Help with getting MCE working and Add keyboard shortcut

[tzr916]

Yes, I performed the disabled driver signing steps. But after I had already plugged in the USB receiver, then unplugged it to perform the steps. I'm comfortable doing it but sort of confused on this step, because it's not clear what this accomplishes. Without doing this step, Windows installs the drivers just fine and all the HID devices showed up the same in EG as they show up now (after doing the disable driver signing steps). I actually thought this step was meant for existing EG running on Win10 systems that went through the creators update, where the creators update uninstalled the drivers.

Restart EG as Admin, add eHome receiver, still get same errors in red and nothing in log when pressing buttons:
-Report length must not be zero for device Formosa21 eHome Infrared Transceiver
-Error reading HID device Formosa21 eHome Infrared Transceiver

Using the same brand/model USB IR receiver on 4 machines. Appears to be Formosa21 eHome Infrared Transceiver. If I get this working on one machine, the goal is to implement the same setup on all 4 machines.


Pressing the same button repeatedly shows this (see screenshot):

[jachin99]

Someone else will have to chime in here but i think if you plug it in before you disable driver signing, it can botch your driver install. The whole topic of driver signing enforcement is a different conversation. My understanding is that a signed driver is just a driver with a digital signature attached. Digital signatures are a mathematical way to prove that a given object or message, or driver in this case came from a particular source, and has not been altered as it traveled so in the case of windows 10, a Microsoft signed driver is a driver that came from Microsoft, and has not changed between when it left their hands, and came into yours. But that is a totally different subject.

Try this, generate a button press event, and drag it into a macro, it can be any macro but you should probably go ahead and setup a keystroke emulation macro because it suits your need. Once you have done that, right click the HID.Button.1 so forth and so on, and rename it to just HID.Button.1. This should give you a unique event for that button regardless of what the trailing numbers are. You could also generate a pool of HID.Button events by pressing it five or ten times, and all of those events to your one macro

you could try to unistall your HID drivers, and reinstalling them because you did plug it in before you disabled driver enforcement

[tzr916]

Unplugged mouse USB receiver so won't get confused.
Uninstalled all remaining items under HID in device manager.
Unplugged mce USB receiver.
Plugged mouse USB receiver back in.
Performed unsigned drivers procedure.
Plugged in mce USB receiver.
EG came up with error during startup regarding multiple HID devices.
Removed HID device from EG.
Add HID device back into EG.
Key presses are being shown in Log (as before LONG codes).
Create new macro to send {CTRL+a}.
Press ZERO button on remote 20 times.
Drag six discrete codes from log to the new macro.
Open Notepad, press ZERO button on remote, and it does perform a Select All in notepad. But it also places a "0" in notepad. So it is working, but what about the "0" in notepad? Isn't that going to be an issue?

[tzr916]

I'm ready to try this on my HTPC (where I originally played around with EG and the mce plugin). How do I properly remove the mce plugin and keep remote operation of RJiver MC ? Because, I previously tried uninstalling EG and lost all control.

[jachin99]

If your talking about the mce vista/7 plugin then start eg as admin, and I think double click the plugin. This should bring up a configuration menu. From here, select uninstall alternate mce service, then delete the plugin itself, and restart the PC. To double check that the service has been erased, open the task manager, and go to service, then look in the left most pane for altmceir service, right click, and unistall/delete. When this service no longer appears in you services menu, then it should be gone. If it altered registry keys, and that causes a problem then we will have to tackle that as a separate issue. At a bare minimum on your HTPC, just peform the steps in my tutorial in order.

[jachin99]

I'll have to look at this more over the weekend but my setup doesn't list that ehome device under generic HID. Maybe your particular blaster adds an extra driver, I'm not sure. I'll think some about your notepad problem also.

[jachin99]

One more suggestion, download USBDeview from a company called nirsoft. Its free, and it will list drivers that aren't shown in device manager. You can try the reinstall after deleting drivers under USBDeview if you want. The lines highlighted in green in that program are currently plugged into the PC, and the gray devices aren't plugged in. If your not sure about something then don't uninstall it for the time being.

