[There's a reason that Yoda is the unofficial mascot of SBS. Size indeed matters not.] MCE on a SBS domain - THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS "DIVA"
Wed, Jul 20 2005 0:49 bradley

MCE on a SBS domain

Media Center Edition.  Think it's just for the home?  I think there's another untapped marketplace out there.

At the SMB Technology Network several of those in attendance mentioned that they were getting asked about installing MCE in the businesses' conference rooms.

There's just one problem... they can't join a domain.  So unless you use a googlable info on having them join a domain, use “pass through authentication”, you really can't have them in your SBS network [you know me on wanting to make sure all workstations are controllable].

I still say everything should be domain-able....but that's just me....

p.s. when I say domainable -- I mean out of the box and supported by the vendor...not upgraded from 2004, not only available on a clean install, not there if you hack it... I want it there all the time in a supported condition.

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# re: MCE on a SBS domain

Wednesday, July 20, 2005 5:10 AM by bradley

Well, there are hacks that allow you to do that. Here's one of them:
http://www.tss2000.nl/vbforum/showthread.php?p=435#post435
Apparently, the downside of this is that you can't use MCE Extenders. However, if you snoop around on TheGreenButton, you'll find people who claim that they managed to do both - join an ActiveDirectory domain, and use extenders. Can't verify this from personal experience though, as I haven't tried it.
Hubert

# re: MCE on a SBS domain

Wednesday, July 20, 2005 8:23 AM by bradley

no joke...if mce could join a domain, we'd be installing one within 30 days in our primary conference room.

we originally figured we could use rdp to connect to other machines as needed for stuff on the domain. but i backed off on that. just a bit too kludgy for a very client-visible system.

# re: MCE on a SBS domain

Wednesday, July 20, 2005 9:08 AM by bradley

Actually according to Microsoft YOU CAN install MCE into a domain . . . there is simply one catch . . . you must do it during the initial install of the software.

More specifically, if you have a Media Center PC with the software already pre-installed -- you're out of luck. But if you have the software on CD and you are installing on to a bare computer -- during the installation it does give you the chance to join a domain.

This information is from a TS/2 seminar that was given last year by Microsoft in Dedham, Massachusetts. I have not tried this out for myself personally, but it should be a simple matter to test it using Virtual PC.

# re: MCE on a SBS domain

Wednesday, July 20, 2005 11:46 AM by bradley

If you upgrade from versions prior to MCE 2005 you will retain Domain Join functionality.

# re: MCE on a SBS domain

Thursday, July 21, 2005 5:32 AM by bradley

You can as discussed above add a MCE machine to the domain, however according to a guy from Microsoft I was talking to its actually a bug and was never designed to do so :< so join while you can !

There is one downside. MCE uses Fast User Switching to handle MCE extenders (such as Linksys, XBOX etc) and as you know as soon as a machine is added to the domain FUS is disabled. Thus extenders wont work.

For info MCE runs fine in a VM (VMware or MS VS) and is very cool peice of software.

Its a shame about the domain - I had a project to deliver around 80 MCE machines in a managed apartment block - in a domain, controlled by a SBS domain would have been cool. Hopefully some one from the MCE product team will think about this, especially with SBS being used as a 'home server' these days......

Heres hoping !

# re: MCE on a SBS domain

Monday, August 22, 2005 2:42 PM by bradley

Well there is hope on the horizon. The reason they pulled it was due to the FUS, in the VISTA beta you can now have FUS and be connected to a domain so since they killed that barrier hopefully the next version of MCE will add the domain support back since there won't be a problem with FUS.