my swearing down 10%......

Enjoy!

OldBuzzard

You sure do like doing it the hard way.


Take a look at this software: http://www.hyperossystems.co.uk/

OneClick works for 4 OS's, and SuperGeek is availble in either 11 or 22 OS versions.

Trust me...once you've used HyperOS you will wonder why everyone doesn't use it.

Good thing is that they had dropped the prices BIG time, and now it's very affordable.I swear by it, and KBUZZARD recently installed it and is a 'believer' too.

H3X4D3C1M4L

I know what that is. This will work better. A native solution is always better than a virtualized or shared one for this kind of work.

OldBuzzard

HOS is neither virtualized nor shared. All the OSs are independent. With HOS you get the added advantages of being to clone a system in about 2-3 minutes, or back one one up in .zip or .rar format.

Believe me, it's the ultimate solution for multi-booting.

H3X4D3C1M4L

Its a hypervisor like Xen... I know what it is.

This works better for someone who doesn't want to buy that

Judas

Someone sticky this!

swimtech

No kidding!

Nice work, very nice. Done.

H3X4D3C1M4L

Thanks guys

kbuzzard

Olbuzzard is right, I started using HyperOs at last post here, as you indicated, use SIMPLE XP's, ATI MMC stuff is NOT stable to driver etc changes. AND For gods sake, stop using CCC and .NET Framework 2 or 3, THEY ARE TROUBLE, TROUBLE,. You will figure that out when your "WORKING" Capture re-boots during recordings 3 times in 3 weeks at the same time, and all the sudden your NERO won't copy your DVD's - YOU OWN.. YEP - keep using CCC and .Net Framework, Don't say I didn't warn you.. ATI MMC users. P.S. I now use up to 10 versions of XP from SP1 to Nlites, XPLites, etc, TRY "TINY XP 4" !!!!!!, wow, a simple 144 meg XP with CAT 6.5 CP/WDM SP or XP/ MMC 9.03 to (.06 'ONLY". Oh yea, try a good XP Codec pack with WMP 6. "stop UPDATING DRIVERS on AIW stuff. I have run the new AVSunified driver but horrible time lag on channel change but otherwise stable !!!!!.

NOTE - last week I un-installed .NET Framework 2.0 and Cat 6.2's C.C.C panel from one of my partitions, Can someone tell me what good those 2 "do WHAT" progs do for a total of 132 megs, "TinyXP's" ISO is only 144 megs, ????????????????

Did you know that XP SP2 when Nite or XPLite cleaned of BLOAT is only about a 400 meg OS, OH YEA, Forget WMP 11, DMA, Digital Rights Management, AND when clean only requires about 50 megs of RAM !!!!!!!, Think about IT !!!!!!!

H3X4D3C1M4L

Using nLite certainly helps the situations yes

ROBSCIX

Very good idea, I used to have the same thing setup for a gaming setup. You can also have seperate Hardware profiles if you have conflicting hardware. You'll get a little menu asking which profile you would like to load...you can also disable services and have them included in the profile.

H3X4D3C1M4L

I may update this guide later now that therer is a Vlite but Vista ironically does seem to handle some things better

kbuzzard

AWESOME, Great Job H3X4D... I have added a 3 way switch to my Mobo to select 1 of 3 SATA HDD's with 1 drive as XPSP1 with ATI 9600 AIW CD soft, it works GREAT. NOTE, don't waste your time with ATI DVD,File Player etc, use JUST TV stuff and install "MPlayer" as it plays all without DRM hell. Only prob with MMC 8.8 etc is big Video file size, just convert to Xvid and save new small file and delete the orig. MMC 0.03 works ok but for some reason it will screw up about 2 weeks after installed, who the hell knows why. Great job and Happy New Year to ALL of you.

