Help me end this nightmare

bpower

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Nov 22, 2006
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Hi all,

A few months ago I got a laptop from work with Media Edition on it :roll: . I'm having terrible problems with it. It keeps losing the connection to my "M-Audio Transit" (basically an external usb soundcard), every thing seems fine then it just goes dead. It sometimes recognises my Creative Zen but usually it doesn't. Both of these work fine on my desktop PC running XP.

People keep saying that ME has every thing xp does bar some networking ability. This is not true. Its incompatible with many audio devices. For something calling itself "media edition" this is pathetic. See this link for a list of some of the devices it cant handle. http://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/ts/detail.php?Index=30163&keyword=30163


I got an xp pro upgrade CD from work, but when i go to upgrade it keeps saying that the key is invalid. But it is valid, I know it is cos on my desktop it excepts the key (i then cancel the install). The key is good for 9 more installs (we got one for 15 machines).

Please help me.
 

fattony

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Oct 16, 2006
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media center comes installed on media center compatabile hardware, it will only work best with that hardware which the OEM and microsoft have built specific drivers for...usuall tho there shouldn't be too many problems if you have the right drivers even if you installed MCE on a whitebox instead of getting it from dell or whatever

with USB and your situation, i can only recommend one thing other than having good drivers: disable your usb drivers from going into power saving mode: go to devmgmt.msc

at the bottom of the list expand the Universal Serial Bus Controllers, you may have multiple entries with the indentical name of "USB Root Hub"

double click each of them one by one, it'll take you to the properties window, click on the power management tab, make sure both checkboxes are unchecked here, if not clear them, do this for every usb hub there and reboot, keep an eye on it and see how it goes

that setting will be commonly enabled, specially since you have a laptop as it tries to save power and all...does the same problem happen if you're running on the ac power? or just battery? can you disable any other power saving options as well, like turn off hard drive and all, see what happens
 

bpower

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Nov 22, 2006
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I always have it plugged into the mains, Im at work now, I'll try your suggestions when i get home.

thanks for your reply,
Brian
 

joefriday

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Feb 24, 2006
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Confused now. Are you referring to Millennium Edition, or Media Center Edition? Millennium Edition is a Windows 9x OS that was release around the year 2000, while Media Center Edition is Windows XP Professional with a selectable graphical user interface that allows one easy access and sorting of his/her multimedia at a resolution conducive to television viewing, being released initially in 2003 and culminating thus far with Windows MCE 2005 rollup 2. Windows ME and Windows MCE are completely different beasts, based on completely different kernels. In short, they are nothing alike, except that they're both Windows OSs, both have system restore, and both have the word "Edition" in their names.

So what do you have, ME or MCE? If it's ME and you're having these problems, then you should at least attempt a reinstall of ME if it's possible (if you have the ME disks). If you're SOL on that idea, you could try to upgrade the old laptop to Windows XP, as you've stated you have some sort of Windows XP CD and from what I can infer a valid license. (FYI, if the CD you took from work is really an XP Pro UPGRADE CD, it'll only upgrade Windows XP Home edition. It won't work with Windows 2000 or any Windows 9x OS (ME/98/95), which would explain your problem. If you upgrade, make sure the laptop has decent enough hardware to run it properly (ie at least 256mb ram, >10GB hdd, 400MHz cpu or faster).

Good luck getting it sorted out.