How To HiveMindUI Your Steam For Windows Machine

[Balderick]

Create User Accounts

1. Alpha Admin - administrator, local account and password protected.
2. Alpha Console - standard, local account and no password.
3. Alpha Desktop - standard, local account and no password.
4. (optional) windows local account or microsoft live account. *This is probably the account you used to install or upgrade win 8/win 10.

Download and install Alienware HiveMind

Making sure you are in Alpha Desktop session download Hivemind installer from http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=1WDGT&fileId=3478531392&osCode=WT64A&productCode=alienware-alpha&languageCode=EN&categoryId=AP

Before running the installer on a non-alpha machine make sure to use regedit to change registry entry for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > HARDWARE > DESCRIPTION > System > BIOS > SystemProductName from whatever it is currently saying to "ASM100".

The installer checks for alpha hardware/mobo so using ASM100 will allow the installer to run and do its thing. Windows will change that registry entry back to what BIOS sees at boot time so no need to manualy edit registry twice.

Run the installer by double clicking.

Reboot when asked to and choose Console Mode once Hivemind loads. Kodi/Hivemind will then take you through first time setup as well as update. Kodi/Hivemind appeared to crash/freeze but i left it for 10-15 mins before ctrl + alt + del to sign out as no input was being seen and then reboot one more time.

Mission accomplished. You just hiveminded your non alpha machine. :)

Sources: https://eu.alienwarearena.com/forums/thread/98878/general-1/alienware-hivemind-on-other-system-than-alpha

https://eu.alienwarearena.com/forums/thread/106622/general-1/rebuiding-alienware-alpha-with-hivemind-from-scratch

Netflix, Hulu, Chrome browser as well as Steam, Origin and any other gaming client or game as well as anything you are likely able to think of is all there at the click of a button.

Controller input for me is needing tweaked and have yet to fix as well as switch to desktop mode only signs alpha console user out but apart from that everything that i have tried so far works as expected i think.

Enjoy! :)

Just a little reminder kodi and hivemind are fully customisable thanks to them being open source software and this vid shows what to expect from hivemind with a few tweaks to the alienware distributed/release version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOGB1AJhYwA

[Balderick]

More info on Epsilons skin for kodi is found at http://steamcommunity.com/groups/bigpicture/discussions/1/541907867780012343/

[Balderick]

Just booted machine and hivemind tried to auto update but could not install the core components part of update due to the "hardware not supported" thing. Need to find a workaround/solution - WIP.

[Epsilons]

İlk olarak Balderick tarafından gönderildi:

Just booted machine and hivemind tried to auto update but could not install the core components part of update due to the "hardware not supported" thing. Need to find a workaround/solution - WIP.

http://na.alienwarearena.com/groups/hivemind-interface/discussion/2149

[Balderick]

Thank you Epsilons, once again. ;)

[The Boss]

Anyone have a solution to the "platform not supported" thing yet? A shame they're keeping this to Alpha :/

[Epsilons]

The new Alienware HiveMind installer for v3.0.7.57 is here

Alienware HiveMind Interface[www.dell.com]

Download Alienware HiveMind v3.0.7.57[downloads.dell.com]

EDIT : But I have bad news. Editing the registry "SystemProductName" to "ASM100" no longer work to install. Setup v3.0.7.57 won't install on my system at all. I get the following error message
HiveMind interface is not supported on this platform.

Hope someone find a workaround soon. The latest available version working on other platform is v3.0.7.53, but auto-update to 3.0.7.57 upon launching :/ !

[wuddih]

why do you want to cripple your system with bloatware?

[Epsilons]

İlk olarak wuddih tarafından gönderildi:

why do you want to cripple your system with bloatware?

Bloatware ? You cleary have no idea what you are talking about. Alienware HiveMind is only a Skin made by Alienware built on top of KODI (previously known as XBMC) (open source media center), used by millions of users since decade and by far the best Media Center interface ever built. And HiveMind add option such as launching program like Steam Big Picture Mode, Origin, Battle.net, uPlay, GOG Galaxy, Netflix, Youtube, Google Chrome, directly from the Media Center interface, that can be controlled with a controller (XBOX360, XBOXONE, PS3 DS3, PS4 DS4, Steam Controller, etc) or with a Mouse & Keyboard. It's the perfect interface to use in the living room to play you're PC games on a TV.

