Hi Guys
Advent over at xpmediacentre has created a great utility in beta mode to fully customise your MC menu

The dicussion can be found here
http://www.xpmediacentre.com.au/community/vista-plugins-addons/25714-new-util-mc-menu-customiser.html

The program can be downloaded here
http://rapidshare.com/files/105465045/MC_Menu_Mender.msi

Here is a screenshot



Keep in mind that this is a beta and not finished production quality - see the known issues below. I take no responsibility for any consequences of running this app on your machine (although I do guarantee it is virus & spy/adware free). Let me know what happens!

How to use
Drag and drop links to move them around. When you begin to drag, plus symbols will appear to show you where you can drop the link. Not all links can be dropped onto any strip - e.g. built in links cannot be dropped onto custom strips, and built in strips will only support one 3rd party app.

Clicking on a strip or link will set that strip/link as default. Default items given the initial focus by VMC. (For the strip, the title is the easiest place to click)

When the mouse hovers over a strip or link, extra UI elements appear for that strip/link. These include:

• Checkbox - set whether the link/strip is enabled or disabled. Disabled items do not appear in the VMC start menu. 3rd party links do not have this option.
• The button to the right of the text for the strip/link enables you to edit the text for that strip/link.
• A delete button is visible for custom strips and 3rd party links. Click this to remove the link/strip from the menu.

Also, when hovering over a strip, up/down buttons appear near the strip title. Click these to move the strip up and down in the list.

To add new 3rd party links to the menu, expand the entry points section at the bottom of the window, then drag links from here onto the menu.

Known Issues
MC Menu Mender must be run as administrator to have access to the relevant registry entries etc.

This version can only be installed on x86 machines (I don't have access to an x64 machine for testing and i'm afraid it might break badly ).

MC Menu Mender does not yet handle changing the required security attributes of ehres.dll and ehres.dll.mui (or whatever language file is relevant for you). You will have to take ownership of these files yourself (see this thread for details).

When moving built in links between strips, make sure the link's original strip is before the one you're moving it to in the list - otherwise VMC will crash on startup. This is to do with the way that VMC loads the menu - i'll try to resolve this in the future but it may not be possible.

After renaming the Now Playing strip, you will need to run mcbuilder.exe (found in your Windows\System32 directory) from an administrative command prompt (this may take a few minutes), and then reboot. This has got something to do with Windows caching language dependent resources.

MC Menu Mender allows you to add more than 2 custom strips, but only the first two custom strips are displayed on the VMC start menu.

Before saving, you must close both VMC (ehome.exe) and ehtray.exe. These processes both use the file that MC Menu Mender needs to write to.

When Things Go Wrong
This is a beta release, and it will almost certainly crash for some people. When it does, if you could forward me the contents of log.txt which will be located in the install directory for the app I would be grateful.

MC Menu Mender will make a backup of the files that it modifies (as <file>_backup.<extension>). These backups are not restored on uninstall or anything - you'll have to do that yourself.

No backups are made for registry changes, so I advise anyone that is worried to manually export the MC section of their registry (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Cur rentVersion\MediaCenter) before running MC Menu Mender.

Finally
If this works for you and you find it useful, and you wish to support continued development of this app, please hit the donate button on the bottom right of the window - I need funds to help restore the WAF after I have been glued to my PC for the past few weeks!

Yep, this is getting to be a really good application. A must, to remedy some of the inane choices made by the MS Menu Design Team.

anyone got the Menu Mender tool to startup?  I have tried tweaking the items above that were suggested but still a nogo.  Just a big raw .net dump that fills up my screen when i try to start the app.

Worked for me.  I had to download .net 3.5.  Was able to disable items with-in the built-in strips, change strip titles, and add custom strips and menu items. No problems that I could see.

NizZ8:

anyone got the Menu Mender tool to startup?  I have tried tweaking the items above that were suggested but still a nogo.  Just a big raw .net dump that fills up my screen when i try to start the app.

I'm getting the same thing. I have .NET 3.5 installed and ran it as administrator. I haven't had time to read through the thread on taking ownership of some files though, so that could be my problem.

