Replace the shell with Media Center

This is done to make a computer much more appliance like, it may not improve performance, but will make it so your family will have a hard time screwing it up, and you won't be asked how to fix it all the time. One thing to take note of is that this can slow down the login time for the "Media Center" user.

Once this is done, the comptuer will boot straight into Media Center. If a user closes Media Center, nothing else shows up - there is no start menu, they can't launch any other programs, all they can do is hit the green button and start Media Center again. All they can access is what is available to them under the Media Center menu. The only known issue is that you'll not be able to change or mute volume because it depends on explorer.exe

Table Of Contents:

1. Improving the user experience
   
   1. Turn off resume passwords
   2. Change error timeouts
   3. Create User Account
2. Implementing the Group Policy
3. Setting up auto log-on

A few system changes to help with the user experience

Turn off passwords from wakeup

1. Right click on the desktop background and choose "Personalize"
2. Select "Screen Saver"
3. At the bottom of the Screen Saver menu, select "Change power settings..."
4. Select the power plan that you would like to use and then click "Change plan settings"
5. Now select "Change advanced power settings"
6. Under "Additional Settings" and "Require a password on wakeup" change the setting to "No"

1. Make any other changes to the power settings that you want. Many people have had better luck turning off all sleep and hibernate settings - this is because of poor driver support for motherboards and video cards - you likely won't need to do this in the future.
2. Click "OK" and close out all display dialogs.

 Change startup times on bad boot

1. Click the start menu, and then right click on "Computer" select "Properties" from the menu
2. Select "Advanced system settings" on the left

1. In the "Advanced" menu, select "Settings" under the "Startup and Recovery" section
2. In here you want to change the "Time to display list of operating systems:" to 3 seconds - this will make it so if there is a system crash the computer won't take as long to reboot.

1. Then click "OK " and close the System Properties window.

Make "Media Center" account

1. You should already have an admin account - this should be the account that you used to install Vista, it will also be used to make changes or do updates - mine is called "Config"
2. Go to the Control Panel and click "Add or remove user accounts"
3. Click "Create a new account"
4. Name the account "Media Center"
5. Leave this as a standard user and click "Create Account"
6. Log off of the "Config" account and then log back in under the newly created "Media Center" account.

Configure the "Media Center" account

1. Log into the "Media Center" account
2. Open Media Player
3. Select "Custom Settings" and click "Next"

1. If you want to make any changes, feel free, but I leave this screen on the defaults, click "Next"
2. It doesn't matter what you select on the "Customize the Installation Options" screen, our Group Policy will void this out, just click "Next"
3. I set Media Player to be the default player, but again, this doesn't really matter - pick what you want and click "Next"
4. I choose "Don't set up a store now..." Click "Finish"
5. There are lots of ways to get to the classic menus for Media Player, but lets stick with an easy one - press "Alt" to get the menu to show up.
6. Go to "Tools" and then click "Options"
7. Click on the "Rip Music" tab and change the setings to what you would like. Make sure you change the Rip Location if appropriate for your setup. You should also take a moment to change the Format to the setings you prefer. I use MP3 320Kbps because it is a high-quality MP3 format, and it is also supported by iTunes. I would like to use a lossless format here, but for my setup I need the songs to be compatible with a large number of devices, so MP3 it is. It is important to set this up now, because you won't be able to change these settings very easily once you replace the shell on your "Media Center" account.

1. When you are done setting up Media Player you can log out of the "Media Center" account.

Implementing the Group Policy

1. While in your administrator account, press the Windows Key and "R" to bring up the Run dialog box
2. Type "mmc.exe" and hit "Enter"

1. In the window that pops up, select "File" and then click "Add/Remove Snap-in".
2. Click "Group Policy Object Editor" and click "Add"

1. Click "Browse" on the window that pops up.
2. Click the "Users" tab, select "Media Center" and click "OK"

1. Click "Finish" and then click "OK" to close out the dialog boxes.
2. Now Expand the folders Under "Console Root" so that you can see "System" (under "User Configuration" >> "Administrative Templates").
3. Double click "Custom User Interface" which is under the "System" folder.

1. Click the "Enabled" option and then put the following in for the file name: "%windir%\ehome\ehshell.exe"

1. Click "Apply" and then "OK"
2. Next you will want to browse to the "Ctrl+Alt+Del Options" folder. This should be the first folder under the System folder you were just in.
3. I recommend setting the first three options to enabled. You will want to leave the "Remove Logoff" alone for being able to do maintenance later.
4. Now just save the file in case you want to make changes later.
5. There may be other options that you want to change, you should be able to figure out what the different settings are based on the explanations given in the Management Console - they are usually pretty thorough.
6. When you are done, close the Management Console.

Setting up auto log-on

1. Press the Windows Key and "R" to bring up the run dialog box.
2. Type in "control userpasswords2" and hit "Enter"

1. Click on your "Media Center" user and then uncheck the box "Users must enter a username and password to use this computer."

1. Click "Apply"
2. On the "Automatically Log On" box, click "OK" (enter the password if you set one for the "Media Center" account.
3. Click "OK" to close the "User Accounts" dialog box

Finished! You should be all done. Restart the computer and enjoy.