Hacking Windows7 MediaCenter

What better way to celebrate Earth Month and Hack7MC’s new house warming than with a new Media Center theme? Featuring shots from the excellent background files of the same name from Deviant Art member vhm-alex. This theme features the two whales seen in vhm-alex’s works prominently in each of Media Center’s sections. Check out a few screenshots then download this theme to give it a shot on your Media Center.

Installation:

This theme doesn’t include an installer and may require you to take ownership of the ehres.dll file manually using the “Take Ownership” registry fix. Download and apply the registry file then navigate to “C:\Windows\ehome\” and right-click ehres.dll. Select “Take Ownership” to take ownership of the file.

Also, make a backup of your ehres.dll file and place it somewhere safe. The patch program should create a backup file named ehres Backup1.dll but there’s no reason to not keep an extra backup on hand.

Download the Flying Whales patch file below and copy the patch file to the “C:\Windows\ehome” directory. Right-click the patch file and select “Run as Administrator”. Inside the patch program select the start button to begin the patching process. Once complete launch Media Center to verify success.

Uninstallation:

Replace ehres.dll with the “ehres Backup1.dll” file created by the patch process. Alternatively, replace the file with the backup you created before applying the patch.

Download: Download Flying Whales Theme from Hack7MC (39.9mb)

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Remove an entire strip with this registry hack. Want to Add New Menu Strips? Check out this guide to Adding Start Menu Strips!

Using some of the same techniques as in this previous article on removing entire strips from Windows 7 Media Center, we can remove individual items from any strip. This is a somewhat difficult hack to employ and is recommended only for more advanced users. System files will be changed during this hack and backups of all files should be made prior to starting.

Get the tools

We will be using the same tools as the previous hack but first make sure to create two copies of “ehres.dll” which can be found in “\Windows\ehome\”. One of these will be for editing and the other will be saved as a backup.

Once you’ve got the files, you will need a resource editor and an XML editor. The resource editor used in this guide will be Restorator. This easy to use resource editor isn’t free but does have a 30-day trial available for download. Also required is XML Notepad 2007 which is available to download free from Microsoft Download Center.

Find the strip’s XML file to edit

Next, open the “ehres.dll” file which you’ve saved for editing in Restorator. In the left pane there will be a number of folders listed, expand the “html” folder then scroll down until you locate a series of files named “SM.XXX.XML”. Locate the file which corresponds to the strip you’d like to edit, for example “SM.MOVIES.XML” contains information for the Movies strip.

Extract the SM.XML file from the ehres.dll by dragging and dropping the file onto your desktop or anywhere on your hard drive. Alternatively, right-click the file and select “Extract > Extract as..” to export the XML File. It’s a good idea to create a backup of each of these files as well before editing them. Once you’ve located and extracted the XML file for the strip you’d like to edit, open the file in XML Notepad.

Edit the XML File

With the XML file open in XML Notepad, locate and expand the “home:StartMenuCategory”, “QuickLinks”, “constraints:ConstrainedList”, and “Source” folders. Each of the folders inside the “Source” folder represents an item in the default menu strip with the exception of the first folder.

Removing an item from a menu strip is simple at this point. Expand each set of folders until you locate the one with the corresponding title to the item you want to remove. The name should be fairly easy to discern from the “App” value or “EntryPoint” value. Deleting the root folder for any item will remove it permanently from the menu strip. The root folder will be the one just listed directly inside the “source” folder as shown in the image above.

To rearrange items on any given strip, locate the “Priority” setting for each strip item. These values define the order in which each item comes in the list. An item with a “Priority” of zero will be placed before an item with the “Priority” of one. Swapping these values will allow you to alter the position of any given menu item. Be careful to not have conflicting values or it may result in undesirable effects.

Rebuild ehres.dll and copy to ehome

Once you’ve made the desired changes to the menu strip’s XML file it needs to be re-added to the ehres.dll. To do this simply drag the file back into Restorator and drop it on the same file in the left pane. Alternatively, right-click the correct file name and select “Assign > Assign To..” and select your modified XML file. Once you’ve laded each of the modified XML files into Restorator, save ehres.dll.

Once you’ve got a new ehres.dll file, open Windows Explorer to “\Windows\ehome\”. You will need to have the “Take Ownership” registry fix installed, then right-click the original ehres.dll file and select “Take Ownership”. This will allow you to rename the original “ehres.dll” to “ehres.dll.original”. Once that’s been done, copy the new ehres.dll file into the folder.

