I have a semi-old computer I've been using as a Media Center mostly.

It's got:
-P4 2.4Ghz
-256 MB PC1066 RDRAM (too expensive to upgrade)
-Hauppauge WinTV PVR 500-MCE (dual-tuner w/ FM)
-GeForce FX 5500 AGP graphics card (128 MB, dual SVGA out + TV out)


It had Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. Last semester they came out with an update to media center. I installed it and the receiver service stopped working. Couldn't get it to work again. Over the weekend, I formatted and reinstalled. I installed all my drivers and typical applications. I configured media center and scheduled a bunch of recordings.

I rebooted because my graphics driver wanted me to and BAM, the media center receiver service stopped working again (it 'encountered a problem and must be shut down' every time i try to do something that involves the tv tuner card).

So... I nuked and paved again. This time using all my OLD drivers (the ones I had been using before it crashed) and I run into the problem again after a while.

I did NOT run windows update on it for either install.



My next course of action I think will be to install linux (fedora core probably) on it with Myth TV. All my hardware is supported under linux. I have a few reservations about it though...

1. I need to be able to share the printer and files with windows computers on the network (I know it can be done but I don't know how -- I can set up FTP and SSH for files though.)

2. I could never get applications to compile last time I had linux on there (though I can use apt-get to get most of what I need)

3. MythTV used to hang on my computer

4. I had trouble getting the audio driver to work under certain kernel versions


I'm not highly experienced with linux, so my troubleshooting capabilities are limited. I thought I ight take it to one of LUG's installfest things but I need to get this up and runing either linux or Windows soon as there are some things I NEED it for (I have a whole lot of MCNP runs I've got to do on it cuz my laptop is slow as ass).




All reasonable suggestions are welcome. If someone wants to come over and set it up for me (MythTV, printer, graphics driver, and audio driver) for like $20 after I get it up and runing that'd be cool.

1/9/2006 5:24:25 PM