Media Center only on my Machine (ideas?)

About three weeks ago I took a trip to Disney Land, California. One of the attractions I visited was Innoventions in Tomorrow Land. If anybody has been there, it is full of Windows touch-pannels running Windows Media Center.

I was wondering if there was a way I could do that. I would like to have a small PC solely dedicated to Media Center. i.e. when you boot up the computer it loads directly into Media Center.

My preffered option would be to have this as the only OS, or not have the entire WinSeven operating system but only the Media Center. I would probably be able to just install winseven and have Media Center run on startup, but if I have the entire OS it will take up more disk space I would like to dedicated to Music and Videos.

Any links or help would be appreciated

I don't think you can have it without the entire OS but you can have Media center run on startup.

AreoX said:

About three weeks ago I took a trip to Disney Land, California. One of the attractions I visited was Innoventions in Tomorrow Land. If anybody has been there, it is full of Windows touch-pannels running Windows Media Center.

I was wondering if there was a way I could do that. I would like to have a small PC solely dedicated to Media Center. i.e. when you boot up the computer it loads directly into Media Center.

My preffered option would be to have this as the only OS, or not have the entire WinSeven operating system but only the Media Center. I would probably be able to just install winseven and have Media Center run on startup, but if I have the entire OS it will take up more disk space I would like to dedicated to Music and Videos.

Any links or help would be appreciated

There's an option to go media only and start WMC within the Media Center configuration screens. I think what you're looking for though is to replace Windows Explorer with Media Center as the operating system "shell". You can do that via the registry but you lose you volume control via the remote.

You can use Vlite to reduce the size of a 7 install
by removing components of the OS that you know you will not ever need.
Vlite is very easy to use and depending on the amount of things that you take out,
i.e. games, aero, print spooler and so on you can seriously reduce the size of the install
But you must retain the key components of the OS in order for Media Center to operate.

I hope I answered your questions
DemonSeed

DemonSeed said:

You can use Vlite to reduce the size of a 7 install
by removing components of the OS that you know you will not ever need.
Vlite is very easy to use and depending on the amount of things that you take out,
i.e. games, aero, print spooler and so on you can seriously reduce the size of the install
But you must retain the key components of the OS in order for Media Center to operate.

Not even vLite's author nuhi can tell you what's safe to remove yet. He explicitly refrains from stating any official Windows 7 support. Best to stay away from it and just use these settings:

@ DemonSeed: That looks like what Im looking for. I will just remove basic applications I will never use like Paint etc...
@ baarod: Hey man, thank a lot! I will probably go about removing basic things with vLite, and then use the options you showed me.

The reason I want to to this is because the junky computer Im using has a 6GB HDD as the master to install the OS and the slave will contain all my media.

AreoX said:

@ DemonSeed: That looks like what Im looking for. I will just remove basic applications I will never use like Paint etc...
@ baarod: Hey man, thank a lot! I will probably go about removing basic things with vLite, and then use the options you showed me.

The reason I want to to this is because the junky computer Im using has a 6GB HDD as the master to install the OS and the slave will contain all my media.

I've got a vLite config file that works to pare my 7068 and now 7077 down to fit into 3GB on an eeePC. You'll have to add back WMC since it's of little use on an eee I removed it. When you add it back in, it should pick up all the dependencies. You'll probably also want to use my imagex direct extract method rather than the installer since you're low on space. Here's the config file: Last Session.zip