SageTV, not so wise.

So, I ended up at SageTV's door, www.sagetv.com. The first thing that I noted when reading the requirements for it was that it required the Java virtual machine to be installed. At first, I thought that explained why it didn't have a problem running on 64-bit Vista, but to be honest, I've seen very little use of Java. The program is even installed in the program file folder for 32-bit applications. On the other hand, it might be using the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) because when I installed the trail version, it looked like it installed the 32-bit JRE as part of the process, even though I had already installed the 64-bit JRE.

The User Interface was very hard to grasp at first because it has some very un-Windows characteristics. The first one that drove me nuts was the scroll bar on the list boxes. On Windows, when you click within the scroll bar, the list box will scroll one page, depending on whether you clicked above or below the slider bar. In SageTV, clicking within the scroll bar will position the slider to the indicated point in the scroll bar, and position the list box to the appropriate place. On Windows, when you click on the arrows at the end of the scroll bar, the list box will move one line. In SageTV, the arrows will instead advance the list box one page. I never did figure out how to advance one line.

Then there is the way that the user interface handles during the channel selection. There are two columns. On the left, there is a list of available channels and on the right, there are some commands like Enable and Preview this Channel. There are no right mouse click pop-up menus here. To preview a channel, you have to hover over the desired channel, carefully move the mouse to the right, being careful not to accidentally stray over another channel, and then move arrow down over the desired command. Then and only then do you click. This probably makes loads of sense if you're using a remote control, but if you're using a mouse, this is a little tedious.

The installation was pretty straight-forward, until it got to the part about setting up the tuner card, and then the whole process got very confusing. I was not surprised to be asked about which of two Hauppauge cards to set up, as there are two tuners on the card, but the screen described then as WinTV-7164, not 2250, Analog cards. Hmmm. I picked one of the tuners and was then presented a list of inputs on the tuner: Composite, Composite_2, Digital TV, S-Video, S-Video_2, and TV Tuner. Huh? It is true that a tuner handled could handle Composite, Digital TV (QAM and ATSC), and Analog TV (NTSC), but each tuner did not have two composite inputs and two s-video inputs. Furthermore, the setup acted like the card could handle only one of these inputs, not multiple ones. So, I selected Digital TV, the obvious choice, and went on. The setup asked for my ZIP code, correctly identified the different cable providers in the area, and then let me select either regular cable or digital cable. It then asked me if I had Basic Service or Extended Basic Service. Huh? Extended I guess. It then proceeded to scan for channels and, as can be expected, only found the QAM channels. Since the tuner can handle both QAM and NTSC, I went back to scan for the cable's NTSC channels (since not all of the NTSC channels have a QAM equivalent on the cable system) and I couldn't figure out how to do it. I looked in the forums and there are others who have accomplished it, but they did it by adding the same tuner as a source twice. When I tried this, it merely replaced the previous description of the tuner. It was beginning to look like I going to have to set up SageTV to record QAM channels on one tuner and NTSC channels on the other which would have prevented me from recording two QAM programs at once. If that was the case, I'm not going to be happy and will probably go back to WinTV.

I read the SageTV forums for some clues and finally found some help. The problem was that I could not perform a full scan using the same channel setup for both digital and analog TV. So, I had to trick the software into accepting the same card twice by having two different setup sources. Here are the steps:

1. Start the Source Wizard.
   
2. Select Add New Source.
   
3. Select Hauppauge WinTV-7164 Analog Capture.
   
4. Select Digial TV Tuner and then Continue.
   
5. Select Use Tuner on Capture Card to tune Cable TV.
   
6. Select Use US, Canada, or XMLTV Guide Data with this Source.
   
7. Select Cable or Satellite.
   
8. Enter your zip code.
   
9. You will be presented with a list of cable and satellite providers for the entered zip code. This is where the trick comes in. With some luck there will be an entry for your cable provided for standard cable and for digital cable. Choose the digital cable entry.
   
10. You'll be asked for Basic Service or Extended Basic Service. I have no idea the proper answer to this question, but I selected Extended Basic Service.
    
11. If you've tried this already, your database could be completely confused. In the left hand column, hover over Edit Channel Lineup and then in the right hand column, select Clear all Remapped Channels.
    
12. In the left hand column, hover over Scan for Available Channels. In the right hand column, select Scan for available channels now.
    