H3X4D3C1M4L

Did you make the SATA switch yourself?

kbuzzard

Yes, SATA is 7 wires, 3 are common ( farleft,right and center which are usually single srand wires), then 2 pairs. A 4 pole 2 position switch will work. If you are savy with soldering and strip wires you can easily do. I have 2 4Pole2Pos switches (mini-toggles) to use 3 hdds. I have experimented with XP pro,SP1,SP2, "tinyXPs" all will work if you do the tricks. NOTE, There are some VERY interesting "Live CD" distro's of Linux that make GREAT MM Players such as Dyne:Bolic,Pureyne.Myrinix with or without MythTV which will work with Hauppauges and ATI TV cards, GEEXBOX is small, almost cyrptic but plays everything, MPlayer on XP makes a great MM player too.

H3X4D3C1M4L

I like MythTV on Gentoo but that's just me

Interesting idea about the home made HDD switch though

kbuzzard

H3X4D..., Thanx for your guidance on Multiple XP's on 1 HDD, I did so today!!. Now I have Part 1 as XPSP1 with ATI CAT2.2 CD soft and Part 2 has fresh up2date SP2 as daily with A/V soft etc CAT 6.7 vid drivers. I ran across something. I copied my SP2 uxtheme.dll from SP2 sys32 to same in SP1 after of course cutting and putting orig in hidden loc, GUESS WHAT... when I re-booted back to SP1 all was fine BUT TV card "fails" to initiate as IT PUTS yellow caution on "ATI WDM VIDEO" ???, I returned uxtheme.dll's as orig and TV card and WDM went back to normal. I have done this in the past to use newer Themes on SP1, never noticed this inter-action before. Screw it, leave it ALONE>>>>> I'm watching Bush saying he wants to balance the budget, RIGHT................................

H3X4D3C1M4L

That uxtheme.dll is interesting, I disabled that in my nLite (support for signed uxtheme.dll or something) and I got pretty good reliability... maybe this has something to do with it?

I'm going to tear apart that DLL and see what I can find in there that the GFX drivers would be dependant on (or at least the WDM's)

kbuzzard

Your the man, it is amazing that this may be the "flag" that controls the nsp/sp deal, now of course its the unified driver crap. Has anyone ever got that to work without the sound delay OR got the TV card to initialize. I have had instances where some nlite os's lack something that keeps even ATI CD software to work as far as TV card detection goes. I guess you fully understand that adding or removing that uxtheme.dll will side track that wdm driver without changing ANYTHING else.Removing it back to uxtheme.dll is v6.0.2800 dated 8/29/2002". I wish someone would modernize the working MMC software and get it out as it looks like the AIW's are about history. AGAIN, THANK YOU for the dual XP BOOT info, AWESOME idea. I have 3 boots on an old P3 and 2 boots on my P4. Amazing, old .dll is 199k and new one is 237k, cause someone hours of wasred high blood pressure.

H3X4D3C1M4L

So far I haven't actually seen anything in it that indicates it would really mess up the AiW cards. I tried installing Windows Blinds to see what that did for my MMC compatibility and all it did was seem to make Windows unstable rather than just the MMC.

kbuzzard

Well folks, probably my LAST post here. I appreciate your forum and the extended time It gave me on my NOW-X-ATI AIW /TV Wonder and a couple other ATI Wonders, LOL . I have bailed out at XP, NO Vista for me, Gone to Ubuntu Ultimate 1.4DVD and have gone 90% nVidia and ATI TV has been replaced with Leadtek WinFast TV2000 XP RM cards, x-3 of them. That card works with damn near anything, 98/ME/2K/XP/Vista and Linux including MythTV !!!. I have had it with driver hells etc and now enjoy operative Remotes, and frankly - software done right. Agin, BIG BIG Thanks for this sorce and best of luck to all . My ATI AIW now sits on the shelf as a example of exercizing futility ......

btw, If interested, do a google search for Ubuntu Ultimate, vers 1.1 -1.4 Live CD's DVD's, maybe try it, Those of you who have old bt878 chipset TV Wonders can use "Tvtime" OUT OF THE BOX. Leadtek takes an easy script to make 100% if you can find one. Linux works best with bt878 chipset TV Cards.............

H3X4D3C1M4L

Shame to see you go kbuzzard. You were instrumental in the movement

A brother in arms forever I say. Keep the spirit alive!