Wednesday, July 28, 2010

WMB54G works in Windows 7 !!!

Okay, this is way out of topic but I want to share how to get the WMB54G music bridge (and probably also the Sondigo Sirocco) working in Windows 7.
The system used was a laptop with Windows 7 pro 64 bit and a WMB54G connecting on a wired network with firmware v2.18. UAC is set to minimum, all is done with an admin user.
I got several tips of the internet and blended them together. Here's what I did:

1) download the drivers from the linksys site (v1.3) and install it
2) open msconfig and uncheck the CMFlyWave application
3) open C:\Program Files (x86)\Linksys\WMB54G and set WMB54G.exe to compatibility mode Windows XP SP2 (or SP3). Do the same for cmas2ds.exe and CmFlywav.exe in the "Driver" directory.
4) run hdwwiz.exe and manually add the driver. Choose "Sound, video and game controllers" and point the driver path to C:\Program Files (x86)\Linksys\WMB54G\Driver. Install the WMB54G driver
5) make this batch file and put it in your startup folder:
ping localhost -n 5
start /b /d "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Linksys\WMB54G\Driver" cmas2ds.exe
ping localhost -n 2
start /b /d "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Linksys\WMB54G\Driver" cmflywav.exe
ping localhost -n 2
start /b /d "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\linksys\wmb54g" wmb54g.exe
exit
6) reboot
7) connect to the WMB54G with the utility
8) open the sound control panel and check if the playback device is set to Linksys Wireless-G Music Bridge
9) enjoy your music

note: for 32 bit systems: drop the "(x86)" in the batch file and directory paths.

For Mac OSX users: The alpha driver that Sondigo offers works okay. Only when closing the program it crashes, but sound is ok.

Such a shame that Linksys is not yet providing a real Win7, Mac OSX and Linux driver.
Or at least open source the protocol used to stream the audio.

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