I love my Xbox 360 as an extender, even if it is sluggish at times, but a minor annoyance is the fact that my main vista machine (a laptop) starts responding to remote control IR commands meant for the Xbox.  I know what you're thinking, just keep the laptop out of the line-of-sight, but this laptop (an HP dv2000) must have the single most sensitive IR receiver in the world.  I can press a button on the remote in the living room, and if the laptop is in the kitchen it will respond.  I use the Logitech Harmony remote for the 360, and apparently it uses the same IR codes and Vista's media center.  I looked all through vista (including the hardware profiles) for somewhere that I can turn off or modify the IR receiver on the laptop, but I just can't find it.  Does anyone have any ideas?

 

Simplest solution...black electrical tape over the IR eye.

Otherwise, I doubt you are going to find a simple way to disable it.  You can uninstall the device via Device Manager, but the next time you reboot it will rediscover the hardware and re-install the driver.

I have a better solution.  You can change the codes on your MCE machine or remotes using tweakmce.  Load it up on the laptop and you can change the remote control ID.

Within Tweakmce chose Remote Control Then Set Remote Control ID.

By default its 0 accepting all codes.  Since you don't want your laptop to accept the Xbox's code just change that to 8.  If it still accepts the commands change it to 7.  If you ever want one for your laptop you can change its code using the instructions within MCE.

 

That is a great answer!  That's why I love these forums!  Thank you so much, I'm going to give this a shot this weekend.  I haven't had a chance yet because I've been busy struggling to get an ftp drive mapped under vista.  I upgraded from home premium to ultimate thinking that would solve the problem, but no dice.  File sync to an ftp drive was a major part of my backup program, and losing it is a killer.  But, that's for another forum!  Thanks for your help.

 

Ed

Tweakmce is best way to do it, but here is the registry setting for it if need it.

Set Remote Control ID - To enable your Media Center to respond to a specific remote control ID do the following; 1. Press and hold the DVD Menu key on the remote then press a number button (1-8) for 5 seconds. Remotes with visible LED signal indicators will blink twice to confirm the change. 2. Enter that same number below. 3. Save. 4. Restart the Media Center PC. Note: To enable Media Center to respond to all remotes use the number 0. A reboot is required for this setting to take effect.

Registry key - HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\HidIr\Remotes\745a17a0-74d3-11d0-b6fe-00a0c90f57da

Registry value - CodeSetNum0

Registry value data type - REG_DWORD

This setting also requires deleting the following registry values:

Registry key - HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\HidIr\Remotes\745a17a0-74d3-11d0-b6fe-00a0c90f57da

Registry value - CodeSetNum1

Registry value - CodeSetNum2

Registry value - CodeSetNum3

This is all cool, but is there a way to make my X-Box 360 not to respond on my MCE remote aswel, so that the xbox responds to my xbox remote and the computer responds to my computer remote. If not I guess i can stick to only use a remote for the xboc and program my computer not to respond to it.

Note: MCE Powertoys only works for Windows XP so far. One for Vista seems to be in the works but not published yet.

On the Xbox 360, got to the System blade, then choose: Console Settings/Remote Control.

You can set it to ONLYwork with the Xbox 360 Media Remote or to work with all remotes.

 

Awesome, this just solved alot of issues for me. Thanx alot :-)

Nobody really spelled it out in this thread, but it should be possible to control both the PC and the Extender using a universal remote that uses a different IR set for each device.

I never got that working with the Harmony remote, but admittedly gave up when I had to call Harmony and wait till the next day to call me back.

Yes you should be able to do that.  I have no idea how, you might need to teach the remote every single control, but it should work.  You might have to buy an Xbox remote, to teach it though.