Restart Media Center to check that you’re edits have been completed successfully. If Media Center should crash at this time it is most likely due to an incorrect XML file. If this is the case you should likely revert to a backed up file and try again. As long as all goes well you should have your perfectly tailored Media Center start menu.

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Tagged As: ehres.dll, start menu, themes

After posting this rather difficult method to removing start menu strips from Windows 7 Media Center, a reader posted an alternate method that turns out to be much simpler. As long as you don’t need to remove the Movie strip this hack can be a much easier solution. Currently, however, there is no publicly known key to remove the Movie strip from Windows 7 Media Center.

This method also enables “per user” disabling of menu strips through the current user’s registry values. Alternatively, editing the local machine values will set the default visibility of strips for all users. This hack was originally posted to Mikinhosoft with details on the registry values to edit. For simplicity we’ll just edit a .reg file to add the values to the registry.

First download this registry file with the all the entries for each of the start menu strips (excluding Movies). Next open the file in notepad to edit the values of each entry. Inside you will find an entry for each menu strip, excluding Movies, which has an “OnStartMenu” value. By default each menu strip’s “OnStartMenu” value is set to true.

For each entry you will see an “@” value with the name of each strip, which is only used to identify the strip, changing this doesn’t change anything inside Media Center. Change the “OnStartMenu” value to “False” for any strip you don’t want to appear in your media center start menu. To reverse the change simply change the value back to “True”.

If you’d rather set the default strips for all users change each “HKEY_CURRENT_USER” to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE”. Changing all of these values to local machine will set the default start menu strips across all user accounts.

After you’ve completed editing the .reg file save and then double-click to add the values into your registry. When prompted, allow the registry entries to be updated. This proves to be a much easier method to edit your start menu strips in Media Center. Again, thanks to Mikinhosoft for posting this information and creating the registry file for this hack.

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Tagged As: ehres.dll, start menu, themes

Also, Try this alternative method which makes removing entire start menu strips even easier!

So you read the guide on Adding New Start Menu Strips and now you want to remove that Movies strip and replace it with a Media Browser strip. Maybe you just aren’t that into sports and want to get rid of the Sports strip. Either way, there's a hack to get rid of those unwanted start menu strips.

Get the Tools

First we need a couple of tools to get us through this hack. A resource editor is required, Restorator is my personal favorite for it’s ease of use and that’s what will be used in this guide. Unfortunately, Restorator isn’t free but does have a trial version available. It’s well worth the price if you plan on doing a lot of Media Center hacking though.

While the XML files we’ll be working with can be edited in something such as notepad Microsoft has a free program that will make this a lot easier. Download XML Notepad 2007 free from Microsoft Download. This free little program is extremely handy for editing XML documents, which are the basis of much of Media Center’s layout.

Get the Files

Now we need to get the files to work with. You will need to get a copy of “ehres.dll” from “\Windows\ehome”. Also, be sure to have the “Take Ownership” registry fix installed as it will be needed later on. Make two copies of “ehres.dll”, one should be a backup kept in a safe place the other will be for editing.

Open your “ehres.dll” for editing in Restorator. There should be a number of folders listed on the left hand pane. Expand the html folder and scroll down until you find “startmenu.xml”. Click the file and drag it to your desktop or anywhere on your hard disk for editing. Now that you have a copy of “startmenu.xml” open Notepad 2007 and load the file.

Edit Startmenu.XML

Once you have “Startmenu.xml” opened in Notepad 2007 you will see a couple of folders ad some xmlns declarations in the left hand pane.  It will most likely be quite intimidating to anyone not familiar with XML but we can ignore these for now and just expand “home:StartMenuData”. Then expand the next three folders inside, “Categories”, “constraints:ConstrainedList” and “Source”. Now you should see a large list of folders.

We aren’t concerned with the first twenty of these folders as they are placeholders for the extra programs strip. After these first placeholder folders you will notice a couple of folders marked “constraints:ConstrainedItem”. These are the first few start menu strips, pictures and folders. Expand these folders as well as the “Value” and “home:StartMenuCategory” folders and you will see an entry marked “StartMenuCategory”. On the right hand you will see “global://Pictures:PicturesSMC”, this tells us that this is the entry for the Pictures strip.

Expanding each of these folders you will see entries for each of the available start menu strips, including Now Playing, Movies, Music, etc. To remove any of these strips simply select the main “home:ConstrainedCategory” folder for the strip and delete it. Then save the “Startmenu.xml” file.

