Windows Media Center 2005 and Small Business Server

There are many links out on the network to explain how to join a Media Center Edition (MCE) PC to a Small Business domain, but that’s not what this post is about. You see, I want my new MCE to play nice with my SBS network, but joining a domain breaks the two specific features I want.

After recently moving my desktop to a more accessible location in the house, I wanted to make it easy for my five year old to use, and that meant I needed the XP Home fast user switching logon style. Clicking on a recognizable name or picture is much easier for her than pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del and typing a username and password. Joining a domain removes this style of logon.

On a side track, I had been contemplating for months the idea of modding my xBox. I’m not a big gamer, so most of the benefits of a modded xBox are lost on me. What I really wanted to do was to be able to enjoy photos and music from my server on my entertainment system. Then, I was introduced (finally) to Media Center, and Media Center Extenders. I found out that Microsoft sells a Media Center Extender (MCX) for the xBox that would let me do exactly what I wanted on the xBox. MCE on the PC would give me that ‘XP Home’ look I was looking for too. One of the requirements for Extenders is that the MCE PC must be using the Fast User switching, so joining a domain would break that too.

So, I rebuilt the PC with MCE and got the MCX up and running. Very, very cool. Now comes the fun part: getting it to play nice with the rest of the network.

I set the MCE up with a workgroup name that matches my domain name, and then defined local users with the same passwords as their domain counterparts. Pretty straight forward stuff there. That left me with three things I needed to work around to get the MCE where I wanted it.

First, one of the cool things about SBS Server 2003 is the Remote Web Workplace, which allows you to securely access the network from the internet and establish Remote Desktop connections to client computers. I wanted to be able to do this with the MCE machine, but because it wasn’t a domain member, it wasn’t accessible. After some googling, I found some blog writers that seemed to know SBS and MCE, so I shot off a couple of emails. I got a reply from Sean Daniel, and he suggested I try a method that I had been contemplating. I set up a dummy machine with the same computer name as my MCE (with the MCE offline at this point) and joined that computer to the domain. Just joining to the domain doesn’t unlock the Remote Web goodness, however. You have to run through the SBS Add Computer wizard on the server as well. Once I did this, the computer name I chose (“Loft”) showed up in the Available Clients list. Cool! I shut down the dummy computer and brought the real “Loft” back online. My first attempt at connecting through RWW was unsuccessful. Just as the aggrevation started, I remembered that blasted Windows Firewall. Once I turned that off, the RWW connection worked GREAT!

The second issue I wanted to overcome was having my Media Center Extender access my already established Shared Music and Shared Photos shares on my server. Lucky, Sean’s blog had an entry on how to do exactly that. I followed Sean’s instructions and they worked like a charm. I think they can be tweaked, however. Since my MCE is a member of a workgroup that is named the same as my domain, once I authenticated my MCX1 user to the domain, I could see all sorts of shared folders when configuring the MCX. I suspect that if the login script for MCX1 just had a ‘NET USE \\SERVER\IPC$’ statement in it, I wouldn’t necessarily have to map drive letters to the shares. I may try this at some point.

Two down, one to go. The only thing I don’t have working yet is access to the administrative shares on the MCE. Even though my domain user name and password match my local username and password on the MCE PC, and even though I’m a member of the local administrators group, I cannot access \\LOFT\C$. I get prompted for a username and password, but nothing works. Not even ‘LOFT\Brad’. I’m not sure why this is yet, but since remote desktop is working, I’m not sure if it’s really that big of an issue any more.

SeanDaniel.com on SBS 2003 & other Tech-stuff

I ran across a great Small Business Server blog while searching for an answer to a question I have. I sent this guy an email, hopefully he can help me. If not, I’m glad I found his site. It looks lilke he has some useful stuff in there.

SeanDaniel.com on SBS 2003 & other Tech-stuff

Google’s Your Friend

I should start blogging all the bizarre, trivial, and fun facts I have searched for and found using Google.

For example:

• I now know how much human waste a 747 can hold.
• An uncle I never met owned a plane in the early 60’s. That plane is now in Missouri, owned by a man who is an acquaintance of a good friend of mine.
• How tall is a wind turbine, and how does that compare to a TV transmitter in Rockford.

You know, that kind of stuff.

Transferring large files to/from a Media Player in Windows

I ran across an error today when trying to copy a 3 GB file off of my Pocket DJ:

not enough storage is available to complete this operation

It turns out that Microsoft has a hotfix for this problem: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;895316

A quick install and a reboot and the problem went away.

Church, State, and Intelligent Design

Remember reading these words in the 5th grade?

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Of course most people will recognize these words from the Declaration of Independence. These are the very words that launched not only our country, but our governing philosophy as well.

Our very country was formed with the belief that we were ‘created’ , or in other words, intelligently designed. Now, the very notion of teaching this outrageous idea to school children is villified as an attempt to introduce religion into the classroom. I wonder how History teachers will explain that phrase “endowed by their Creator” without touching on Intelligent Design.

The fact is, you can’t. Our founding fathers held the belief that we did not just happen here by chance and evolution. They believed we were designed, and I suspect they felt very strongly that each of them were designed for a very specific purpose, that is to launch this wonderful experiment in Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

I’m Getting Old, Part I

Last week I got another reminder that I’m not as young as I used to be: Last week was parents/teacher conferences at my daughter’s school, our first conference as parents.

In the past, just hearing the phrases, “teacher conference”, or “report card day”, would give me that unmistakable feeling in the pit of my stomach. You see when I was in school nothing good ever came as a result of those phrases, and now they have re-entered my life.

My daughter is in Kindergarten, so it’s not like there would be any bad news shared with us or anything, but that didn’t keep me from being nervous. What would the teacher say? How does she compare with the other kids? Is she making friends? Does she talk too much? A dozen questions filled my head, which I suppose was a welcomed distraction from the bizarness of it all.

It turns out that my daughter’s teacher had nothing but positive things to say about her and the progress she is making. Not a day goes by that I’m not absolutely proud of my daughter, and marvel at how quickly she is growing into a bright, creative, expressive little girl.

New Toy

We got a new toy at work today:

A Dell Rack Console 15FP

It took us about two seconds to get cracking and throw that puppy in the rack. When it’s installed, it looks so cool. I’m trying to find out if it was designed to double as a laptop work surface. It seems that when you extend the monitor, but don’t flip it up, the back would be a perfect spot to rest a laptop in the data center.