[beaumonr]

hi,

I am trying XBMC on PC which runs windows normally. It's happily connected to my network via cable and accesses the net without problems.

So I wanted a non windows media server and the obvious choice looks like XBMC. I have installed OpenElec on USB and GeexBox on USB, I can get to the net to download addons and programs but whenever I have changed anything and reboot it looses all the revised settings and I am back to the start

Has anyone any ideas

[pumkinut]

Did you enable any sort of persistence on the USB drive? Without it, all changes are written to a RAMdisk and are erased during a reboot.

[Orclas]

Aye, it sounds like you're running it Live from the USB (which is mostly there for demo/testing purposes), not Live installed to it. As Pumkinut writes, running it live is done via setting up a virtual disk (so called RAM drive, simply put a c:\ on your RAM) which of course disappears after reboot.

What you want to do is to install XBMC on the USB, which (if I remember correctly) means you need one USB or CD for the ISO which you boot from and then another USB to which you install it.

Please note that it's usually a good idea to use a branded, high quality USB stick for install. Cheap sticks are known to fail far to often, happened to me...