Update ehres.dll

Now that you’ve edited “Startmenu.xml” and saved it the time has come to reapply it to the “ehres.dll” file. Make sure you’ve got Restorator open and your “ehres.dll” file for editing is loading. Either drag the edited “startmenu.xml” onto the “startmenu.xml” listing in Restorator or right-click the file in Restorator and select “Assign > Assign to..” and choose your edited xml file from the dialog. Once the new xml file has been added to the “ehres.dll” file save the .dll with Restorator.

This should create two files with the default settings, a backup and a new “ehres.dll”. Copy the new “ehres.dll” into the “\Windows\ehome\” directory. To successfully copy the file you will need to have the “Take Ownership” registry fix installed. With the fix installed, right-click the original “ehres.dll” in the “ehome” directory and select “Take Ownership”. You should now be able to copy over the original file. Be sure you’ve got a backup before proceeding though!

Check it out in Media Center

Once you’ve got your “ehres.dll” replaced, relaunch Media Center to check that the start strip you wanted to remove is gone. That should be all there is to it. If Media Center crashes upon starting or you’ve removed the wrong start menu strip by mistake replace your “ehres.dll” with the backup you created. Then you’ll have a fresh start to try again. A crash is most likely caused by an incorrect XML edit.

For even more tips on hacking your Windows 7 Media Center be sure to subscribe to the Hack7MC RSS Feed or follow on Twitter for the latest!

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In order to increase the readability of certain screens in Media Center I’m releasing a patch to modify background used with the Road to Nowhere theme. This background adds a dark stripe to increase the contrast between the light text and the light areas of the background.

This background will effect a number of areas in Media Center including the Music, Pictures and Videos sections as well as a number of other subsections of the main menu. The increase in readability should allow for somewhat easier use of these areas for those desiring to update.

Before installing this patch you must have the “Road to Nowhere” theme already installed. To install the patch simply download the zip file below and extract it to your “\Windows\ehome\” directory. Then right-click the patch exe and select “Run as Administrator”, when the patch dialog appears press “Start”. Once the patch completes that should be all there is to it.

Download: Road to Nowhere Alternative Background Patch

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Have you seen the guides on creating your own themes for Windows 7 Media Center? You can check them out here: Changing your Background and Making a Complete Theme.

Want to get started in creating your own themes and having them used by Media Center fans all over the world, earning you a good bit of pride and fame? Now’s your chance!

Use the guides to create your own Media Center themes then zip them up and send them to theme7mc@hack7mc.com. The best entries will be featured on Hack7MC each week and all entries will be eligible for a new project to be announced soon!

There is also the very good possibility of prizes being awarded to the best entries with more details on that to come in the near future.

If you need help with your theme or submission use the comments section below or send an email to theme7mc@hack7mc.com

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Both Homeworld (Download) and Road To Nowhere (Download) themes have had updates to the installers. If you previously had trouble installing the themes you can try one of the new packages. However, if you have successfully installed the themes previously there is no reason to get this update.

Stay tuned to Hack7MC through the RSS Feed or by Following on Twitter to stay up to date on future developments.

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A surprise release for this weekend, a new theme. Going off another background designed by Phil2001 of DeviantArt, this theme features high resolution images (1080p) designed for wide screen televisions.

This theme has a good imaginative style featuring a road that seems to go on forever into the distance. The depth of field plays very nicely with a Media Center setup. To find out how to make your own themes check out this guide.

Installation:

1. Download and install NowhereRoad.msi
2. Close Media Center and wait 45-60 seconds for the system files to be released
3. Run the Enable Road To Nowhere Theme shortcut as administrator (right click and select “Run as Administrator”)
4. When the patch dialog appears press start. If you receive an error it is likely the system files haven’t been released yet, wait 60 seconds and try again.
5. If the patch fails consistently, open Windows Explorer and navigate to "C:\Windows\ehome" and locate "ehres.dll". Right-click and select "Take Ownership" then retry the patch.
6. Once the patch is applied successfully close the patch program
7. Restart Media Center

Uninstallation:

1. Close Media Center and wait 45-60 for the system files to be released
2. Run the Disable Road To Nowhere Theme shortcut as administrator (right click and select “Run as Administrator”)
3. Optionally you can permanently remove the program files through the windows control panel but you must do step #2 first or the theme will not be reset.
4. Restart Media Center

This theme is meant for use only on Windows 7 Beta 1 (Build 7000) Media Center. No guarantees are made as to the compatibility with other plug-ins or modifications. If you do require assistance, however, you can leave a comment below.