Take a look at this video to see it in action :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOGB1AJhYwA

[wuddih]

İlk olarak Epsilons tarafından gönderildi:

Bloatware ? You cleary have no idea what you are talking about.

The link you posted is a mod for hivemind you made?!. but the whole topic is about the alienware hivemind software. And that is Kodi, yes, but it is not only a skin for Kodi, they have enclosed proprietary code added to it, against the GPL license Kodi has. Or why do you think they try to disable the usage of their version of Kodi for non-Alienware devices?

Kodi is a media center, yes. it works wonderfully in limited environments for that single purpose only. But putting gaming on top of it if you already have solutions that you cannot really bypass, like the Steam client, Kodi is just bloatware, hogging resources you could've used for gaming and that behavior is by definition: bloatware.

[Balderick]

All of the opensource components that Alienware have modified and use are available to fork view and modify at alienwaresoftware/kodi at github.

The proprietary closed source parts of the installer ship with the open source parts and these together make up the installer available friom dell's driver download webpages for the alpha.

Steam Universe discussions are full of threads of people asking for integrated apps be made available in steamos.

Hivemind does exactly that it comes with many launchers including youtube, plex, netflix etc and you can make a launcher for anything on the web or on your machine and network. Fully customisable ui and launchers.

[Epsilons]

İlk olarak wuddih tarafından gönderildi:

Kodi is just bloatware, hogging resources you could've used for gaming and that behavior is by definition: bloatware.

I don't see Alienware HiveMind using any more ressource than Kodi, actually my base-model Alienware Alpha (intel core i3 + 4gb ddr3 with 2gb gddr5 geforce gtx gpu) can run Witcher 3 High Setting at 1080p no problem at all launched from Kodi/HiveMind....Maybe you should do some research before talking about an app you obviously never used.

[The Boss]

Whoa did this ever get a lil off topic. Kodi uses barely any resources at all. Therefore it is NOT bloatware!

Anyway back on topic. Shame the reg edit doesn't work anymore grrr guess they're not gonna be supporting other non Alpha PCs now. I hope someone finds a work around!

[The Boss]

I really liked what I got to play with till I got that stupid "not supported on your platform" error when installing components. Now we can't install it at all.

I agree I guess someone like them will have to find a way around it if they're interested.

[ZARk]

I checked things out. They are now using
wmic computersystem get model /format:textvaluelist.xsl

to read the system model instead of registry.
Much harder to fake obviously. Only way would be to make a fake wmic app :)
<5minutes pass>
Quickly wrote one, feel free to dissassmeble it if you don't trust me, it's basically a simple "write to command line" app.

http://www.zark.be/software/get.html?file=wmic.exe

Simply copy it to :

C:\Users\Alpha Console\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\addons\service.aw.customizations\resources\lib

After a failed auto-update :)
There should probably be a way to put the .exe file somewhere and add a path priority for mindhive so that it trigger our wmic rather that windows's .. but i'll let that experimenting for someone else, i have to solve the issue with my gamepad not getting picked up

You can also use it to install latest version from DELL
http://downloads.dell.com/FOLDER03472810M/2/HiveMind_3.0.7.63_W10_W81_DT_setup_V66XT_ZPE.exe

Just copy my wmic to your temp folder.
C:\Users\Alpha Admin\AppData\Temp\

(make sure you copy it to the temp folder of the admin account you will be using to install !)

[ZARk]

Okay... Second issue.

After the update, an updated component now checks for the (in)famous ASM100 string on startup !

So that needs to be patched too !

(Seriously AlienWare, just sell the damn app for 10$ and bundle it free with your machine).

File needs to go in and overwrite previous version c:\program files (x86)\HiveMind\

http://www.zark.be/software/get.html?file=HiveMindMonitor.exe


Replacing it gives you back the keyboard and launchers :)
(So everything works again basically).