13. Select Start a Full Channel Scan.
    
14. Wait for the scan to complete. Select Review Channel Changes.
    
15. Select Done Reviewing Scan.
    
16. Look at the scanned channel and remove any that you don't want by selecting, which will make the green dot go away. Look at each located channel and decide if you wish to keep it. The software has a bit of a problem here because, if you say you want to preview a channel and for some reason it can't, it will display the last channel that it can. To make matters worse, it will put the name of the channel you are trying to preview at the bottom, making it appear that it was able to successfully display it.
    
17. Select Done with Channel Setup.
    
18. Select Add New Source.
    
19. Select Hauppauge WinTV-7164 Analog Capture #2.
    
20. Select Digital TV Tuner and then Continue.
    
21. Select Use Tuner on Capture Card to tune Cable TV.
    
22. Select Use US, Canada, or XMLTV Guide Data with this Source.
    
23. Select Cable or Satellite.
    
24. Select the zip code that you used the last time.
    
25. Select the same Digital Cable source as last time.
    
26. Select Use the same channels as other sources using this lineup.
    
27. Select Extented Basic Service again.
    
28. Select No - I will scan for channels later.
    
29. Select Done with Channel Setup.
    
30. Select Add New Source.
    
31. Select Hauppauge WinTV-7164 Analog Capture.
    
32. Select TV Tuner and Continue.
    
33. Select Use Tuner on Capture Card to tune Cable TV.
    
34. Select Use US, Canada, or XMLTV Guide Data with this Source.
    
35. Select Cable or Satellite.
    
36. Enter the zip code to use.
    
37. You will be presented with a list of cable and satellite providers. Find your cable provider and select the one without digital service.
    
38. Select Extended Basic Service.
    
39. If you've done this before, hover over Edit Channel Lineup and then select Clear all Remapped Channels.
    
40. Select over Scan for Available Channels and then select Scan for Available Channels now.
    
41. Select Start a Full Channel Scan.
    
42. Wait for the channel scan to complete. Select Review Channel Changes.
    
43. Select Done Reviewing Scan.
    
44. Locate any SD channels that also have QAM channels located in the previous scan and select them to remove them from the list. Look at each located channel and decide if you wish to keep it. The software has a bit of a problem here because, if you say you want to preview a channel and for some reason it can't, it will display the last channel that it can. To make matters worse, it will put the name of the channel you are trying to preview at the bottom, making it appear that it was able to display it. Also on my analog scan, it located some digital channels which it was unable to preview, so I disabled them too.
    
45. Select Done with Channel Lineup.
    
46. You should now have three WinTV-7164 in the Wizard Summary. Select Add New Source.
    
47. Select Hauppauge WinTV-7164 Analog Capture #2.
    
48. Select TV Tuner and then Continue.
    
49. Select Use Tuner on Capture Card to tune Cable TV.
    
50. Select Use US Canada, or XMLTV Guide Data with this Source.
    
51. Select Cable or Satellite.
    
52. Select the same zip code and last time.
    
53. Select the same non digital cable provider as last time.
    
54. Select Use the same channels as other sources using this lineup.
    
55. Select Extended Basic Service.
    
56. Select Done with Channel Setup.
    
57. You should now have 4 sources configured. Select Finish Source Setup.

See, that was obvious. Wasn't it?

MythTV and Beyond TV

I took a look at MythTV and Beyond TV as DVR software.

BeyondTV, based on Houston, has a really nice website, www.snapstream.com/products/beyondtv, that explains what their software does including an overview, features, how it works and how to get it. On their System Requirements page, they very clearly state that it does not support 64-bit Vista. I appreciate their honestly (and I wrote them an email to tell them so) and then moved on.

MythTV, www.mythtv.org, is an open source DVR. By open source they mean that the software is not a product of an company, but a group developers working together to produce and maintain a publicly available piece of software. Their website states that MythTV "started out in 2002 as a way for Isaac Richards to produce a better TV-viewing environment than his cable company's digital cable box could provide, and through the help of the open source community quickly grew into a powerful tool for watching and recording television." My friend Judy said that MythTV was only available on Linux, but the website says that it will compile on Windows, but it has to have a Linux Virtual Machine to run. (So, Judy was right, as usual.) There are no prebuilt distributions and even the website describes the process of building it on Windows as a "lengthy and sometimes painful process", so I moved on.

Look Ma, No Wires!

So, I finally got the wireless card from my friend Judy. I installed it and, sigh, nothing happened. The machine didn't even recognize it was present. I was pretty sure that the card was seated properly, so I threw up my hands, went to my friendly-neighborhood electronics store and bought a D-Link wireless G card.

While I had the box opened installing this new card, I took a moment to change the BIOS to remove the Away-Mode and to set the machine to automatically boot during Power On.

