Installing MCE (dual boot)

I want to get MCE as i want to stream over my XBOX360.

At present i have a DELL 8400 with windows XP and double hard drives.

I have heard that it is almost impossible to load MCE onto a PC .

First of all is that true and what would i need to do (ie drivers etc).

I would also ideally want to keep all my existinf files and programes on the PC and my understanding is that if i install MCE it will have to be a clean sweep of my system.

However would it be possible to install MCE onto my other harddrive and then have the option of chosing the operating system when i boot up the PC.

I am not interested in and have no intention of using the MCE as a Tivo type device and all MCE would be used for would be for streaming films etc to the XBOX360

[lisag]

Yes, you can dual boot.
When you go through the set up process of installing MCE, you will need to select or create a new partition on your hard drive, and install MCE on there, leaving your existing OS intact. When you boot your pc you will be presented with a boot menu enabling you to select which O/S to boot into.

[sanderton]

Remember that XBox 360 can only stream video in WMV or MPEG-2 formats, not AVI files.

how easy is it to set up. The Dell had XP ready installed. There were no back up disks as recovery can be selected from the harddrive to do a clean install.

Will i need to make copies of all the drivers i will need and if so where should i store them ie on a seperate disk etc.

Is it just a matter of putting the MCE disks in the computer and selecting where to install.

If i do this will all my programs under XP be preserved or will my first hard drive with xp be overwritten

[lisag]

If you do it carefully it should be fine.
When you install from the MCE set up disks,
Just be very sure that you are installing it to a different partition than what your current XP O/s is on.
You will need to install your motherboard drivers, MCE approved graphics card drivers, drivers for any other devices / PCI cards and an MCE approved dvd codec.
The easiest way would be to download all the correct drivers from the net and burn them to disc, before you start.

[springtide]

Is there any reason why you require to dual boot? i.e. MCE is basically Windows XP Pro with a few bits removed (e.g. not being able to join Windows domains etc).
It appear on the surface that MS have reduced the functionality of XP Pro down to what you get with XP Home (maybe the decided they wanted the stability of XP Pro but with restricted XP Home functionality).

Not exactly sure what else has been taken out but most games are supposed to work so I guess most applications will too. Yes, you can setup dual booting but the question I'd ask first is... do you really need to? (you will double your admin overhead)

As for whether you should backup your personal data, then the answer is "your last personal data backup should be fine". If you haven't got a data backup of your personal data then either it's not important to you or you need to start doing backups!

[sanderton]

Originally Posted by FGEvans

There were no back up disks as recovery can be selected from the harddrive to do a clean install.

Good luck recovering from a dodgy hard drive then!

the reason i want MCE is to stream movies with the XBOX360

[springtide]

What's the reason for keeping Windows XP? (was my question)

I do not want to lose everything that i have on the PC and do not fancy having to make a back up of all the programes, films and music i have.

This seems to be dragging on and you don't seem to have got any further forward.

You have the luxury of two hard drives so you can install a dual boot system very easily.

Before you start you should download all the latest drivers for your PC from the Dell website. Store them on your D: drive but under a folder at the root level, not under documents and settings on the C: drive (D:\Drivers for example). This is easy if you have the Service Tag. Go here and enter the tag and select your model number.

Once you have these you are safe to install MCE. During the installation you will be prompted to select the drive to install to. Make sure you select the D: drive, if you don't, you will be screwed! You will be also asked if you wish to leave the file system as it is or format. Best you leave it as it is! If it finds your existing installation, tell it you wish to install a new one.

During the install you will probably be prompted for the XP Service Pack 2 disk. Ignore this irritating mistake and just insert the second MCE disk. When prompted again, re-insert disk 1.

When you've finished you will get a choice of both installations with a timer counting down from 30 seconds until it loads your new installation.

I would advise you to make sure that your second drive is D:. If you added it later you may find your CD/DVD drive is D:, as long as you haven't installed any software to D: and it only contains data you will be safe to change the letters around. I'd make the optical drive V: or W: but you can use whatever suits you.

Dave

One final question - which drivers am i looking for. ie when i look at the drivers section it lists a number of operating systems but not windows MCE, it has XP etc.

do i download the drivers for XP

[lisag]

Originally Posted by FGEvans

One final question - which drivers am i looking for. ie when i look at the drivers section it lists a number of operating systems but not windows MCE, it has XP etc.

do i download the drivers for XP

Yes, some devices have MCE specific drivers, mainly tv cards and graphics cards, but if not go for the XP ones.

[Golfpunk]

I am also doing the dual boot thing - its a piece of cake (as long as you make a note of your Boot.ini file) and works fine.

BUT - I have found MCE to be a pig as a gaming platform so even though I wanted to move over to MCE and get rid on XP Pro, I can't do that now. MCE 3d mark 05 scores are around 1000 points lower than Pro using Nvidia normal drivers and are even worse using the MCE ones. Quake 4 is jumpy but smooth under the normal XP pro. Its a pain as I wanted MCE to do all as it was going to be used with a 360 to do my PVR'ing on a TV.

I cannot find a explanation as there is less running in memory/cpu then under my normal build.....

[Hammer Schultz]

MCE 2005 is a XP Pro 2 with the media capabilities, in theory it shouldn't affect gaming performance too much except for the increased memory stamp.