(2012-09-24, 20:12)dvined Wrote: how about an update? 
Indeed, definitely time for an update here. Studies have been keeping me out of the fun for the most part but the status is as follows:
I managed to get a new board fairly quickly and that proved to sort out my hardware related problems.
With the system ripped from the chassis and the parts scattered across the floor (diagnostics from the previous mobo problems) I was able to test things out before getting everything back in the chassis.
The software side on the other hand did not prove to be as easy as I had hoped for.
The first step was to get a OS installed on the machine. The candidate: Windows 8 Enterprise Evaluation 64-bit
Getting the ISO from the MS website was the easy part.
I then spent too many hours trying to make a USB install of the ISO (no ODD on the build).
I must have gone through 10, if not 20, different procedures with absolutely no luck.
I changed settings, procedures, ISO's, USB's ... everything that I could think of.
I finally stumbled across a procedure that I thought worked until I realised that I had installed the OS on the portable medium (USB HDD) instead of the SDD: enter Windows To Go.
Seeing as this was the closest I've managed to get to actually getting the machine up and running, I repeated the process with the SSD instead of the USB HDD and I now have Windows To Go running on the SSD. What the actual implications are of running Windows To Go, I have no idea. I can only imagine that I would be better off with a "proper" install.
On the OS side, I haven't bothered going much further. I have something that boots and considering it is scheduled to be replaced by a proper install of Windows 8 Pro ASAP, I figure it is good enough to just leave it as is.
The XBMC install was pretty straight forward. Installed with all default options, added some network shares (the main server, to be replaced by this box, is still hosting all the content) and I was up and running. I did notice some visual anomalies which almost look like frame rate issues. Switching off hardware acceleration (DXVA2) seems to have solved the problem.
I tried out 2 add-ons: Subtitles and Trakt.tv
Subtitles had some troubles initially but this was easily resolved by specifying a local download location for the subtitles (instead of the default content location which in this case was a network share).
Trakt.tv (or any other variant thereof) has been a bit of a different story. I keep getting incorrect username/password errors. I'm sure the details are correct. There is no problem with XBMC's ability to access the internet connection consider it updates weather and downloads subtitles just fine. I have uninstalled this and will give it another go when I redo the build.
For the most part, everything is working as expected. I'm able to start XBMC and watch my content. I've had some crashes and still need to figure out what I want to do with the power settings of the OS.
I've been swamped with studies and I'm going to be out of the country for a while soon, which is why this build has not been getting my full attention.
Once I'm back and Win8Pro is available I'm going to start from scratch and try and iron out all the kinks.
Just a random picture of the process:
(but that will have to wait a while)