I installed the card, plugged in the power cord, which caused the machine to automatically boot. After booting, the Find New Hardware dialog came up and I canceled it. Instead I followed D-Link's instructions and installed the D-Link software, which installed the Drivers and configured the network. It asked questions about the name of the network and the WEP security key. I entered this information and the wireless network came right up.

As I was afraid, the signal strength is not terrific, around 45%, but I think that it will do for now.

WinTV? I don't think so.

I've spent the week playing around with WinTV. There's a lot to recommend this software, being free is high on the list. The interface looks nice and it has the necessary functionality. WinPC does not have a lot of bells and whistles, but it gets the job done. I'm reminded when I worked at Texas Instruments, we had a saying, "Minimum but adequate." There's a reason why TI is not a big name in computing. They never aimed very high. (Well, except for their attempt to create one of the first PC clones. It was a valiant effort, but the subject for another blog.)

The WinTV 7 viewer has an updated interface. (The helpfiles shows the rather outdated looking version 6 user interface still.) The viewer has a lot of buttons merely labeled with icons, and what most of them do are pretty obvious, but a few are not, and when you hover over them, a tool tip is not displayed that tells you the button's function. So, you have to press a button to find out. (Steve tells me that a gear is pretty common for a configuration icon, but I had no idea what it did.) When I clicked on the ? button on the menu bar and then clicked on the buttons, WinTV tried to bring up online web page, but since my network is not working, this was not helpful.

One thing that I don't like about the viewer is that it doesn't have a fast forward button. When you press what looks like a fast forward, it merely skips ahead, potentially landing you in the program after it has returned. I've started merely fast forwarding through commercials, rather than skipping. If I see one that interests me, I'll stop and watch it. (Hey, these folks paid to create these programs, the least we can do it watch their commercials. Of course, if it's for a product that I'll never use or a commercial that I've seen before, then it's on to the show!)

I also had problems with the scheduler software. When you schedule a recording, the time is entered in 24 hour time. When the schedule is displayed, the time is in 12 hour. Personally, since the time in the TV listings is in 12 hour format, I'd prefer to enter in the scheduler in 12 hour time. There is also a pair of up-down buttons next to the time. If you press them, they will increment or decrement the hour or minutes by one, depending on which is currently selected. It would be nice, when the minutes are selected and they are decremented past the start of the hour, if the hour would decrement too. If I'm trying to schedule a program whose scheduled time is listed in 12 hour eastern time, I have to convert to 24 hour time central and then subtract one from the hour because I want the recording to begin a minute early. It's just too easy to make a mistake when you're in a hurry. I'd like to just enter the time and press the down arrow to back up the time a few minutes. (Sure, I could use a calculator to compute the start time, but it seems ridiculous when there's a 64-bit microprocessor sitting there that can do it too.)

This is not my only issue with the scheduler. I messed up the start time on one of my programs and when I noticed that it wasn't recording when I expected it to, I looked at the scheduler, noticed my mistake and corrected the program. This created a program that spanned the current time. Now my old DVR would have started recording immediately, but WinTV didn't. I'm not holding that against it, but 45 minutes later, when the recording was originally scheduled to run, WinTV cranked up and began recording. Sigh.

All of this I could live with and eventually learn to deal with, but the program has crashed a few times. A dialog can be brought up where the discovered channels are can be edited, such as changing the title. There is also a check box that you can uncheck and cause the channel not to appear in the channel list. After you uncheck this check box, if you try to change the channel information, you'll get a message box saying that an error has occurred with the application. You can click a button to ignore the error and the program will continue as if nothing happened, but the crash is still pretty unprofessional. I have also had the TV Viewer outright crash while watching a live program. This required me to get up, cross the room to use the keyboard to clear the error and get the program back.

At this point, I knew that I couldn't use WinTV. If it was the only game in town, I'd keep working with the WinTV guys to help them fix their software, but at this point I think that I'll just report the problems and move on to another piece of software.

It's Tuner Time

If you have been reading carefully, you know that there is one very important card that I have not installed yet. While I wait for my schedule to align with Judy's so that I can get the correct wireless G card from here, I'll install the Hauppauge HVR card.

1. Locate the serial number for the card and write it down. If you do not do this, there is a utility that you can run later and get the serial number directly from the card.
   
2. Really power down the machine by turning it off at the power supply. Just because you told Windows to power down, does not mean there is no power flowing to the motherboard.
   
3. Remove the case cover, hard drive cage, and support bar.
   
4. Remove the full sized bracket from the HVR card and install the low profile bracket. Also replace the full sized bracket on the Auxiliary A/V panel with the low profile one.
   
