WMCE Boot Up

[Jonnyboy]

Can I get WMCE to skip the user selection screen when windows boots up. I have the machine set to only have one user so 1. It's a bit pointless, and 2. It breaks the "this is a consumer product" and makes it feel computery. I just want to turn the machine on and have it load all the way to the Media Center interface without any other rubbish.

[groovyclam]

TweakUI XP in the XP PowerToys has this facility but I'm not sure if it works for MCE but they are pretty similar so it's worth a try.

Just do a System Retore point before installation/tryout in case you need to back it out.

[Werner]

jonnyboy, easy as pie.

1) grab a shortcut to media center and put it in the start menu, under the "start up" group.

That will make it so media center ui runs at startup

2) go to start/run and type in "control userpasswords2" minus the quotes.
Deselect "user must enter a username and password to use this computer". Click apply. It will ask for a default username and password to use when booting. Select your chosen user account. This will get rid of the username/password prompt when powering on the system

3) (optional) go to the display properties applet, select screensaver, make sure nothing is ticked for "on resume, display the welcome screen", so that if/when the screensaver kicks in, it will just return to mce on keypress, instead of asking for a username/password.

4) (optional) go to the power applet in control panel, select "advanced" and deslect "prompt for a password when computer resumes from standby"

5) send me £10 :grin:

Now it should act quite a lot more like a ce device
cheers
Werner

[Jonnyboy]

Excellent, thanks for this. I'll give it a go in a bit. Cheers, guys.


jonnyboy, easy as pie.

1) grab a shortcut to media center and put it in the start menu, under the "start up" group.

That will make it so media center ui runs at startup

2) go to start/run and type in "control userpasswords2" minus the quotes.
Deselect "user must enter a username and password to use this computer". Click apply. It will ask for a default username and password to use when booting. Select your chosen user account. This will get rid of the username/password prompt when powering on the system

3) (optional) go to the display properties applet, select screensaver, make sure nothing is ticked for "on resume, display the welcome screen", so that if/when the screensaver kicks in, it will just return to mce on keypress, instead of asking for a username/password.

4) (optional) go to the power applet in control panel, select "advanced" and deslect "prompt for a password when computer resumes from standby"

5) send me £10 :grin:

Now it should act quite a lot more like a ce device
cheers
Werner

[Daithi]

Can I get WMCE to skip the user selection screen when windows boots up. I have the machine set to only have one user so 1. It's a bit pointless, and 2. It breaks the "this is a consumer product" and makes it feel computery. I just want to turn the machine on and have it load all the way to the Media Center interface without any other rubbish.

It's strange that it's doing this (mine doesn't). Although now that I think about it I think there was a very short period a while back when this was the case, but a .net framework service pack fixed the problem. Might be worth checking that you're fully patched on Windows Update.

[PannyAdams]

ANyone know how to get MCE to run from boot if you do have more than one user set up?

[Werner]

yes, even easier. you have to create a shortcut to media center, then drop it in this locaiton on your hard drive
c:\documents and settings\all users\start menu\programs\start up

This is the global startup location for all users.

[lisag]

Within MCE you can set it to start-up with windows

[PannyAdams]

Werner

Done that, but I still get the chose user screen after boot or if the screen saver kicks in.

I want it to byass the user select page and start with the MCE page - do I need to remove the other two users from the system? :lease:

[Werner]

no, you need to set mce so that it logs in one user by default. go re-read my post as a reply to johnnyboy, i mentioned control userpasswords 2 to set a default user. as well as o wto set it so that the screensaver doesnt ask for login details.

[DaveP]

Werner

Done that, but I still get the chose user screen after boot or if the screen saver kicks in.

I want it to byass the user select page and start with the MCE page - do I need to remove the other two users from the system? :lease:


I don't think that would help. I only have one user defined and I get the chose user screen!

I too tried Tweakui but MCE seems to forget the setting.

You can stop the screen saver invoking the screen by un-ticking the "on resume, display welcome screen" box.

Dave

[Werner]

have you guys that have one user and get the choose user screen actually tried the "control userpasswords 2" trick I mentioned at the top of this thread so that mce will log a user in by default everytime?

[DaveP]

Yep, the box is already unticked.

Thanks anyway.

Dave

[Spacecat]

Why not just put it into S3 standby? never boots up but turns on and off from the MCE screen

[Jonnyboy]

have you guys that have one user and get the choose user screen actually tried the "control userpasswords 2" trick I mentioned at the top of this thread so that mce will log a user in by default everytime?

It worked for me. Although I think I might have stumbled of the instructions a couple of times first.

[Jonnyboy]

Why not just put it into S3 standby? never boots up but turns on and off from the MCE screen

What is *S3* Standby?

[markxtc123]

What is *S3* Standby?

S3 standby is almost like turning the player off. The hard drive shuts down, the display output shuts down, the power light on the front turns off. For all the world it looks like the machine is turned off. HOWEVER a small trickle current is running through the processor so that queued events, such as a scheduled recording, will wake up the machine so it can do it's duty. Then, assuming you have set up the power management correctly, the machine will record the scheduled programme and go back to sleep again.

[Jonnyboy]

S3 standby is almost like turning the player off. The hard drive shuts down, the display output shuts down, the power light on the front turns off. For all the world it looks like the machine is turned off. HOWEVER a small trickle current is running through the processor so that queued events, such as a scheduled recording, will wake up the machine so it can do it's duty. Then, assuming you have set up the power management correctly, the machine will record the scheduled programme and go back to sleep again.

And is that different to normal Standby?

[Werner]

there are two main types of standby used in pc's,
s1
and
s3

s1 isnt as good in terms of power saving, quite a lot of the machine is still active

s3 is almost a deep sleep, with only minimal power trickling through cpu and ram

the easiest way to tell if you have it set to s1 or s3 is to see if the fans are spinning while in standby. s1 will leave the fans spinning and s3 should have the fans stopped (as the cpu isnt technically ON, just alive..)

s0 to s4 here
http://www.shahine.com/omar/StandbyExplainedS1S3.aspx

[CTID]

best thing to do is when first running the setup for users is to only setup one and then don't give this user a password, then windows boots up without the authentication screen. Then set mce to boot on windows boot.

[Dave_M]

I've been having this same problem on an XP Pro machine. The following fix worked for that - don't know about MCE as I don't have mine yet, but it's the same kernel so ...

Control Panel -> User Accounts -> Change the way users log on or off -> clear BOTH check boxes and Apply. Does the trick for me

[Dave_M]

BTW .. the above is IN ADDITION to following Werner's instructions