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#1
First Time Poster, Long Time Reader...
I just joined because I wanted to ask a question or so. I completed A+ training early last year. Before that, I had experience with PC's going back to Windows 3.1, so installing OS or even building PC's is not an issue but as always you don't know all the answers.
I previously searched this site for information about swapping the motherboard, cpu (in this case APU) and memory, yet retaining the OS as installed on older hardware.
Initially this went off without a hitch (or so it seemed). On the old hardware, I swapped out the HDD for a SSD, did a BMR or Bare Metal Install (no previous OS) onto it using Windows Home Server 2011.
Worked great, no problems at all.
Undaunted, I picked out a time and place to replace the motherboard, apu and memory I had sitting here. Since its my HTPC, you can understand picking a spot to do hardware or even software upgrades since all the recording happens locally (on the client machine in question).
Then the problems started -
IPv6 was preventing the NIC (Realtek) from working, so I disabled it. Not a big deal if you're not using WHS 2011, but I am so to the HTPC, the server is not online nor is HomeGroups working...
Sort of minor, I know how to fix that.
The next problem and the more problematic was PlayReady. I read here that if you install anything but a new motherboard PlayReady works, but replace the motherboard and it knocks it out, something to do with the MAC address being different on the NIC or Motherboard itself.
I was able to use a tut on here to uninstall PlayReady, clean the cashe and it installed no problem. Of course all my Schedule to Record files were flushed, but that needed pruning anyway, not a big deal.
My first problem was watching Live TV at all. On flagged content I was getting Copy Protection and the usual can't record on a different machine (makes sense MAC is different), but I thought installing PlayReady. This even prevented Recording. It happen with the F1 race on Fox and the NASCAR race on TNT. But not the Speed TV re-broadcast of the F1 race? Hmmmm
I have no problems with content that isn't flagged.
My question(s) is -
Is there any hope in thinking this can be solved with some other method or do I have to nuke the whole thing and start over?
If I have to nuke it, can I use WHS to restore the Programs into the new install or do I have to make a fresh install of all the programs?
Thanks I want to get this solved before Le Mans this weekend....