5. Remove the PCI slot covers for the PCI-Express x1 and PCI-Express x16 slots. These are the two PCI slots farthest to the left, when viewed from the back of the case.
   
6. Install the HVR card in the x1 slot. This is the far left PCI slot. Replace the screw removed from the slot cover.
   
7. Install the Auxiliary panel in the x16 slot. This is the middle left slot. Replace the screw removed from the slot cover.
   
8. Plug in the cable for the Auxiliary panel into A/V slot closest to the back of the HVR card.
   
9. Reassemble the machine.
   
10. Plug in the A/V breakout cable into the A/V input connector on the HVR card's panel (mounting bracket).
    
11. Install the ATSC antenna cable or the cable system to the TV connector on the HVR card.
    
12. Turn on power and boot.
    
13. Windows will detect the new hardware. Tell it not to install the software for it.
    
14. Do not bother with the Hauppauge installation CD. Go to www.hauppauge.com, locate the support page for the 2250 and download the latest Drivers and WinTV. The downloaded file will create a directory named C:\Hauppauge.
    
15. Using Windows Explorer, open C:\Hauppauge. Within this directory will be another directory with the current installation CD. Double click on setup.exe.
    
16. Select the language to use.
    
17. Click on Step 1: Install Drivers. The latest drivers will be installed.
    
18. Click on Step 2: Install WinTV. The WinTV installation will performed. I believe that it attempts to scan for channels during the installation. If you have the antenna or cable system already connected to the 2250, then let rip. If not, then you can setup the Tuner later.
    
19. Click on Register to register your card. If you don't have the serial number, download and run the ProdInfo utility.
    
20. Start the WinTV application. The Device Setup Wizard will start. Select whether you are connected to a ATSC antenna (Digital ATSC) or a cable network (Clear QAM Digital cable). (Note that you can not select both ATSC and Clear QAM.) If you are using cable, also select analog TV to locate the analog channels that the cable service is providing. Finally, if you want to use the A/V inputs, select Add Composite/S-Video inputs as channels. WinTV will scan for channels, first the digital ones and then the analog ones. The scanning process takes about 10 minutes.
    
21. Click on the gear button in the bottom of the WinTV display. A tabbed dialog will open. The General tab is the initial tab. On this tab is a group of radio buttons labeled TV Shape. Select the shape of your TV.
    
22. Click on the All Channels tab. A list of the scanned channels will appear. If you're luck, the information about the channels will already be in the list. If not, select one, right click and, from the pop up menu, select Watch. As soon as you identify the channel, right click again and select Details. A new window will open with details about the channel. Change the Name field to be the desired name and press OK. Repeat this for the other channels.

When I setup the HTPC, I spent a large amount of time rearranging the current components such that my current DVR would still run. I wanted to have it as backup while I experimented with the HTPC as a DVR. There's a signal splitter on the cable and I had put the digital devices (cable box and HTPC) on one half of the split and the analog devices (SD DVR and VCR) on the other. What I didn't realize was that the RF output of the cable box was merely meant to drive the cable input of a TV set. In other words, it didn't pass through all of the cable channels. (I should have realized this, but I was thinking that it was like a VCR.) So, the first time that I had WinTV scan for channels, it found only one. I scratched my head, moved the tuner card to the other half of the splitter and then things worked much better. It wasn't until then that I realized what was happening. So, my old DVR is now without a signal. I'll have to mull over what to do about that, but that is not a topic for this blog.

As part of this grand last step, I have removed the HTPC from the monitor I was using while installing software, and connected the HTPC directly to the LCD television, using an HDMI cable that I bought at, of all places, Target.

When I booted the HTPC using the LCD television as the display, there was a noticeable pause. At first I thought that the machine was searching for the monitor, but then I realized that the BIOS does not know how to display to the HDMI port, so the pause was merely the machine's normal boot. I just couldn't see it.

I have watched a few programs on the machine, and I'm very pleased with the results. However, I haven't tried the DVR software that WinTV provides. I'm not quite sure what is going to happen when the time comes to record and the HTPC is in a sleep mode. Also, the remote doesn't seem to be working and whenever I wake up the machine from sleep mode, Vista puts up a login screen, requiring that I keep a keyword connected to it.

There's still plenty to explore here, including evaluating different DVR software. So, I guess the real fun is just beginning.

