Digital Cable Advisor

This month we finally made the switch at home from analog cable TV to digital cable. I have been using Windows Media Center for years, since the old XP Media Center days, and have really enjoyed watching TV and recording movies to DVD's.

But now we have a new hi-def TV, Blu-ray DVD, streaming Netflix, etc. I took one of our old DVD's recorded from analog cable TV and it looks HORRIBLE on our new TV. So now I'd like to make the switch on our home computer to digital TV.

You can buy a modern PC with a digital TV tuner already installed. But you can also install a digital tuner in an existing computer PROVIDED that it meets the Media Center requirements for a digital tuner.

You MUST run Microsoft's Digital Cable Advisor from within Media Center to enable Media Center's digital cable functionality. See here for more information about it.

Unfortunately for me, our home computer doesn't cut it. While I could buy and install a new graphics card to replace the motherboard's integrated graphics, I only have two DDR memory slots and 2GB is as high as I can go. Maybe it's time to shop for a new motherboard.

SQL Server 2008 R2 Express Repair Problem

Yesterday, I blogged about the DACL problems that I had with my new SQL Server 2008 R2 Express installation. I thought after fixing those problems that everything would be OK. As it turned out, the installation wasn't healthy and I decided to run a Repair on it.

I started the installation again, and chose the Repair option under the Maintenance section. The install ran for awhile but eventually I got an error that said

Error 1316.A network error occurred while attempting to read from the file e:\367ede46587e326a4067cebb84442e\1033_ENU_LP\x64\setup\SSCERuntime_x86-enu.msi

This error ultimately caused the Repair to fail.



Googling this error led to a Microsoft Knowledge Base article indicating that this has been a known problem with SQL Server Repairs since 2009. The gist of it is that there is an .msi file having two different names between the SQL Server install and the Visual Studio 2008 SP1 install. The solution is to uninstall the SQL Server 3.5 Compact Edition, then run the SQL Server Repair, which will also reinstall it again.



After uninstalling the four Compact Edition applications that I highlighted above, I reran the Repair. This time it completed without a problem and my SQL Server runs just fine.

SQL Server Setup DACL Problem

Just got done installing SQL Server 2008 R2 Express on my Windows 7 development computer. It was an upgrade to SQL Server 2008 Express that installed with my Visual Studio 2010. At the end of the install, the summary noted that there had been an error.

Setup has detected a non canonical discretionary access control list (DACL) on directory 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\COM'. Please verify your security settings and make corrections if needed.

With a little googling I learned that this is repairable from Windows Explorer. Interestingly, the COM directory mentioned in the error message was actually OK, but there were 2 peer directories that did in fact have the DACL problem.

Here is how you can fix it in Windows 7. If you right-click on one of these bad directories to view Properties and try to open the Security tab, you will get the following message:

The permissions on Tools are incorrectly ordered, which may cause some entries to be ineffective.

After closing the dialog, you can press the Edit... button, which requires Administrator credentials.



A similar dialog box as the original message will appear, except this time you will have the opportunity to fix the problem. Press the Reorder button.



This will fix the DACL and take you back to the Properties window.