I vagely remember having asked this before but I can't find that thread.

Should wmfdist95.exe (WMP9/10 codec package) still be placed in HF when including Windows Media Connect 2.0? The latter already contains the latest version of wmfdist95.exe so it would seem to me we can safely leave out the separate wmfdist95.exe file in this case.

the latest wmfdist is in kb900325.

That don't sound too good...

I'll rephrase the question, then: will everything be as expected if I include Windows Media Connect 2.0 and wmfdist95.exe from XP MCE UR2?

wmfdist95.exe in wmcsetup.exe (and in KB891122) = 28-Jan-2005 (5.46MB)
wmfdist95.exe in XP MCE UR2 = 5-Aug-2005 (5.44MB)

I'm not sure if this really answers your question, but HFSLIP uses the wm9/10 codecs of this:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/891122/
There are two downloads, one for 2k and the other for xp. I do not think they are interchangeable. If in doubt about the latest and greatest, extract the executable, and compare the DLL revisions (I did that too many times when writing hfslip).

When WMCSETUP is placed in the HF folder, it gets installed via svcpack (in other words not slipstreamed). So it won't matter if you have newer ones already slipstreamed (the installer will not overwrite a newer binary). An alternate route is to skip the wmfdist95 in the HF folder, but keep the WMCSETUP in the hf folder, and just let the WMCSETUP install its own wmfdist95.

FYI, when HFSLIP is run and the wmfdist95.exe is in the HF folder, HFSLIP will extract the contents and repack it into the sourcess folder. If there is a real need for this, I'll look into slipstreaming it.... but don't hold your hopes up.

What are the benefits to WMCSETUP? Does it work on W2K?

That answers my second question.

That answers my first question.

The DLLs in wmfdist95.exe from the MCE rollup are newer; some gone, some new ones too.

The only problem is:
KB891122 = 5.0MB
MCE 2K5 UR2 = 29.0MB

I'm on 6.6 mbps broadband but not everyone is...


Not according to MS, but I'll give it a try...

The versions are more important in this case, not the dates. I tested a few files from the MCE and from the KB891122 version. Both are the same, and both extracted exe files result in 60 files. It's the same package with different timestamps. The filedate change is a common thing now with microsoft. They are getting sloppy now with their binaries and save dates.

These are no longer there in the new package:
DRMClien.dll
DrmStor.dll

These are new:
MFPLAT.dll
wmdrmsdk.dll

Here's a comparison of the first three DLLs that are available in each package:

blackbox.dll: 10.0.0.3802 (288KB)
blackbox.dll: 11.0.0.4332 (419KB)

CEWMDM.dll: 10.0.3790.3802 (161KB)
CEWMDM.dll: 10.0.3790.4332 (203KB)

drmv2clt.dll: 10.0.0.3802 (491KB)
drmv2clt.dll: 11.0.0.4332 (566KB)

We're probably using different sources.
Update for DRM-enabled Media Players (KB891122)
Update Rollup 2 for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 (KB900325)

It cannot be installed via update.exe, that's for sure. When modding the build numbers and NT version numbers, the installation does start but quits immediately; a few seconds later, an error dialog comes up saying that "setup could not verify the integrity of update.inf -- make sure that Cryptographic Services is installed and running." When editing update.inf too much, it errors out immediately.

The only thing I haven't tried yet is a manual integration into a Win2K installation source.