Wireless woes

I would prefer to have a wired connection to the HTPC, but getting a cable from the front room where the DSL router is to the living room is going to be hard. The DSL connection comes into the house in a place that is hard to drop cables to the rest of the house. I've managed to get a wired connection from the DSL router to the room next door, but not to the rest of the house. Fortunately, my friend Judy has some wireless G equipment that she replaced with N equipment. Hey, I'll take hand me downs, so I decided to give a wireless solution a try. I don't really plan to download HD content over this connection, but schedule information would really be nice.

I started by plugging in the wireless G router into the existing network. I suppose I could have replaced the DSL router with the wireless router, but I have had a wireless router in that location before, and it had poor coverage to the rest of the house. Instead, I decided to put the wireless router in the room adjacent to the one with the DSL router. In that room, the wireless router will be closer to where the room where the HTPC will be.

The first thing that I did was find the rest button on the wireless router and set it back to its factory settings. It then wanted to run a setup program where it established a PPPoE connection to the server on the other end of the DSL line. Fortunately the two routers are from different manufactures, so they already had different IP addresses. I just plugged a network cable from the DSL router into the wireless router's uplink connection, stopped the setup program, and switched the wireless router into manual setup mode. I then selected an ISP connection without a login, told the router to get IP addresses and the DNS address from the ISP (in this case the DSL router) and to my surprise, that seemed to work. I finished off by setting up the wireless network with encryption. Wow, that was easy. Too easy.

So, then I turned my attention to the HTPC. Judy had given me a low profile wireless G PCI card, but it had full size mounting bracket. However, inside the antistatic bag was a low profile mounting bracket, so I removed the full sized one and tried to put on the low profile one. That's when I discovered that it didn't match the card. The holds in the mounting bracket didn't match the holds in the PCI card. I could slip the low profile mounting bracket over the connection for the antenna, but the holes for the LEDs didn't match the actual LEDs. I started to install the PCI card without a mounting bracket and then I noticed that the CD was from one board manufacturer and the card was for another. Hmmm. I fired off an email to Judy and hoped that she had the correct combination of parts still.

Fortunately I had a plan B as Judy had given me a wireless G USB transceiver. I tried to install the driver software off the CD and it didn't work. It probably didn't work on Vista. There was a version online that said that it was Vista ready. So I downloaded and installed it, and when the installation asked that I plug in the USB device, Windows said that it couldn't find any drivers for the device. I tried this several times (once actually reading the instructions), and I could never get the USB device to run. Then I saw this on the manufacturer's website:

"Since there is a limited market for 64-bit drivers, and creating them is expensive, has no immediate plans to release 64-bit drivers for products. This would raise the cost of the products for all other customers. If you install the 64-bit operating system, all drivers and utilities on that computer may stop working! Of course, much other software and drivers will also stop working, so you should consider whether you want to go to the expense and risk of changing to this operating system."

Well, isn't that special. I knew that this was a danger when I started, but I don't plan to back down now. I'm sure that I can find another manufacturers that are more enlightened, but I wonder if the wireless PCI card that Judy gave me is going to have the same problem. I decided a trip to my local electronics toy store was in order.

So, I made a quick trip there and found a low profile card, but I wasn't sure about the drivers, so I didn't buy it. I also looked for a wireless keyboard with touch pad or trackball. I finally found one for $150. Ha! Before I shell out $150 for a keyboard I hope not to use much, I'll buy a Blu-Ray drive instead.

Stay tuned!

Brush up your BIOS

OK, after all the warnings about how a failure to install the BIOS properly, or installing the BIOS for the wrong board revision, could permanently disable the machine, I was a bit nervous about updating the BIOS. However, using the @BIOS utility, I could see the motherboard was at revision F1 and the Gigabyte website said that the current version was F5, so I figured that I needed to make the attempt.

There are a lot of ways to update the BIOS. I'm documenting what looks like the easiest here.

1. From Start menu, navigate to Gigabyte group and right-click @BIOS. From the pop up menu, select Run as Administrator.
   
2. From the @BIOS program, select Update BIOS from GIGABYTE Server.
   
3. Select the server in the US and press OK.
   
4. In the Please select one file to update dialog, verify that the correct module name and motherboard revision is shown. Then select the BIOS to install and press OK.
   
5. There will be a message about the screen freezing for a few seconds while updating the BIOS. Cross your fingers and press OK.
   
6. Restart the system.
   
7. After logging in again, go to the Start menu and open the Gigabyte program group, open DMIView and start DMInfo. Double click on BIOS Information and make sure that the correct BIOS version got installed. If there is a problem downloading the BIOS, @BIOS will silently revert to the latest version that it can download. It may be necessary to go to the Gigabyte site, locate the desired BIOS and download it. However, if @BIOS has a problem downloading the BIOS, then you'll probably has a problem too. You may have to download the file from the Asia site, but don't worry, it will be a English BIOS.
   
