Dusting off the old MVP's

[WhiteGuyTranslating]

Caught wind that the fine tinkerers at gbpvr were hashing out a new project and thought after a 6 year hiatus in Windows Media Center Land, I'd try out the new, good stuff. Unfortunately, that is (after 5 hours of staring at a computer screen, blankly) where I am still at: in thought.

Here is my problem: My MVP is stuck at the loading screen saying "Connecting to Boot Server" with minor flashes ever 30 seconds or so to "Connecting to DHCP".

Here is my situation: 3 MVP D3 Revision boxes trying to get NPVR to load. I only hook up one at a time, since I am looking to troubleshoot here. Each one registers on my router with the correct MAC address and a good assigned by the router DHCP ip address. Pinging works good.

Here is my issue: I am pretty sure I am missing some kind of server application that is not installed with the NPVR program. Something along the lines a boot server. Unfortunately, since my aforementioned hiatus, I have forgotten what I need to get this guy running, and I am pretty sure that I can't use the old methods even if I do remember them because that was more than 2 OS's ago. Since I now have Windows 7 64-bit (for the ram), I am not getting anywhere with the MediaMVP software package from their support website. So even using these MVPs as stock is out of the question. I have found johnsonx42's sticky for newbs and I have downloaded in preparation mvallevand's dongle (which the MVP gets its OS from, I gather) but I just can't seem to find that last piece of the puzzle.

Here is what I would like: Tell me what I need to download to get this to work like I see others in forums talking about, so that I can get stuck on their more advanced issues as well.

PS
I should say that I have got the program to work on my actual PC/Media Server in windowed and full screen mode. It looks fantastic! I am just hoping to get the same results for the MVP.

[Sheik Yerbouti]

There can be a lot of reasons, but you should at least have one server running for the mvp. Do you have this enabled on the MVP setup tab in the setup of npvr (number of servers = 1)?

Chris

[steeb]

Here is my problem: My MVP is stuck at the loading screen saying "Connecting to Boot Server" with minor flashes ever 30 seconds or so to "Connecting to DHCP"........

........I am not getting anywhere with the MediaMVP software package from their support website. So even using these MVPs as stock is out of the question.

I could be wrong but I think it is essential that you manage to get the MVP's to boot the stock Hauppauge Dongle initially so that they load your server's IP address?

steeb

[WhiteGuyTranslating]

There can be a lot of reasons, but you should at least have one server running for the mvp. Do you have this enabled on the MVP setup tab in the setup of npvr (number of servers = 1)?

Chris

Yup, I even kicked it up to 10 instances just in case. Did not work so I went back to 1.

[WhiteGuyTranslating]

I could be wrong but I think it is essential that you manage to get the MVP's to boot the stock Hauppauge Dongle initially so that they load your server's IP address?

steeb

So what you are saying is that I need to download the Hauppauge MVP software, find the dongle from the directory, remove it, uninstall the Hauppauge MVP software and then put the Hauppage MVP dongle into the NPVR Dongle folder? Once that is done I can then put back into the NPVR dongle folder the NPVR dongle or the mvpmc dongle by mvallevand?

I only ask if that could be a work around as the Hauppauge MediaMVP software seems to be out of date and non-compatible with my Win7x64 OS. And I only say that because I cannot get the stock MediaMVP to boot past the Boot Server screen.

[steeb]

So what you are saying is that I need to download the Hauppauge MVP software, find the dongle from the directory, remove it, uninstall the Hauppauge MVP software and then put the Hauppage MVP dongle into the NPVR Dongle folder? Once that is done I can then put back into the NPVR dongle folder the NPVR dongle or the mvpmc dongle by mvallevand?

I only ask if that could be a work around as the Hauppauge MediaMVP software seems to be out of date and non-compatible with my Win7x64 OS. And I only say that because I cannot get the stock MediaMVP to boot past the Boot Server screen.

