windows media center edition

[sitlet]

i have a few questions about mce. first off, i know the extras that mce has over sp sp2, but is there anything that sp2 has that mce doesnt? so basically i want to know, if i install mce, will i be missing out on anything thats in regular xp? and my other question, ive searched all over but cant find anyone with a definite answer. could i do a dual boot with mce and xp sp2? basically, i want to use the mce partition to just hook up to my tv and stereo. i dont want anything installed on it except for the media players. and the xp partition will be my normal web/game/video editing system.

[rallynavvie]

Are you referring to XP Pro or XP Home with service pack 2 installed? MCE is almost entirely built around the XP Pro kernel. The only thing I am aware of that MCE lacks is the ability to join a domain (if you really need your HTPC to be part of one) but there are ways around even that. The other thing to consider is that the video drivers, at least for nVidia cards, are different than the general release ones. I've been told that the regular XP drivers work just fine with MCE so you can have the latest drivers for games and such but they aren't guaranteed to work with the Media Center app itself. Honestly I don't think it will matter, though I'm interested to try it now...

[edDV]

Just be aware that MCE is not intended or supported as a field upgrade. It is intended for OEM installations only. As such certain hardware assumptions are built in.

There are specific forums and websites focused on all the issues of homebrew MCE installations.

[rallynavvie]

It will still work on pretty much any hardware that XP would run on, only the Media Center application itself would be affected by unsupported hardware. Although MCE is very specific on what sort of tuner you use with it. Hauppauge cards are always a good bet.