8. If you downloaded the BIOS, it will be an EXE. Run that EXE and it will extract itself in the current directory. The extracted files may be placed on a USB drive and used as the boot media. A program will run, FLASHSPI, that will update the BIOS. You can also use the @BIOS program's Update BIOS from File to update the BIOS. Select MA78GUS2.F? as the file.

Sadly, this process did not repair the Away Mode System. It also set the BIOS settings back to their default, so I had to make them again. (It's a good thing that I took notes.)

For once in this entire process, the blog has caught up with the work. So, what's next? I'm hoping for you that you have a dedicated network cable to your new HTPC. However, for me, I need to install a wireless card in the machine and set up a wireless network. So, I'll be back after I finish that.

Buena Vista?

So, I was going to write, "just install Windows Vista" here, but no, the Vista installation is just as screwed up as the rest of the Vista. I don't know why that surprised me, but I thought that after the excellent and understandable XP installation, they would not need to change anything for Vista, but I was wrong. My biggest beef with the process is that it doesn't have a final Are you Ready? dialog, just like Vista doesn't ask you if you're sure you want to log off. Accidentally click the wrong button and you're out of there. My second complaint is that there is a clearly labeled Next button at the bottom right hand side of the installation pages, but what if you want to go back? Well, you use the arrow button in the upper left hand corner of the page. Who dreamed that up? Either a pair of Next and Back buttons, or a pair of arrow buttons. Not one of each! And put them next to each other! Gee whiz. It's like a SciFi movie where the descendants of an ancient race have forgotten how to use the technology of the "old ones". Oh well, enough of the rant, let's get down to business.

1. Power on the machine, insert the Vista DVD into the optical drive and close the door.
   
2. On the first page, select the Language, Time, and Currency Format.
   
3. In the next page, click Install Now.
   
4. Take out a magnifying glass, read the Product Key from the back of the DVD case and enter it into the field on the next page.
   
5. Accept the License Terms.
   
6. Choose Custom (advanced) installation.
   
7. On the Where do you want to Install Windows? page, this it where you want to be careful not to press the Enter key before you're ready. You're just one button away from installation. Choose Drive Options. This will give you further options for partitioning the hard drive.
   
8. You should see Disk 0 Unallocated Space. Again, be careful not to hit Enter. If the hard drive space shows that it has already been allocated, select Delete (Alt-D) to remove it. Then select New (Alt-W) to allocate a new partition.
   
9. Enter the size for the operating system's partition, in megabytes. I looked at the Microsoft website and they were recommending 40 GB for Vista, but I decided to leave lots of space for the installation of programs and gave it 100 GB. So, I entered 100000 MB for the partition size and selected Apply (Alt-P).
   
10. Make sure that your new 97.7 GB partition is selected and finally press Next (Alt-N). (I'll format the remaining disk space later.)
    
11. The installation will begin.
    
12. At the Choose a user name and picture page, enter a user name, password and hint. Select the picture and then hit Enter. (If you tab away from the picture, it will loose the picture selection.)
    
13. Enter the name for the computer. Select a desktop background and press Enter.
    
14. At the Help protect Windows automatically page, go ahead and select Use recommended settings, although I'll probably turn off the firewall later as there's already a firewall in the router of my network.
    
15. Set your time zone. Correct the date and time, if necessary. Setting the date is a little odd. You can select a new day of the month, but the currently selected date is still highlighted. If you hit Enter, it will take you to the next page.
    
16. Hit Alt-S to start the second phase of the installation.
    
17. While Windows checks the computer's performance, Microsoft advertisements will display on the screen.
    
18. Login. At this point, you will have no network access, but don't panic.
    
19. Insert the Gigabyte Drivers DVD and let it run.
    
20. If necessary, select Chipset Drivers. The only thing controversial about the Chipset Drivers is the Browser Configuration Utility. I'll let you make your own call here. As for me, I selected Install All.
    
21. After the installation of the chipset drivers, Vista will restart. (It did not ask me if I wanted to wait until later, it just did it.)
    
22. A small message box will probably appear indicating there is a Problem Reports and Solutions message. On my machine, it told me that my computer's Away Mode System is incompatible with the 64-bit version of Windows. The problem here may be that the drivers which Gigabyte installed are 32-bit. I did a bit of searching on the Internet and couldn't find a better set of drivers. It is not clear how important this feature is, but until you find a better driver or disable this feature in the BIOS Setup, the system Device Manager will show a device without drivers.
    
