XP Media Center Compatibility w/ Firewire Interface

cderum · Post by **cderum** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 9:03 pm

So I was all ready to buy a new firewire audio interface (well, I had narrowed it down to a few of them, anyway), and then the guy at Sweetwater told me that because my laptop runs XP Media Center that I would have major compatibility issues owing to the bundled (largely useless) software on my machine. I called Presonus and they confirmed this. I bought the machine in spite of it having Media Center, not because of it, but I didn't think it would make a difference. I would rather not have to install XP Home or Pro if I can avoid it.

Anyhow, is anyone running XP Media Center with a Firewire Audio Interface and doing ok? Here are the interfaces I am looking at: Presonus Firebox, Edirol FA66, MOTU Ultralite, Focusrite Saffire. I would expand this list if there are other boxes that are doing the job w/ Media Center. Any thoughts??
___
Dell Insprion 9300/Windows XP Media Center/Pentium M 2.13 ghz/2gb RAM/7200 rpm

jbuonacc · Post by **jbuonacc** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 7:43 am

shit, this doesn't sound good. i was planning on getting an E-mu 1616m anyway, but a Firewire interface wasn't out of the question. i knew i shouldn't have settled for XP Media Center. besides the fact that i'd hate to go through the hassle of installing a different version of the OS, i think i read that HP (in particular, i have a dv5000) states that you shouldn't. honestly i don't know enough to believe this or not.

cderum · Post by **cderum** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 5:00 pm

Yeah, installing a new OS sounds like a pain in the A S S. I guess I'll have to plan for that contingency, though. I would still like to hear if anyone has made XP MCE work for them with a firewire interface. Anyone? Anyone?

At least installing a new OS will give me a chance to get rid of a lot of the garbage the machine came with and set up an optimized system.

minimal · Post by **minimal** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 5:14 pm

I'd go the install XP way.
It can be bothering and all but consider how much crap you have to remove from XP to optimize it for music production... i guess XP MCE comes with even more crap, i don't have even checked it out because I'm fine with XP Pro so I couldn't be bothered to try other things, never change a winning team.
I saw lots of new comps come with this MCE... I guess is fine for multimedia-modern-digital-family-entertainment more than a better version of XP. I might be wrong though--

jbuonacc · Post by **jbuonacc** » Fri Apr 14, 2006 5:50 am

hmm, might not be so bad afterall. found a bit of info here, hope it helps...

http://acapella.harmony-central.com/for ... id=1188739

i'm still looking around more more, we'll see.

Hypomixolydian · Post by **Hypomixolydian** » Fri Apr 14, 2006 11:58 am

minimal wrote:I'd go the install XP way.
It can be bothering and all but consider how much crap you have to remove from XP to optimize it for music production...

Hello,

Hope you don't mind me asking, but what sort of "crap" do you get rid of in XP Pro to make things run "better"? I have a standard install of XP Pro and have to say that everything runs smoothly, efficiently and without problems, but if there is a way to make things run "even better" it would be interesting to know.
So when I have a clean install of XP ( I can do an image restore to get back to a virgin state), what do I get rid of? I should say that I don't want to reinstall windows again and have to get a new serial number and then new serials for all my programs. So basically, what can I do with XP already installed?

Thanks

cderum · Post by **cderum** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 6:01 pm

Well, I went ahead and ordered the Presonus Firebox, with XP Media Edition still on my system. It arrived yesterday. I disabled all of the Media Edition features in msconfig and then loaded the Firebox drivers. Setup was a snap. I spent about an hour tweaking knobs, running my midi controller through its paces in Live and running my guitar into the line inputs. No problems with monitoring or recording at all yet, though I have not taxed the system much. No latency problems. No dropouts. Sound quality is decent; though I have not run a mic through the preamps. We'll see whether XP Media Edition works in the long run with the Firebox and Live, but it's a promising start.

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 7:33 pm

fyi media center edition is just plain ol' XP with some media stuff on top. Any sales person who tells you otherwise is ignorant AND a bad sales person

I know at least two people rocking FW interfaces on media center without problems.

anti-banausic · Post by **anti-banausic** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 8:25 pm

Yeah, this is probably just a disclaimer from companies so they don't have to right specific drivers for media center.

"We highly advise you don't use media center because we don't care enough to develop drivers, or trouble-shoot yet another Windows OS/"

my .02.

cderum · Post by **cderum** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 10:08 pm

It is because of the essential sameness between XP and MCE that I didn't think it would be a big deal to buy a laptop with MCE; I figured it's just XP with some media stuff, right?? Then I got all paranoid because I talked to Presonus and they were not just making disclaimers about Media Center; they were saying that the OS just plain did not work with MCE. That concerned me.

But so far so good. I'm glad to hear that others are not having problems running MCE with a firewire device.

LivePsy · Post by **LivePsy** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 3:19 am

Don't worry about MCE, its only a flash interface and remote control on top of Windows Home Edition. I bought an HP Media Centre and didn't really want the MCE bit, and you really don't notice it at all. On the other hand, the slide show and DVD playing is very nice with MCE.

Regards,
B

jbuonacc · Post by **jbuonacc** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 6:10 am

great news, thanks for the update. hopefully all this XP MCE paranoia is for nothing.

deepmarine · Post by **deepmarine** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 6:47 am

I'm running a Toshiba Qosmio F10, with windows MCE, and a FW1814.

Rock solid, no issues.

amarte · Post by **amarte** » Thu Apr 26, 2007 5:57 pm

Im also using a MCE PC With an Ultralite with out problems except when i use an external Firewire HD. In that case, noise comes trough to the UltraLite. I think its because the PC has only one bus for both Fireware ports.

Clearscreen · Post by **Clearscreen** » Thu Apr 26, 2007 11:44 pm

got a 2 year old toshiba qosmio with XP MCE and been running an ESI quatafire most of that time and never had a problem. i've noticed if i'm running the firewire port and using the pcmcia slot at the same time i get some glitching, but i'm assuming their on the same bus or something, and it's not something i do often....
try using the asio4all driver with the forebox, i know i can run the quatafire at a bit lower latency if i use asio4all.