Questions on which version to use (solved, but new question asked)

[w00dr0w]

Dunno if I should start a new thread or not so I'll continue it here till suggested to make a new one

Got it to install (apparently the disks were perfect, it just didn't like my Samsung SH-183L (sata) burner to install from.
Hooked up my Lite-On SHM-165H6S onto a USB HDD enclosure (hoping it'd work) and it did!

Now for the problem...
Everything installed fine, got to the prompt to remove the CD and hit enter, did that and the system rebooted (everything fine so far)
or was it?
It booted straight into windows. I thought it was installing it's own bootloader but apparently not.
Is there some way i can install a bootloader (grub/lilo) while being totally inept at anything Linux related (cmd prompts are not my friend)

[Zaerc]

I don't think windows is even on the DL image, are you sure you used the right install-DVD? 

[colinjones]

There's definitely no Windows on the disk. It destroys the entire drive that you point it at, including partitions, repartitions and installs there complete with bootloader, etc.

The only way I can think that you would end up with this result is if you have 2 drives in your system. Drive 0 had Windows on it, and drive 1 was the drive that you pointed the installer at when it asked you which drive. In which case, Windows will still exist on the first drive and the BIOS will always attempt to boot that drive. Given that the installer never touched that drive the original bootloader is still intact and will boot Windows - the bootloader LMCE installed on the second drive will remain unused as it is on the wrong drive.

The simplest way around this is simply to swap the drive connectors around so that drive 0 is the LMCE drive, then this will boot LMCE - for SATA, IDE might be a little more complex depending on how you have your master/slaves set up, but fundamentally the BIOS will try to boot from the first channel, master HDD.

Otherwise, there is no reason why you can't install a new boot loader on your Windows disk to give you the option of booting Windows or LMCE, or even modifying the Windows boot loader to give you the option of Windows or pointing to the LMCE GRUB loader. But I really wouldn't recommend dual booting a core, it speaks of not understanding the point of a LMCE core... that it is supposed to be on 24/7 to be able to do its job.

[w00dr0w]

As i said in a previous post, this is a test of MCE before I build an HTPC specifically for MCE itself. I'm using my *main rig* hooked up to my HDTV.

Yes, windows was already installed on this PC. What I thought was MCE would have put the bootloader on the main (windows) drive so I could dual boot windows/linuxMCE

I'm not technically inept, I've worked with PC's for over 15 years now (and dabbled in linux a couple times, all of them installed grub/lilo on the main drive so I could dual boot). I fixed it just after posting by setting my HDD boot order in the bios (and it doesn't matter with PATA drives which is master/slave so long as the bios is set to boot from whichever drive you want to boot from) The only problem with this is I still can't dual boot cause grub doesn't have my windows install as an option (will google to figure out how to edit it in)

As far as MCE itself goes, It boots, it loads the wizard, everything went fine.
Can't watch commercial DVDs cause I don't have decss (i think that's what it's called) installed, so I'll have to get that once I get networking going.

I'm having an issue with the KDE desktop now though, MCE is fine and fits the screen perfectly, but when I went to the KDE desktop to setup my wireless and do some other things it's too big for my screen (the *start bar* for lack of a better term is below my screen, the icons are off to the left so I can't even see them etc.) Will post a pic as soon as I reboot into MCE. If it helps I'm running it off my component video to a 42" 1080p HDTV

Another issue I'm having is it's not finding my video files off another HDD (750gb formatted as NTFS). My videos are x.264 mkv's (i've found this to be the best to encode my home movies off the HDR-CX7 handycam cause I can add different audio tracks like commentary and [my favorite] the benny hill theme music over the scenes of my kids chasing each other) I went into the KDE desktop and tried mplayer but that just gave me a host of errors and played the videos in slow motion.

Once I get all this figured out I'll start adding my hardware to the wiki because AFAIK most if not everything works (cant test wifi cause I cant get to the top of the desktop). It shows my bluetooth adapter, but i haven't had a chance to test it (want to fix the resolution issue first)

[colinjones]

Then its a good job you didn't actually point the installation at your main disk as it would have completely reformatted the drive and killed your Windows installation! (I'm sure you have read that in the FAQ )

If you pointed the installation at the other drive, then clearly there is no way it could have made it dual boot, as it doesn't know which drive or bootloader is being used - it quite reasonably assumes that it should create a bootloader on the installation disk that will be used exclusively to boot LMCE. The DVD is an image drop system, after all.