DOWNLOAD: Road To Nowhere Theme 1.0.2

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Expanding on the article detailing how to change your Media Center background let’s take a look at building a more complete theme. The basic tools will stay the same. You will need a copy of Restorator, a paint program like Paint.net and Windows 7 Media Center.

Once you’ve got the necessary tools open Windows Explorer and locate “Windows\ehome\ehres.dll”. Make two copies of this file, one as a backup and one to edit with Restorator. Be certain your backup is in a safe place, there is no reason to have to reinstall because you lost your original ehres.dll file.

Next, open up your ehres.dll file for editing in Restorator. You’ll see an explorer type tree on the left listing a handful of folders. These contain the various files stored inside the ehres.dll. For this guide we’ll only be looking at the basic image files used in the theme. The image files are contained under “RCData”.

The easiest way to work with these files is to extract them to your hard drive. Create a folder in the same location as the ehres.dll file you will be editing named “extracted”. From Restorator right-click on RCData and select “Extract all of type RCData” and save them in the “extracted” directory. Now there should be some 2,100+ png images in that directory. The easiest way to view them will be to set them to be displayed as Thumbnails.

Locating the particular image you want to change can be somewhat tricky. You’ll need to use a combination of the thumbnails and the general description in the image names. Many of them will be quite obvious from the thumbnail exactly where they belong in Media Center, others not so much. The images marked “HC1” and “HC2” for instance are only used when users have the High Contrast settings enabled.

Opening these files in an image editing program such as Paint.net you will notice that many of them have areas of transparency. These areas will be displayed as a grey/white checkerboard on the image. You will also soon realize that many of these images are a very low resolution (about 500x300). When you consider that these are being displayed on 720p and 1080p monitors it is easy to understand why the default theme seems so bland.

Fortunately, Media Center will scale any images to the correct size. This makes skinning for multiple resolutions a non-issue as all images will be scaled properly. This also means we can use high resolution images in our themes as a large resolution image scaled down will always look better than a low resolution scaled up!

We won’t cover using Paint.net or any of the other image editing programs you can use to edit these files here as there are plenty of resources around the web for that sort of thing. You can find some especially good guides at Paint.net’s Tutorials forum.

Once you’ve got the new image you want to use adding it to your file couldn’t get much easier. Open up Restorator and locate the file that you’ve edited under RCData. Then simply drag your file onto the proper name in Restorator. Alternatively, it is also possible to right-click and select “Assign > Assign to..” and select the replacement image to be used.

When all the images you wish to change have been replaced in Restorator simply save the file (ctrl+s). Next, the “Take Ownership” registry fix must be installed to enable the ehres.dll in the “Windows\ehome” directory to be renamed or replaced. Once the fix has been installed to the registry, right-click the ehres.dll file in “Windows\ehome” and select “Take Ownership”. Now replace the default ehres.dll with the edited version.

Once that’s been done restart Media Center and bask in your hard work! It will almost certainly take some experimentation before the new theme is just right but you can be pushing out new themes in no time.

For the latest guides on creating themes for Media Center subscribe to the Hack7MC RSS Feed!

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The new theme for Windows7 Media Center based on the Homeworld background by Phil2001 of DeviantArt is now available for download.

Installation:

1. Download and install Homeworld.msi
2. Close Media Center and wait 45-60 seconds for the system files to be released
3. Run the Enable Homeworld Theme shortcut as administrator (right click and select “Run as Administrator”)
4. When the patch dialog appears press start. If you receive an error it is likely the system files haven’t been released yet, wait 60 seconds and try again.
5. If the patch fails consistently, open Windows Explorer and navigate to "C:\Windows\ehome" and locate "ehres.dll". Right-click and select "Take Ownership" then retry the patch.
6. Once the patch is applied successfully close the patch program
7. Restart Media Center

Uninstallation:

1. Close Media Center and wait 45-60 for the system files to be released
2. Run the Disable Homeworld Theme shortcut as administrator (right click and select “Run as Administrator”)
3. Optionally you can permanently remove the program files through the windows control panel but you must do step #2 first or the theme will not be reset.
4. Restart Media Center

This download is provided as a public beta release. It has been tested to work on both x86 and x64 Windows7 Beta1 Build 7000. There is a very real chance that something will go wrong with this install version for at least one person who downloads it. If you need help leave a note in the comments below this post (No Registration Required).