23. If your machine connects directly to the internet, select Connect to the Internet. If you have a home network, this step is unnecessary.
    
24. Click on Register Windows online. Fill out the online registration. This will require a Windows Live ID. If you don't have one, it looks like you'll need to get one.
    
25. Don't bother with the AMD/ATI Registration unless you have a separate ATI graphics card. Check Don't show me this again and click No.
    
26. The Gigabyte Install Chipset Driver program restarted after the reboot and, for some reason, the Gigabyte Install Chipset Drivers puts up a message box stating Install finish. Please reboot your computer., even though the reboot happened already. Go ahead and reboot your computer. Now that Vista has access to the internet, it has probably downloaded a bunch of high priority updates and now is a good time to install them.
    
27. Autoplay the Gigabyte CD again and select the Application Software tab. Install EasyTune 6. On my system, this did not appear to run, but was in fact behind other windows. Go find it and let it install. In sequence, install DMI Viewer, Face-Wizard, @BIOS and Update Manager.
    
28. Insert CD for optical drive's drivers. For my LG drive, I opted to install CyberLink PowerProducer, SecurDisk Viewer (although I'm still not sure what is does) and the Firmware update program. I decided to not install Nero Essential at this time. (I am not positive that the Firmware update program was such a good idea. Every time it runs, Vista asks if it can run. Given that firmware updates to the DVD drive are rare, this may not be worth the annoyance.)
    
29. Bring up the Control Panel and select System. Go to the bottom of the window and verify that Windows has been activated. If it has not, then click on the link and complete the activation.
    
30. In the system Notification Area (lower right, near the time), there will be a small red icon with the letters ATI. Right click on it and select Catalyst Control Center. When the control center opens, find the Welcome Center and select Check for Driver Updates. This will take you to the AMD/ATI website. In the left hand list box, select your operating system. Mine is Windows Vista 64-bit Edition. In the center list box, select the product family. If you have a separate Radeon graphic card, select Radeon. If you are using the graphics chip on the motherboard, select Integrated/Motherboard. Mine was the Integrated/Motherboard. In the right hand list box, select your graphic hardware. Despite the fact that my north bridge chip set is the 780 G, the graphics hardware is a Radeon HD 3200. Look at the Catalyst Control Center to find the graphics hardware that you are using. Do not guess, make sure! When you press the GO button, you'll be presented with a list of drivers to install. There may be two options, one with all the drivers and the latest Catalyst Control Center bundled into one download, and another with the display driver and the Catalyst Control Center separate. Download the one that you wish. Also look for other drivers such as the South Bridge and RAID, if you have multiple hard drives and have set them up as a RAID. I didn't find the HydraVision software all that interesting, and can't recommend spending the time to download it. I do recommend downloading all of the updates first and then installing them. They'll all want to reboot the computer and there's no need to have to navigate to the ATI website multiple times.

From here, I started personalizing Vista according to my tastes, and I'll not take the time to record those changes here. However, there is one more thing that I did, which I found nerve racking enough to want to put it in a separate post: updating the firmware on the motherboard. (Yikes!)

Finishing touches, I mean, touchs

Before I got down to the business of installing Windows, I opened up the case and made a few final changes.

First, I powered up the machine and pressed the button for the optical drive door in the front of the case. If the door hadn't opened, I would have removed the optical drive cage and installed what the Lian Li instructions called a "rubber" on to the door button of the optical drive, although I would have probably installed it on the button on the inside of the case. The rubber is a square of rubber with an adhesive sticker on one side. It is in the bag of parts that came with the case. Fortunately, the door opened, so I moved on.

Next, I applied the vanity stickers that came with the CPU and the power supply to the front of the case.

Then I opened up the case and began to locate connectors that didn't plug into anything. I covered these with black electrical tape. It is unlikely that the connector will come into contact with anything conductive, but why take chances? There are probably caps that can be bought to do this job, but the electrical tape seems good enough.

Next I looked at what my mother would call a "rats nest" of wires underneath the hard drive cage. I was so focused on getting the wires plugged into the right place, that I didn't notice the crisscrossed mess I was making with them. The biggest problem with them was with the 22-pin power supply cable, so I disconnected it from the motherboard, untangled it from the various wires that were going above and below it, reran it under everything, and plugged it back in. There is a set of four cables coming out of the front of the case: the HD Audio, 2 USB, and IEEE 1394 cables. Running the 22-pin power cable under these helped hold the power cable close to the case bottom. A large clamp with adhesive sticker case with the case. I slipped it over the 22-pin cable and stuck the clamp to the case bottom to hold the cable even more firmly in place. Finally, I placed the 8-pin power cable into the clamp as well and closed the clamp.

