It’s been around for a while but I decided to install the latest version of Live OneCare on my Media Center PC.
Firewall
The immediate effect of this was that it blocked the connection with my Xbox 360. My Xbox 360 wouldn’t even connect anymore. Live OneCare seesm clever enough to automatically allow various Microsoft products through it’s firewall, Internet Explorer, Windows Live Writer etc, but not non-Microsoft stuff. Firefox and various online games spring to mind (wow this was the first time I actually fired-up the Star Wars Galaxies Launchpad in about a gazillion years!).
The majority of blocked software throw a dialog box which is similar to the one in Windows Vista asking if you want to allow the product to connect through the firewall. Media Center extenders don’t seem to work this way though. You have to manually go into the Settings for OneCare. (see below).
The ‘Connect my Xbox 360 or Media Center Extender to my Media Center PC’ option was not checked when I opened up the options. One click of this and a quick prod of the OK button and I was back up and running. My Xbox 360 could see my Media Center PC again and I was able to start streaming XVIDs and DIVXs to my TV using Transcode 360 - what a lovely piece of software that is.