Big Screen weather on the Sports strip?

[digitalfre]

Just installed the trial version of Big Screen Weather v2, and the icon is showing up on the Sports strip in Vista?!? How do I fix that?

[Niall]

Originally Posted by digitalfre

Just installed the trial version of Big Screen Weather v2, and the icon is showing up on the Sports strip in Vista?!? How do I fix that?

Hi,

This is actually a problem (dare I say 'bug') - with MediaCenter start Menu and how it picks up the categories. In this case - the Sports Strip picks up other addins marked in the 'News' category - rather than just the 'Sports' category which I imagine it was supposed to do (which is the case for Big Screen Weather 2). I'm also assuming you're a US user (as they are the only ones who are supposed to see this sports strip as well).

If you really want - I can provide some steps on how to remove this from the Sports Strip (which will also result in it being unavailable in some other places) - however warn it's not for the feint hearted (and requires some raw registry editing/searching to be done with 'regedit'.).

Please however note that many 3rd party addins you install which use this same 'News' category - and hence will also appear in the Sports Strip as well - and the final 'position' in this strip will be occupied on a 'last in - best dressed' basis. (so doing any manual registry editing most likely won't fix the problem permentantly).

thanks

Niall

[digitalfre]

Originally Posted by Niall

Hi,

This is actually a problem (dare I say 'bug') - with MediaCenter start Menu and how it picks up the categories. In this case - the Sports Strip picks up other addins marked in the 'News' category - rather than just the 'Sports' category which I imagine it was supposed to do (which is the case for Big Screen Weather 2). I'm also assuming you're a US user (as they are the only ones who are supposed to see this sports strip as well).

If you really want - I can provide some steps on how to remove this from the Sports Strip (which will also result in it being unavailable in some other places) - however warn it's not for the feint hearted (and requires some raw registry editing/searching to be done with 'regedit'.).

Please however note that many 3rd party addins you install which use this same 'News' category - and hence will also appear in the Sports Strip as well - and the final 'position' in this strip will be occupied on a 'last in - best dressed' basis. (so doing any manual registry editing most likely won't fix the problem permentantly).

thanks

Niall

I would appreciate it if you could provide the registry edits. I'm pretty comfortable working in there. I did have the Sports strip removed at one point, but something I did caused it to pop back up.

Is it possible to move it to another strip, or to it's own strip? I know that My Movies creates it's own strip if you want it to. BTW, nice weather app, though the interface seems kind of "busy".

[Niall]

Hi -

Ok - see following for info on how to do the above (warning: not for feint hearted) :

A) Add BIG SCREEN Start Menu Strip

To add a 'big screen' Start Menu strip on the Vista Media Center main menu (which will automatically add any of the v2 big screen titles that are installed past/future + online showcase link) - download, unzip and run the .reg file included in the file attached to this message. :

bsgvstart.zip

Please make sure it's unblocked and that Media Center / Extender sessions is not loaded or running at the time (otherwise you may need a reboot the machine to kick in the changes).




B) Remove BIG SCREEN Weather2 from Sports Lounge Strip + News category

** WARNING : IF YOU DON'T FOLLOW THIS EXACTLY - IT MAY CAUSE BIG PROBLEMS **

1. Load up RegEdit (which will require UAC elevation).

2. Locate the Media Center News Category Registry Key :
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Media Center\Extensibility\Categories\Services\News]

3. Click on each of the Child Keys (of above news category) until you find a REG_SZ Value that matches the following path and value EXACTLY :

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Media Center\Extensibility\Categories\Services\News\....{GUID differsbetweenversions}..]

The Key you are searching for is where there is a Child Value called 'AppID'='{bb3cf1cf-aa67-4b69-93ce-ce8c18076593}'.

4. Once you find the above pattern (ENSURE IT'S CORRECT BEFORE PROCEEDING) - Remove that Key (ie the one with the path ..\..\Services\News\{GUID differsbetweenversions} ).

5. When you reload Media Center it should now be no longer coming up in Sports Lounge (and will also disappear from the 'Program Library | News + Sports' section) - but will come up in the general program library.




Please let me know how you (or others) go with these 'hacks'. If all OK - I will make a sticky thread with these instructions.

thanks

Niall