[tzr916]

Thanks for all the help. Just got it working on the HTPC. Uninstalled previous version, installed latest beta. It showed all the same HID devices as the laptop and chose the exact same one to make the button presses show up. Three other machines to go...

This new MCC command is a toggle during playback, for which there is no visual/audible notification when the toggle has been enabled/disabled. Maybe there's a way for EG to show a pop up or play a sound? One for enable, different one for disable??

[jachin99]

What MCC command are you trying to execute, and why?

[tzr916]

Brand new command that disables/enables automatic commercial skip mode. Ctrl-K or MCC 28042
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index. ... 678.0.html

[jachin99]

You can probably attach a macro that displays a message that comskip has been toggled but unless jrmc somehow broadcasts the status of comskip then I don't think eg will have any way of knowing whether it's on or off. I guess for that particular functionality we'll have to see what happens with the jrmc eg plugin

[kgschlosser]

simply unplugging a device from a PC does uninstall it's drivers. the drivers will stay installed forever unless you specifically uninstall them.

There is a little utility I like to use to clean out USB drivers. you can download it here.
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usbdeview-x64.zip

it is a portable program so no installer. this is for x64 windows systems it is also free. and i mean every kind of free, free from malware/spyware/adware/restrictions/taking money out of you wallet

it will show you what is installed and what is in use. as well as all kinds of other information. But the biggest thing is it gives you the ability to uninstall the drivers. and also completely remove them from the system (be careful with the latter as not to delete any core USB drivers)

[jachin99]

Are you running WIn 10 on your HTPC, and if so, does it get regular updates? The driver signing enforcement wasn't implemented until WIn 10 build 1607 so if this installs without disabling signed driver enforcement on an older OS, that explains why.

[tzr916]

Yes, all machines in my home run Win10 64 and are updated, currently on version 1703. Is it a problem to run EG events based on the long codes? Why so much focus on uninstalling USB drivers / performing unsigned process? Is it just in attempt to get the short code working? Or is there another reason? What problems may arise?

Trying to change this a bit to send keystroke CTRL+k, pause, DOWN. But I'm having problems setting it up... The DOWN button pops up a MC progress bard (at least showing me that the button press sequence occured.

[kgschlosser]

OK in order for EG to be able to be the "man in the middle" between hardware and OS there are drivers that get installed depending on your device. with Windows 10 build 1607+ Microsoft has decided it was a good thing to disallow the use of unsigned drivers completely and without any notification to the user of doing this. As an added bonus it gives you no Error that tells you what the problem is when you try to install an unsigned driver (very nice of them). Windows 10 has brought about all kinds of problems most of which we have been able to deal with through code and are transparent to the user. But with the driver aspect of things there is no way to go around this through code. the only way would be to get the drivers signed. I have been trying to locate a person that knows how to go about getting this done. But it now requires that these drivers get sent to Microsoft. and they have to do what it is they do. and then if they approve them we can get the signature. I am working with some people that might be able to help us on this but it is still going to be some time before we can get it done.

Another very large problem is that with all of the different types of hardware that is available it is impossible for us to be able to test EG with each and every single piece. so we have to work through these problems with the user if the user has an issue.

I do thank you for your patience in this It is an extremely frustrating and aggravating process to go through. But i will tell you this. the team of people that work on the EG project are extremely diligent and will not give up until at the very least they have a complete understanding of what is going on. But 99% of the time we will find a solution. I know this is an important thing for you to have working, and we will not stop trying to find a solution until one is had.

The most important thing is never overlook the smallest detail. don't matter how obvious it may be and never assume anything. the more information that is given the more we have to be able to formulate the proper cause-solution formula. If something comes up or is said during this process in which some other person reading might know what the cause is they are usually pretty good about chiming in to lend a hand. We are going to go through a very detailed step by step troubleshooting process. and even if you have already tried it and are being asked to do it again. do it agian simply for the sake of us knowing it has been done.