Modern suburbia not just in America anymore

I read this article in the USA Today when I was down in Seattle last month.

Modern suburbia not just in America anymore

It is inevitable that development around the world be modeled after what has happened in North America. Hopefully, the best of what has happened in North America will be emulated around the world. Unfortunately, with some governments not having proper controls to ensure healthy sustainable growth, there is plenty of opportunity for foreign investors to go the route of replicating environmentally unfriendly developments that have been done here in the past.

What do you think?

Windows XP SP3 vs Media Center 2005 Extender Software Issues

Some of you that are still using Media Center 2005 (with Update Rollup 2) and Extenders for that platform may have run into issues with the Extender software after you have installed Windows XP Service Pack 3.

In particular, attempts to install the Extender software would fail or attempts to add new Extender devices to the host computer would fail.

When trying to install the Extender software on a system or when trying to add either a V1 Extender or Xbox 360 Extender device to your host machine with Service Pack 3 installed, you would get a message similar to this.

or

To get around this, follow these steps so that you can re-install the Extender software after Windows XP Service Pack 3 is installed.

1. Go to Start, Run and type 'cmd'


2. At the command prompt, type 'reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\HotFix\KB895961" /v Installed /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f' and press 'Enter' (Starts with reg and ends with /f, all in one line)
3. Run the Extender setup again. To download the Extender setup files, follow this link: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=73537

What does the above fix do? It basically adds a registry key so that the hotfix KB895961 (essentially, the Extender software) can be re-installed after Windows XP Service Pack 3 is installed. It seems that Windows XP Service Pack 3 interferes with configurations where the Extender software is already installed, and Extender software itself, without any registry modifications, would not install when Windows XP Service Pack 3 is installed.

Hope this helps people who have run into this issue.

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Media Center, Extenders, Windows XP, Service Pack 3