I am fairly certain that you have to get the MVP/'s to initially load the Hauppauge Dongle from the server that you will be running NPVR from. (I'm not very technical but this loads the IP of your server into the MVP 'memory'). You would do this directly running the Hauppauge MVP server software nothing else. I don't know about the software compatibility with Win7. Perhaps there is a firewall/permissions issue on your server that is stopping it loading?

Once successful booting the MVP's with the stock Hauppauge MVP software turn off the MVP's with RC. Either uninstall the Hauppauge Software or (I just turn it off in services from the default automatic start).

You should not need to do anything with the Hauppauge Dongle from this point.

Now turn your attention to NPVR and set up Martin's MVPMC dongle using at least one instance of MVP running in NPVR (as Chris said)

Don't turn on the MVP's with RC, force a reboot by unplugging the power at the back of the device. The MVP should 'remember' the IP of your server but should now load the MVPMC dongle instead.

I don't know of a workaround without loading the Hauppauge dongle initially, there may be one.

Also may be better if you posted anything further about this on the MVP/NMT threads, it may be more likely to be spotted by minds greater than mine

steeb

[WhiteGuyTranslating]

Semi-Resolved! I read in a thread buried deep under a "windows 7" search that the firewall needs the programs to have home network AND public access. I have moved past the looking for bootserver section on to "Loading..."something (sorry, forgot what the machine was loading verbatim since I was so excited to move on past that point). Just turning off the firewall does not work apparently, since that was the first thing I tried. You HAVE to add the program to both the private and public exceptions list. I suppose this is along the same lines as you would find working with a MCE and Windows 7 requiring the shared access set to "Everyone" in order to play and/or view files on the network. If I don't get past the "Loading..." screen, I will be looking for next steps.

If you have hankering for BBQ and fireworks steeb, then I owe you a July 4th Independence "but we still think you guys are cool" Day party!

[WhiteGuyTranslating]

So unfortunately after doing as much reading as possible, I am still stuck at "Loading Application...". I have tried all 3 dongles (Hauppauge Orginal, NPVR Orginal, and mvallevand mvpmc) to no avail. So using NPVR as my streaming service to the MVP is working at least as a boot server, whereas the Hauppauge streaming service does not function in my Win7x64 environment.

I will move into that MVP/NMT section like you said steeb and see if anyone there can get me past "Loading Application..."

1 Hour later and still stuck at "Loading Application...". Hauppauge software will not even get that far. Looks like I need to ask this question: can I use NPVR at all if I cannot do a first time load of the original Hauppauge dongle using Hauppauge software?

[mvallevand]

Semi-Resolved! I read in a thread buried deep under a "windows 7" search that the firewall needs the programs to have home network AND public access.

That's nonsense. There are a lot of old posts with totally useless "tips" and tweaks that contain bad information like that.

I don't support the MVP anymore but providing more information will help others. help you. Postings logs is always good too. A couple of pieces of info about networking, if you are using wifi only WEP-128 is supported by mvpmc, wired cross-connects will require a local dhcp, so this isn't recommended. Also you can't cross sub-nets.

Martin

[WhiteGuyTranslating]

That's nonsense. There are a lot of old posts with totally useless "tips" and tweaks that contain bad information like that.

I don't understand the nonsense. Adding NPVR.exe to the firewall exception list for home AND public network is the only way I got to the "Loading Application..." step so that seems to me as good information. Now if you are saying that circumventing the firewall is only going to lead me to a dead end, then I can at least see the nonsense in that method.

Unfortunately, with most old tech, that the MVP on a windows 7 environment, using the latest security setting on a wireless network to get 300Mbs speed, in a 64bit environment, is just not going to work. Since my main moving watching system is all Microsoft with Xbox360 extenders and it works great, all the time, then downgrading the whole system just to support 8 year old devices sounds a bit silly. I suppose I'll take Martin's advice and not support my MVP's either. Thanks for the help and time spent Steve and others who have pondered in passing!

PS. On a positive note, I suppose I'll get to take these apart and see what makes em tick! Always wanted to try soldering something...