Remote options on Win2003 Server w/ display

[M3_boogie]

I have Sage 6.5 installed and fully functional (minus remote control) on Win2003 Server R2, where I would like to (eventually) add one Client and also have direct video output from the server to a TV (video card DVI-> component video --> TV). This setup worked fine under WinXP MCE SP2 (no client at the time) but as other's have noted on this board, getting the MCE remote (which came with the Hauppauge PVR-150) to work under Win2003 server is a problem.

I currently have the MCE remote & receiver from the PVR-150 as well as a Harmony 880 and I need to control a DirecTV SD box, currently connected through the Paterson USB/serial cable. What is the best way to gain remote control? Do I need to go the USB-UIRT route when I have the Paterson cable and the MCE IR receiver?

Thanks in advance.

[M3_boogie]

I've been trying like mad to get the MCE remote working under Win2003 Server R2 with zero success, thanks to Windows File Protection. It seems possible just by replacing the drivers in 2k3 server with the ones from XP MCE SP1 or higher as mentioned here. I've been trying every way I can find to disable WFP (registry edits mentioned here) and even went as far as to have someone fashion me a .exe which calls this DLL (which is seemingly made for exactly what I need), but it won't work under Win2003 server r2 (works fine under WinXP MCE sp2) and just throws a generic Internal Error.

Does anyone have any tips on disabling WFP under Win2003 Server R2?

[M3_boogie]

Maybe I should give some specifics:
After "disabling" WFP with the reg edit (dword SFCDisable set to 0xffffff9d) and telling SFC.exe not to scan at all (SFCScan set to 0) then rebooting, if I try to delete, for example, C:\windows\system32\hid.dll in order to replace it with the version from WinXP MCE, the old version is simply regenererated by Win2k3. Even if the C:\windows\system32\dllcache\ version of this file is deleted first, then the one in the parent folder deleted, that one is still regenereated.

Where exactly is the backup file coming from, if not from the dllcache folder? I can't find it by searching.


TIA

[gplasky]

Taken from a post on TGB:

The remote was a hole different story. I had to hack this quite a bit to get it to work, but it does now.

What I did was delete the SP1.CAB and changed the installation source, this way Windows couldn't find the Win2K3 version of files. After that I replaced several inf files with the WinXP ones and choose to update the drivers. When Windows asks for the location of the files I pointed it to the WinXP CD.

Files that were replaced:

* IrBus.sys
* HidClass.sys
* HidIr.sys
* HidP****.sys ( [Blush] This should say H_i_d_P_a_r_s_e_.s_y_s but some swaerfilter is bugging me [Tongue] )
* Hid.dll
* HidServ.dll
* KbdClass.sys
* KbdHid.sys

All these files (and the inf files reffering to them) were replace with the Windows XP MCE version (build 2180) and after that everything works exactly as it does with Windows XP. As always, this only works if Windows File Protection is turned off, and if SP1.CAB is deleted.

I hope someone finds an easy way of doing this, replacing the drivers this way wasn't fun andit will cost me over an hour to do this again on a clean system.

Gerry

[M3_boogie]

Thanks Gerry, that is what I was following to know which files to replace. Having WinXP MCE SP2 installed on another machine, I was attempting to simply copy the files from there and delete/overwrite the ones on the Win2k3 machine. The rest of what is written in that post is not entirely clear to me.

Where is he deleting SP1.cab from? The Win2k3 machine's drive itself?

As he mentions at the bottom of that post, it only works with WFP disabled (which I can't seem to accomplish) and SP1.cab deleted (which I can't seem to find or understand where it is).

Any feedback is more than welcome!

[M3_boogie]

Ok, I'm making some progress on this. After reading on this MS support page the "fine print" where it says that even if you disable WFP with the registry settings, if a kernel debugger is not hooked up, then WFP is not actually disabled. A light went off for me there. I booted into safe mode on the Win2003 Server after doing the reg edit above, and could easily replace all the files mentioned in the post from TGB in the system32/ or system32/drivers directories as well as in the sytem32/dllcache directory. After rebooting into normal mode, the new files are not overwritten!!!

Not suprisingly, and as mentioned in the TGB post, the Human Interface Device --> Infrared HID Device in the hardware manager is not installed correctly. This seems like the easy part, but I can't seem to get it to install properly using the new files by manually pointing to them and selecting letting windows "automatic"ly do it causes the old drivers to be reinstalled.

Either the files I'm using (from WinXP MCE SP2 machine) are not correct or maybe I need to reinstall the whole Hauppauge PVR-150?!?!