Then, I took a small tie-wrap that came with the case and placed it around the small wires for the power button, reset button, hard drive LED and power LED.

Finally, I removed the IDE ribbon cable, straighten it out a bit and plugged it back it. It laid too close to the AMD SB700 clip for my taste, so I turned it such that it was standing on its side, rather than laying on its back.

You may have other house keeping chores that you want to do, that will be your call. (You may also feel like, "It runs, lets move on". Again your call.) Either way, it's time on install the OS.

Press Del for Setup

When a computer is powered on, it begins executing a program called a BIOS (Basic Input/Output System). This program performs the initial testing and initialization of the hardware and begins the process of loading the operating system. While the operating system is loading itself, the BIOS provides basic operations to communicate with the hardware of the computer. During the days of MS-DOS, the BIOS played a very important role providing all the device driver support to the operating system (if you can call MS-DOS an operating system), but I suspect that the BIOS gets very little use these days once the operating system is running. The BIOS may be stored in Read Only Memory (ROM) and in that case the BIOS can only be updated by replacing a memory chip. But it is also common that the BIOS is stored in an erasable read only memory called CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor). A BIOS stored in this way can be easily replaced later using software, usually while the operating system is running.

It is not uncommon for the BIOS allow the user to configure the computer in very basic ways, storing the configuration settings in CMOS (or Flash) for the BIOS to use during boot. The configuring of these setting falls to a program usually called Setup. And it can be invoked during the boot process in place of booting the operating system. Asking the BIOS to run Setup usually involves pressing a particular key on the keyboard during the power on tests. On the Gigabyte board, this key is the Delete key.

Unlike the DELL systems where you have to guess when it is appropriate to press DEL (Cute right?), the Gigabyte motherboard gives a helpful message, but be ready for it. It doesn't stay up for very long.

Normally I pay very little attention to the BIOS settings on my computers, but leafing through the documentation that Gigabyte provides, it is clear that there are some settings that are helpful for HTPC machines, so I made them. Most of these changes are not critical, but I suspect that the setting of the power button not to actually cut power unless it has been held for 4 seconds (the Soft off by power button setting) is pretty desirable. It is debatable that having the CD-ROM as the first book device is a good idea. There is something to be said for having this be a USB drive. There are a number of USB boot devices to chose from, but I wasn't sure which one is a USB Drive, probably USB-HDD.

Finally, there is the Away Mode setting. This looked like a good setting, but when I enabled it, but after I installed Vista I that said that the Away Mode support is incompatible with at 64-bit operating system. Apparently the Gigabyte Motherboard Drivers installs a driver for the Away Mode, but it is not a 64-bit driver and therefore 64-bit Vista won't use it. I set it originally, but I came back later and disabled it.

1. During the power on tests, when you see a message about press the Delete key, press it to start Setup.
   
2. Using the arrow keys, press the down arrow key until Standard CMOS Features is highlighted and press Enter.
   
3. Set the Date.
   
4. Set the Time.
   
5. Down arrow to select the Drive A field and press Enter. Use the arrow keys to select None and press Enter.
   
6. Press Escape.
   
7. Select Advanced BIOS Features and press Enter.
   
8. Select Onboard VGA output connect and press Enter. Select D-SUB/HDMI and press Enter.
   
9. Select Init Display First and press Enter. Select OnChipVGA and press Enter.
   
10. Select First Boot Device and press Enter. Select CDROM and press Enter.
    
11. Select Third Boot Device and press Enter. Select Disabled and press Enter.
    
12. Select Away Mode and press Enter. Select Disabled and press Enter.
    
13. Press Escape.
    
14. Select Integrated Peripherals.
    
15. Select Onboard Serial Port 1 and press Enter. Select Disabled and press Enter.
    
16. Select Onboard Parallel Port and press Enter. Select Disabled and press Enter.
    
17. Press Escape.
    
18. Select Power Management Setup and press Enter.
    
19. Select Soft-Off by Power button and press Enter. Select Delay 4 Sec and press Enter.
    
20. Select AC Back Function and press Enter. Select Full-On and press Enter.
    
21. Press Escape.
    
22. Press F10. To SAVE to CMOS and EXIT (Y/N)? Y message box, press Enter.
    
23. The system will save the new settings and begin to reboot.

Since there isn't an operating system installed, there's not much point in proceeding, but before we install the OS, power down the machine let's put some finishing touches inside the case.