An installation report - older hardware and why I used 1.33 not 1.38 (1 Viewer)

[bill_gensheet]

My TV PC is more a cast-off on older hardware (a 'Quiet PC' i5 4690, 16GB ram, 2xSSD 1xHDD, system graphics), mainly as a cheap way to get UK satellite reception. Progress, and lack thereof, recorded in case it is of use to others or open for correcting my misapprehensions.

Previous attempts brought me to this point:
Win 10 does not work my TV card (Hauppauge 88x WinTV DVB-S2 ) as it won't do the LNB switch to higher frequencies, so Win7 x64 it is.
Hauppauge 'support' thought the tuner had 'worn out' and denied any Win10 incompatibility ......
Also have to instal MP as 32-bit so that the Hauppauge remote will work.

Fresh clean install Win7 x64 with little else (AVG, couple of reference software, Firefox, VLC, Opera) and of course the TV card software & drivers
Tested the Hauppauge software, it worked OK.

Initially tried MP 1.38 x32 but this calls for DotNet 4.8.1 which then refused to go onto a Win7 system.
I guess we have hit the limit for Win7 backward compatibility now ?

So settled on MP 1.33 as that also predates possible database issues.
There was a complaint that WMP11 was 'not executable' but the instal ran fine anyway.

Rest of installation and TV server config tuning all good with both LNB IF's working.
A few tweaks to the tuning xml to get all the channels, as they move transponder a fair bit. I use KingofSat and have a spreadsheet to generate a new xml file just for 28.2E

Then sorted out the remote control side (editing the Hauppauge .ini file) so that I can run the whole system from the Hauppauge remote.
Boots to Windows (not direct into MP)
Then 'TV' remote button gives MP, 'Videos' and 'Music' goes to VLC direct or 'red' for a Firefox link to BBC i Player
All the remote functions once inside MP are also fine
Shut down is also achieved through the remote.

I still have a wired mouse (useful for killing AVG popups) and wireless keyboard for more conventional PC use

Any suggestions for getting a UK programme guide welcome though - no luck with that side yet

 

[CyberSimian]

Initially tried MP 1.38 x32 but this calls for DotNet 4.8.1 which then refused to go onto a Win7 system.
I guess we have hit the limit for Win7 backward compatibility now ?

My production HTPC is even older than yours -- Intel Q6600 quad-core CPU, 7GB RAM, AMD 6400 graphics card, TBS 6284 DVB-T2 quad tuner, Pinnacle 2000i DVB-T dual tuner. And yes, I run 64-bit Windows 7 on it. But I have successfully upgraded to 64-bit MP 1.38.3.

When I was testing MP 1.38.3 prior to its release, I am reasonably sure that I did a true first-time install on an empty Windows 7 partition, which succeeded without any problems. But that was 64-bit MP; I don't remember whether I also tested an install of 32-bit MP. If you are having problems with the .Net install, it is possible that one of the dependencies that MP uses has changed since I did my test installs (i.e. Microsoft has changed something in the .Net install).

There have been some other reports of difficulty installing some Microsoft-related stuff, and the resolution was (I think) to install the missing stuff manually (instead of allowing MP to install it). Unfortunately, I don't remember what was missing, or what to install manually. If you have time over the Christmas period, you might like to search the 2025 threads for install problems to see if a solution is described.

Fresh clean install Win7 x64 with little else

Did you install from the DVD? There were a lot of updates applied to Windows 7 over its lifetime, including changing the update procedure so that it would not work any more -- updates were available, but the Updater would not install them. If I remember correctly, you had to download several KB fixes and install them manually, in order to get the Updater to work again. If you are missing some updates, it is possible that they would contain the missing Microsoft components.

I keep an empty Windows 7 partition on my HTPC, with all maintenance applied. This enables me to test true first-time installs of MP (I copy the partition and then install MP into the copy).

Any suggestions for getting a UK programme guide welcome though - no luck with that side yet

I have never used satellite TV, but I understand that there is a radio(?) channel that carries the EPG.
This post gives some details about the technical settings (but I cannot confirm that they are correct).
And this post describes the setup in more detail. I hope that this is of some use.

