Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Turning an Aging Computer into a Media Center - Part 3 - Setting up Netflix streaming
One thing we really want to be able to do is watch instant movies from our Netflix subscription without having to sit in front of a computer or laptop. Streaming movies from Netflix is usually pretty simple. The first time you try to view it, it asks you to install a few things. First it installs the Netflix Player, then Windows Media Player 11 if you don’t already have it, then an update to that installation. Afterwards, you’re good to go.
Not so with my setup. For some reason, every time it tried to install Windows Media Player 11 it would tell me I have an incompatible operating system, that I needed to have Windows XP Media Center 2005. Well I had 2004, but it still should have worked. Something was giving the installation false information. After much research, I finally found out that SP3 was to blame. My Windows installation came with SP3 already bundled, but the media player installation didn’t recognize it and kept looking for a separate installation of Security Rollup 2. It was infuriating. The workaround that seemed to work for most people was to download the media player installation file onto your machine, open it up with WinRAR, extract the contents, and then run two or three of those files. Which files and how many seemed to differ from article to article. Well none of that worked for me, and I couldn’t uninstall one of the components either.
Seriously. Why me? It was enough to make me say FUCK IT! and flatten the entire partition, reformat and reinstall… Windows XP SP2 this time. I installed some of the security updates while carefully avoiding SP3, then went to set up Netflix again. Not a single hitch. I love Windows XP SP2. SP3 is the devil.
On the bright side I fixed the whole mixed up drive letter issue while I was at it, so I now have the OS on the C: drive again. Yay.
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Categories: • Random acts of geekery