DOWNLOAD: Homeworld Theme 1.0.1

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Currently going through private alpha, “Homeworld”, a new theme for Windows 7 Media Center will soon be released on Hack7mc. Originally a windows background developed by Phil2001 on DeviantArt, I’ve secured permission to use Phil2001’s background images to develop Media Center themes for release on Hack7mc.

This image was previously used in the guide posted on changing your Media Center background. Expanding on the background modification, a complete theme is being developed including background, menus, TV guide and more. Compared to the original “boring blue” theme this theme also includes much higher resolution images. Many of the menus and displays have been optimized for display on 1080p. Hopefully, this will be the first of many Media Center themes to come in the future.

Once the theme has been thoroughly tested on both x86 and x64 systems it will be available for download. Be sure to check back often as a public beta release should be ready for download this weekend!

The best way to keep in touch for when the download hits is to subscribe to the Hack7MC RSS feed or follow on Twitter. Alternatively, you can use the links below to add a bookmark to Del.icio.us or Windows Live, even send a link to your friends!

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Tagged As: themes

Everyone wants to stand apart from the crowd, unfortunately Media Center doesn’t allow you to easily change the appearance of your setup. Windows 7 may have added better support for themes but Media Center has still ended up stuck with "boring blue.” There is hope though, it may not be easy but you can alter the look of your Media Center interface.

Step One: Backup Your Files!!

The first thing you should do is go to “C:\Windows\ehome\” and and make two copies of the file “ehres.dll”. Save one to a folder for editing and save the other somewhere safe just in case you want to undo your changes.

You also need to apply this registry file. Download the file to your machine and double-click to apply the fix to your machine. Once you’ve done that right-click the original file and select “Take Ownership”. This allows the file to be replaced later on.

Step Two: Get an Image

You need an image to use for the background. The default is 500 pixels wide by 300 pixels high (500x300) but you can use images of varying height. This allows for high definition 1080p and 720p files to replace that boring low-res blue. For this guide lets use this image which can be downloaded from the author below:

Step Three: Insert into the ”ehres.dll” file

To edit the ehres.dll file a resource editor is required. For this guide you should download Restorator. The program isn’t free but does have a 30 trial availalbe for download. This editor allows you to view png files inside the dll file and works on x86 and x64 machines.

Once inside Restorator open the ehres.dll file you have copied to be edited. Expand the “RCData” section and scroll down until you find “Common.Animated.Background.png”. Right-click the file and select “assign > assign to” from the menu. Then browse to and select the background file you want to use.

Once that is complete save the file.

Step Four: Replace the original “ehres.dll”

Once you have your edited file (and your backup!) copy the edited file from where you have it saved and paste it into the “C:\Windows\ehome\” directory replacing the old one. Remember you must have the “Take Ownership” registry fix applied to this file to allow it to be replaced.

Step Five: Launch Media Center

Now you should be able to launch Media Center and see your new background in place. The animated portions of the background will not have been changed, however. To change these you must replace “common.background.layer1.png”, “common.background.layer2.png” and “common.background.layer3.png”. These are the files that are loaded onto the screen to make it appear animated.

That’s all there is to changing your Media Center background! Keep in touch with Hack7MC for future theme guides for Windows 7 Media Center. Hopefully, this article will be the first of many to come.

Want to get even deeper? Look at this guide on creating an entire theme for Media Center! Be sure to follow along on the RSS Feed or Twitter as well to get all the latest information.

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Tagged As: featured, themes

Sometimes a change in scenery is in order or perhaps you’ve just got something against the color blue. Either way there is a solution to the predicament. Thanks to Astrotoy7 of The Australian Media Center Community you can change that same old blue Media Center into a sleek black.

Installing this new look couldn’t be much simpler. Just download the x86 file or x64 file depending on your version of Windows 7. Once you’ve got the right file for your system run the own.reg file included. It will show a prompt asking whether or not to continue, press “Yes”. This will allow you to take control of the file that needs replaced to change the theme.

Once the registry entry has been updated navigate your Windows Explorer to “C”\Windows\ehome”. Locate the “ehres.dll” file, right-click and select "Take Ownership" then rename it “ehres.dll.bak”, a prompt asking you to continue will appear – press “Yes.” Once the old file has been renamed transfer the ehres.dll from the download into the same location.

Restart Media Center and that should be all there is to it! Welcome to a new sleek black theme for Media Center.

To revert back to the default theme, simply remove the new “ehres.dll” file and rename the “ehres.dll.bak” to “ehres.dll”. This will restore the system to the original default theme.

For even more customization options check out our articles on plug-ins here!

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Tagged As: featured, install, plugins, themes