I'm able to use the Menu Mender UI and change everything just the way I want it but when I re-start VMC only some of the changes are showing up. Hmmm!!!

Any idears???

That's no good, Sharp_1... can you provide more details about exactly what you have done and exactly which changes have not shown up? The more detailed your information, the better chance i'll be able to find and fix your problem.

P.S. Thanks for the promotion Novalak

Advent:

That's no good, Sharp_1... can you provide more details about exactly what you have done and exactly which changes have not shown up? The more detailed your information, the better chance i'll be able to find and fix your problem.

P.S. Thanks for the promotion Novalak

Here are my changes in Menu Mender:

Here is how the TV + Movie line shows up in VMC:

You can see that I created a new custom line for movies and both of those menu items are plugins. I'm not to sure that the Netflix plugin is not the issue. The author pointed out how the menu item is created in his registration.xml here:

<application title="vmcNetFlix" id="{733C3DD2-B581-4a26-B196-F2591E19DB81}">

  <entrypoint id="{7E80C0B6-99EE-41b4-A192-961A01477439}"
              addin="vmcNetFlix.MyAddInStub, vmcNetFlix,Culture=Neutral,Version=1.0.0007.2,PublicKeyToken=1aaf23cc7f0f9cd2"
              title="NetFlix AddIn"
              description="Vista Media Center NetFlix Manager"
              ImageUrl=".\vmcNetFlix.Logo.png">
              <category category="Services\Movies"/>
  </entrypoint>

  <entrypoint id="{A030EED5-56A1-4bc1-A252-27C95C6AE04C}"
              addin="vmcNetFlix.MyAddInInstance, vmcNetFlix,Culture=Neutral,Version=1.0.0007.2,PublicKeyToken=1aaf23cc7f0f9cd2"
              title="NetFlix Client"
              description="Vista Media Center NetFlix Manager">
    <category category="Non-Existing Category\vmcNetFlix"/>
  </entrypoint>

</application>

 

Any help would be great...thanks for a good looking app.

Is it also possible to set a default menu item in each line so that when you are scrolling thru the menu lists the default button/icon will be highlighted first?

Example: When I start Vista Media Center by default the "recorded tv" icon is highlighted if you move to sports the "on now" icon is highlighted and so on.

Thanks Sharp_1. I'm not sure why you're seeing what you are - what is your weather strip? Another custom strip?

Sharp_1:

Is it also possible to set a default menu item in each line so that when you are scrolling thru the menu lists the default button/icon will be highlighted first?

Example: When I start Vista Media Center by default the "recorded tv" icon is highlighted if you move to sports the "on now" icon is highlighted and so on.

Yes, you can already set the default strip and default links. The highlighted link/strip in  Menu Mender is the default one - you can see this in your screenshot above. To change the default, just click on the strip/link that you want.

Advent:

Thanks Sharp_1. I'm not sure why you're seeing what you are - what is your weather strip? Another custom strip?

Yes, I have a plugin for weather that adds a custom strip. I think what I'll try is to uninstall the weather plugin and see if that changes things from me. Do you think there is a limit on how many custom lines can be used?

Now I see what your talking about with the defaul links. Thanks!!!

Yes, there is a limit on the number of custom strips. From the first post:

"MC Menu Mender allows you to add more than 2 custom strips, but only the first two custom strips are displayed on the VMC start menu."

I think what you're seeing is a combination of a link that has been registered for a single user only (Menu Mender doesn't support this yet) and having too many custom strips.

By the way, a new version is available - see this post for details.

Advent:

I think what you're seeing is a combination of a link that has been registered for a single user only (Menu Mender doesn't support this yet) and having too many custom strips.

I have been installing addons with my account which has administration rights....do I need to be in admin mode in order to make sure my addons are registered to all users???

Thanks!!

Any chance for a 64bit version yet? I have wanted to use this app but can't!

Thanks

Wow this application looks very impressive and it's what a lot of folk have been waiting for! I take it this application "MC Menu Mender" updates / replaces the original "MC Menu Customizer" program you released. Keep up the good work!