If you need to dual boot, you could potentially use the CDs instead. This is because you have to install normal Kubuntu 0710 (no updates) first, and this will give you the option to install it dual boot alongside Windows and create a GRUB loader to go with it. In fact it modifies the Windows loader to have an extra entry that points to the GRUB loader. CD installation will take over 3 hours, however, and don't hold me to this as I haven't got through a dual boot install with Kubuntu 0710, only 0810 which doesn't work yet with LMCE.

Failing that, you will need to look up how manually to modify one of the loaders. Haven't got time to go through the video question with you at the moment - you need to create a new thread for that as it is potentially a dedicated task on its own, and you need to attract the right minds.

.mkv files should be scanned in. As long as they have the .mkv extension. x.264 shouldn't be a problem (although it depends on bit rate, resolution and your hardware, because you won't be getting any graphics acceleration in the decode). First up, make sure that other video formats are getting successfully scanned in on the same drive - you seem to be saying that on other drives, other file formats work fine. Move one of those to this drive and see if it gets scanned in. If not, go to the web admin under media sync and check that it has a big check mark next to it indicating that it has been scanned it. Basically, you need to determine is it the drive not being scanned properly, or something specific to these files.

[w00dr0w]

I got the video files working for the most part. I had to go to KDE and mount each HDD then it worked as it should (the video issue was a real PITA to work around [still not fixed] just had to predict where I needed the mouse cursor on certain windows and drag them within view.)

Gonna make a new topic regarding the new issues I have, thanks again colinjones.

(and FYI i actually formatted the wrong drive once on accident when reinstalling windows [as I have 2x 250gb seagate PATA drives]. So this time I made sure I had the drive model# and serial# written down before I installed so I wasn't making any mistakes [FAQ FTW])

[colinjones]

Critical Tip: Never, ever manually mount or symlink anything in LMCE, you have likely broken your installation.

LMCE has a very complex and sophisticated automounting and linking system to allow it to work its magic merging all media from different sources into a single pool, and to handle offlining of removeable devices.

You never have to mount anything manually (command line or within KDE) - if something is not mounted or linked in properly, then you have an issue elsewhere that needs troubleshooting. Mounting manually will not only break LMCE's functionality, it is also simply addressing the symptom, rather than the cause.

If possible, backout whatever you did to mount manually and reboot, and hopefully you will not have to reinstall. Then you can work through why it is not seeing the drive - there are any number of known reasons that a remote drive might not be visible or scannable, but none of them are anything to do with mounting.

[w00dr0w]

hrmmm...
Well, Im in windows right now (every time I post it's in windows)
but when i reboot I'll see if I really messed anything up (and I wont mount the drives any more if I didnt screw up MCE)

I don't know if I mounted the drives or not. just was browsing in KDE and tried opening one of my HDDs and a little green arrow showed up in the lower right corner afterward. when i went back into MCE it saw all my video files

[colinjones]

ok, that's not mounting (manually) then so you should be OK. but clearly there is something causing an issue - post when you have a clean reboot and you're sure all is OK, then we can look at the cause (or post once you reboot again, anyway!)

[w00dr0w]

Ok well everything was fine, I just picked a wrong setting when I was setting up the extra HDD's (told it to only use it when I tell it to or something of that sort)
I've changed a couple things
Did a complete reinstall cause when I tried installing the latest Nvidia drivers it hosed the whole install (I think I went wrong when I told it to reconfigure x-windows or something like that)
I've also reinstalled a couple more times cause I kept messing up some settings (I didn't want it to manage my windows drive at all, but I accidentally kept telling it to)
I'm now using my HDTV's VGA input instead of component and the screen issue is almost fixed (still just a tad too far off on the left)
Hooked up my PC via ethernet so I'm now posting via MCE instead of windows

I still need to know EXACTLY what to chose when I install the latest Nvidia drivers so I don't hose this install (as it's almost perfect) but other then that I think I've got everything setup how I'd like (though i still don't know how to hook it up via wifi instead of my ethernet)