jamescuarterodotcom

a few days ago i installed mymovies, a really cool plug-in for MCE 2005 that allows you to catalog your dvds, automatically download information on them and gives you an interface to play offline dvds and iso dvd images. it’s worked out pretty well but last night i found out that i couldn’t burn recorded tv to dvd anymore. it would get to about 3% and wouldn’t go any further. when i minimized MC there was a window that gave me an error in my sbeserver.exe file. i set a restore point before i installed mymovies (here’s a tip: always set a restore point before installing third-party anything) so i was able to roll back this morning and get everything functioning again.

i’d like to get mymovies working correctly, though. to get mymovies to work i had to install .NET framework 1.1 and daemon tools to read isos so maybe that’s where things got messed up. microsoft has a hotfix available that may fix my problem. the symptoms they list are close enough but i never actually get a ‘create failed’ message. i’m hesitant to try it because the hotfix just came out last week; i’d rather wait for the next service pack before i start calling MS. $35 a phone call, $245 for ‘advanced issues’? i don’t think so.

mymovies also has a new version out as of this past tuesday. release notes don’t say anything about that particular bug so that leads me to believe that i should have installed daemon tools before mymovies, or installed a later version of .NET framework. maybe i’ll give that a shot later on this week.

update: it looks like the problem is with the actual show i tried to burn last night. i’ve burned two other shows with no difficulty. however this show is the first i’ve recorded since installing .NET so i’m going to dvr a show tonight, burn it & see what happens. maybe this thing just doesn’t like revelations (sorry nolan!).