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[mark_h]

Hi guys,

I lost my PC last month.  Fortunately I had some good backups and am now building up my new PC.  I have installed Media Center 11 and recovered all my libraries.  But what I cannot find is where are the player changes stored?  eg customisations like Navigation items - changes to the display bar - changes to toolbar etc...

Any ideas?

Many thanks,

Mark

[marko]

In the registry.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\JRiver

Changes to the display bar, the saved presets for places such as rename from properties etc. are in keywords:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\JRiver\Media Center 11\Properties\Keywords

Toolbar settings are at:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\JRiver\Media Center 11\MCBars

-marko

[Magic_Randy]

In the registry.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\JRiver

Changes to the display bar, the saved presets for places such as rename from properties etc. are in keywords:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\JRiver\Media Center 11\Properties\Keywords

Toolbar settings are at:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\JRiver\Media Center 11\MCBars

-marko

This is why I suggest a comprehensive backup capability from the JRiver team.  There is a lot of talent in the company, and IMHO, it would take them almost no time to provide this functionality.  Without it, people to to mess with registry settings, take multiple steps to do backups, find tools (like glynor's tools) to do partial save & restores, etc., etc, etc.

[marko]

indeed.
atm, I use genie backup manager to backup MC because as well as all the files, it can be set to include registry keys in the backup job, but would much rather an MC produced archive that included everything at the click of a button.

[mark_h]

Thanks, Marko, you're a star   I also use Genie - is there a plugin for Media Center or do you pull the registry entries yourself?

Cheers,

Mark

[Magic_Randy]

indeed.
atm, I use genie backup manager to backup MC because as well as all the files, it can be set to include registry keys in the backup job, but would much rather an MC produced archive that included everything at the click of a button.

marko,

I too use Genie for backups.  Would you mind documenting the keys we need backup?

Thanks,

Randy

[marko]

I can't work out how to work the genie plugin author so I pull them myself.

When setting up the job, I select Registry on the "My Profiles" tab, then choose "backup selected registry keys" and add HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\JRiver
Then I move on to the my folders tab and add the entire \application data\JRiver\ folder, and the entire \program files\media center\ folder.

I only save the current user\j. river key because that's where all my options and customisations are stored. The rest of the registry stuff is taken care of by MC itself during install.

When restoring, I only replace if the target does not exist, or is older than the backup files. Everything goes back where it came from.
First, I install MC, start it, and then close it again.
Next I install all my usual plugins. (I install my plugins into MC's \plugins folder, so that any data associated with them, pn skins, for example, are included in the backup job by default.)
Then I restore the genie backup job and start MC...

All my options settings are restored, my ipod settings, all keywords, thumbnail texts, player display customisations etc. etc. are restored, all thumbnails are built and ready to go, all mega and mini skins are available, as are visualisations and track info's.
It works, and works well.
My only slight concern is that over time, the registry key might be picking up a fair bit of redundancy, especially so as I run every beta build. So every so often, I skip the registry restore and let it build from a clean, current MC install.

-marko.

[Magic_Randy]

marko,

Thanks...

I now have a Genie backup of MC.

Randy

[mark_h]

Great stuff, Marko. 

Many thanks.

Mark

[mark_h]

Here is the plugin for my system - note that it backs up my libraries which I keep in a non-default folder, so if you use this you'd want to edit the <Folders> and <RestorePath> section to point to your libraries.  Thinking about it I could probably pull the library location from the registry to make this script more generic, but anyway, here you go.

[edit]If MC 12 uses the same reg keys for preferences then the <Version> tags could be changed to ALL to work with MC12[/edit]
[edit2]If you want to store ALL MC reg entries then edit the <RegistryKeys> section to point at the top of the JRiver key tree[/edit2]

<Backup>
   <Program>
      <Main>
         <Name>Media Center 11</Name>
         <Category>Audio & Video</Category>
         <SubCategory>Music Management</SubCategory>
         <HomePageURL>http://www.jrmediacenter.com/</HomePageURL>
         <HomePageText>J River</HomePageText>
         <Note>Backs up library and player specific settings</Note>
      </Main>

      <Version>
         <MIN>11.0</MIN>
         <MAX>11.9</MAX>
      </Version>

      <Path>
         <FileName />
         <Type>-1</Type>
         <KeyName />
         <Value />
         <IncludeSub>TRUE</IncludeSub>
         <Enable>FALSE</Enable>
      </Path>

      <Variables />

      <RegistryKeys>
         <Key IncludeSub ="TRUE">HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\JRiver\Media Center 11\Properties</Key>
                        <Key IncludeSub ="TRUE">HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\JRiver\Media Center 11\MCBars</Key>
      </RegistryKeys>

      <Files/>

      <Folders>
         <Folder  IncludeSub="TRUE" Extension="">
            <From>c:\Media Center Files</From>
            <To/>
         </Folder>
      </Folders>

      <Ini/>

      <Links/>

      <Restore>
         <RestorePath>C:\Music Center Files</RestorePath>
         <RestoreNote>Install Media Center prior to restoring this backup</RestoreNote>
      </Restore>

      <Author>
         <Name>Mark Harding</Name>
         <Company />
         <Date>04-03-2007</Date>
         <HomePage />
         <email>genie@markharding.net</email>
      </Author>

   </Program>

</Backup>