How to get TweakMCE to work with Update Rollup 2 for MCE 2005
A couple of folks have contacted me and mentioned that they have had trouble using the TweakMCE power toy after installing Update Rollup 2 for MCE 2005. I remembered that Matt Goyer had posted an item about TweakMCE a few weeks ago indicating that there will be a new version that will be available shortly after Update Rollup 2 itself is released. I looked around a bit and couldn't find an updated version that we've posted to the web yet, so I took a look at the version that is currently available on the web. The setup package is an MSI and it is not checking for a specific version of Media Center before letting you install (it only verifies that the OS is running Media Center, but doesn't care which version). However, there is a check that happens at runtime that will block TweakMCE from running unless specific versions of Media Center are installed (specifically - Media Center 2005 or Media Center 2005 with Update Rollup 1).
If you would like to use the currently available version of TweakMCE on a computer with Update Rollup 2 installed, you can use this temporary workaround to get past the runtime check (note you will need to have write permissions to HKLM for this workaround to work, meaning you will need to at least have power user privileges on your computer with the currently logged in user):
- Open up your registry using regedit.exe
- Find the sub-key HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center
- Change the Ident value to be 3.0 (it should be set to 4.0 when you install Update Rollup 2)
- Try to launch TweakMCE again
Of course, I encourage you to keep an eye out and download and install the updated version of TweakMCE when it is available instead of using this workaround in the future. There are some settings that will be added to the new version of TweakMCE to modify new MCE settings that have been added in Update Rollup 2.
Please let me know if you run into any issues getting this workaround to work for you....