Archive:Windows FAQ
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
This page or section may require cleanup, updating, spellchecking, reformatting and/or updated images. Please improve this page if you can. The discussion page may contain suggestions. |
This is the Frequently Asked Questions for Windows and Windows-compatible computer hardware. Template:XBMC FAQ
General FAQ
- See also: XBMC all platforms FAQ for FAQs that apply to all versions of XBMC.
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
|
Troubleshooting
See also: Troubleshooting
| ||||
|
Why do I see a black/white screen instead of video?
- ... but the gui works fine.
- if you have a video adapter with pixel shader >= 2.0
- XBMC compiles the video shader at runtime and the compiler was not installed. When installing XBMC, do not uncheck the "Install DirectX" option. Contrary to a common belief, Windows Vista and above do not have a complete DirectX installation out of the box.
- if you have a DirectX 9 video adapter with pixel shader < 2.0
- version 9.11: you are out of luck because the video renderer requires support of pixel shaders >= 2.0
- versions after 9.11: supported, with the 'Software' render method. The CPU will work harder.
Why do I not see the "Allow hardware acceleration (dxva2)" and WASAPI output settings? (Dharma and later)
- These options are available with Windows Vista, 7 and later.
- If you have the required OS and do not see the options, check System Info->Summary->Operating system. It should match your actual OS version.
- If not, Windows is starting XBMC in a compatibility mode, which reports an alternative OS version. To disable the compatibility mode, open the file properties of xbmc.exe (located in Program Files\XBMC), and uncheck all the options of the Compatibility tab.
- If that doesn't help, check the compatibility options of the shortcut used to start XBMC or any launcher program that starts XBMC. If there is a chain of launchers, check each and every one.
Video stutter/jerky playback when "Adjust display refresh rate" is turned on
- The "Adjust display refresh rate" function of XBMC sometimes has bad interactions with Aero on Windows Vista and 7.
- Turn off the "Use a fullscreen window rather than true fullscreen" option.
- If you must have the "Use a fullscreen window..." option turned on, disable Aero, either globally on the PC with the selection of a basic theme, or just for XBMC, with the "Disable desktop composition" option, in the compatibility tab of xbmc.exe's file properties.
Video plays in half/a quarter of the screen
- This happens for certain settings with nVidia graphics cards/integrated chipsets and hardware decoding. To fix this, go in the 3D settings of the nVidia Control panel and stop forcing antialiasing to be used (set "Antialiasing - Mode" to Application-controlled or Off). To avoid changing the setting globally and to preserve it for other applications, you can alternatively create a program profile for XBMC and only disable antialiasing in that profile.
DVD player does not work, why I keep getting "please insert disk" message?
- Please check if you have more than one ejectable media drive in your system. If that's the case you must be sure that you insert the disk in the drive that has the first drive letter, as XBMC will fail in all others. You may need to swap driver letters in your Windows installation.
XBMC displays Chinese Text as unrecognized squares
- When using e.g. Youtube plugin to search for Chinese media video content, the XBMC displays the retrieved media video title Chinese text as unrecognized squares. The reason is that the default font pre-installed with XBMC does not support Chinese Unicode Font display.
- To make XBMC to display proper Chinese Text, you need a True-Type Font (.ttf) that supports Chinese Unicode. Below steps guide you on how to install the required font:
- Navigate to Windows | Fonts directory, select an Unicode ttf font file that supports Chinese characters display e.g.KaiTiRegular, copy the font file.
- Navigate to the XBMC user directory i.e. C:\Users\<your_user_name>\AppData\Roaming\XBMC\media\Fonts (Windows 7)
- Create the Fonts sub-directory if it does not exist.
- Paste the copies Chinese font .ttf file into this Fonts sub-directory.
- Rename the newly copied .ttf file to arial.ttf.
- Launch XBMC and navigate to System | Appearance | Skin
- Change the Fonts selection to 'Arial based'.
- You should now be able to see the Chinese font display properly.
- Note: Your Windows system must have the Asia Fonts support pre-installed. Otherwise you may not be able to find any Chinese .ttf font file in Windows|Fonts directory.