I’ve written before about my mission critical MCE machine, serving the household with TV…

Well, the Dell Vostro 200 (with 2Gb RAM) hard disk failed again (the second one in 13 months… the first was a Samsung, then a Western Digital), and it required some surgery.

Since I’ve just installed Windows 7 RTM on my Toshiba M200 (very old kit, also 2Gb of RAM – but still running strong!), I thought I’d also upgrade my MCE machine with the RTM code of Windows 7.

I had less than an hour between two TV shows, and thought I’d time and write up the process from 7pm.

1. Rip out offending hard disk drive, and replace with new drive. (Wow – 1Tb disks are now soooo cheap! No wonder they are failing frequently!)
2. Install new disk (completed 7:06pm)
3. Boot from Windows 7 and install (completed 7:15pm!)
4. Download only missing driver, the BlackGold BG3450 driver, and install (7:20pm)
5. Windows Updates, Restore content & data to it from Windows Home Server in the garage (7:40pm)
6. Restore accounts (control userpasswords2) ,permissions, MCE configuration*, AnyDVD installation, and schedule recordings etc. (7:55pm)

So – all in all, in less than an hour with no fiddling (and even some time to play with the kids in between), I had Windows 7 MCE up and running, complete with surround sound, HD TV from several channels via dual co-ax and dual LNB and sky dish, and it looks even better than before!!!

I realised that what I like soooo much about this set-up, is that I also have a PC always connected to my big screen. When I do TV-on-demand, I don’t have to hunt for another machine. When I want to share photos, it’s right there etc.

All in all – I’m a fan. My only hick-up, was really with Home Server: The backups on it is not incredibly reliable…. I guess I’ll use more of Windows 7’s VHD backups in the future…