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

 

[el Filou]

There was a complaint that WMP11 was 'not executable' but the instal ran fine anyway.

I have this issue every time I want to upgrade MP (32-bit). At one point I uninstalled WMP from Windows because I had no use for it, forgetting about it being a requirement for MP, but I left the "Media Features" item checked.
Now every time MP insists I provide the path to the WMP installer, which fails to install every time with an error saying to use DISM, but MP installs and runs fine anyway without it.
I once tried to open a support thread about it but nobody replied. Oh well.

 

[bill_gensheet]

Did you install from the DVD? There were a lot of updates applied to Windows 7 over its lifetime, including changing the update procedure so that it would not work any more -- updates were available, but the Updater would not install them. If I remember correctly, you had to download several KB fixes and install them manually, in order to get the Updater to work again. If you are missing some updates, it is possible that they would contain the missing Microsoft components.

I did apply several KB hotfixes to get MS Update running happliy. That got me DotNet 4.5.5, hence my surprise with 1.38 being bothered and wanting 4.8.1. Maybe the change of database system ? 1.33 is the last build for MySQL isn't it ?

I have never used satellite TV, but I understand that there is a radio(?) channel that carries the EPG.

This post gives some details about the technical settings (but I cannot confirm that they are correct).

And this post describes the setup in more detail. I hope that this is of some use.

There is a set of data channels roughly as described I edited a couple of unwanted channels to suit the KingofSat settings for 'FreesatHome' and 'FreesatInformation' , but neither will tune as there's no regular channel in with it.


I have got 'Now & Next' working, but contrary to this post (maybe applies to DVB-T as is your post ?)

The correct advice is to select one channel for EPG grabbing, and only one channel

I needed all the required channels to be selected - ideally not too many ! Even so by the time it has tuned through to get each Now & Next they are more like 'Just Missed' and 'long ago'.


Thanks for the assitance

 

[CyberSimian]

Initially tried MP 1.38 x32 but this calls for DotNet 4.8.1 which then refused to go onto a Win7 system.
I guess we have hit the limit for Win7 backward compatibility now ?

I have just been looking at my test laptop to see what test installs I had performed earlier this year. I had installed both 32-bit MP 1.38.0 and 64-bit MP 1.38.0 into empty Windows 7 partitions with all maintenance applied. These were true "first-time" installs, and both succeeded without problem.

To check if anything has changed, I have just installed 32-bit MP 1.38.3 and 64-bit MP 1.38.3 into empty Windows 7 partitions, and as before both installs succeeded without problem.

Here are the pre-install summaries:



Some points:

(1) The pre-install summaries are not quite identical, specifically the centre and right boxes on the top row are different:

• 32-bit MP installs MS C 2008 SP1, but 64-bit does not.
• 64-bit MP installs MS C 2013, but 32-bit MP does not.

I don't know why these are different.

(2) MP 1.38.3 on Windows 7 still uses MySQL, and will (I think) continue to do so. This is because there is no supported version of MariaDB that runs on Windows 7.

(3) In performing these tests, I found that two of my own tools failed to work on the empty Windows 7 partitions because of a missing MS C DLL. This was initially puzzling, as both tools had worked previously. Then I remembered that I was using versions that had been compiled with MS Visual Studio, which had evidently placed into the EXE file a requirement for this missing DLL. I recompiled these tools with Open Watcom, and they both then worked on the empty Windows 7 partition. So although an empty Windows 7 partition is missing some updated MS C DLLs, MP does not use any of those missing components (MP downloads and installs everything that it needs).

(4) I don't have an explanation as to why your install failed and mine succeeded. From my notes I notice that I ran a Windows 7 update as recently as 2025-08-18, but I don't remember what (if anything) was actually updated at that time.

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

 

[el Filou]

I did apply several KB hotfixes to get MS Update running happliy. That got me DotNet 4.5.5, hence my surprise with 1.38 being bothered and wanting 4.8.1.

4.5 is really old. I'm not sure 4.5.5 even is a version that actually existed. You should be able to install .NET Framework 4.8.0 on Windows 7 SP1