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ServeToMe 4 requirements when running on Windows

CPU requirements

ServeToMe 4 requires an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU (any speed) or an Athlon Phenom CPU (any speed) or any newer x86 CPU except Intel Atom CPUs.

While ServeToMe 4 can be installed on any CPU that will run Windows XP SP3 (including CPUs older than those listed above), required performance cannot be guaranteed on older CPUs. Similarly, performance on Intel Atom CPUs cannot be guaranteed — even on Intel Atom CPUs made in the last few years.

Windows version requirements

ServeToMe 4 requires Windows XP SP3 or any newer version of Windows. This includes Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10 as well as equivalent versions of Windows Server and Windows Home Server.

Windows XP users may need to install .NET Framework 3 or newer if it is not already installed. If you don't have .NET Framework 3 or newer installed on your computer, we recommend that you download .NET Framework 4 from Microsoft (the lastest version available for Windows XP).

Install required Apple software components

ServeToMe 4 requires the "32-bit Apple Application Support" version 2.1 or newer. This library is used by ServeToMe to perform media encoding. This component is installed as part of iTunes (version 10.5 or newer) and we strongly recommend you install iTunes before installing ServeToMe 4 since it is the simplest way to satisfy thos requirement.

However, if you do not want all of install iTunes, it is possible to extract this components from the iTunes installer and install it alone without installing the other parts of iTunes. To do this, you can follow these steps:

  1. Download and install the free 7-zip decompression program. You will not need to keep this program installed on your computer — it is only needed to extract the 32-bit Apple Application Support package from the iTunes installer — you can uninstall 7-zip once these steps are complete.
  2. Download the iTunes installer but do not run it (if your web browser asks if you want to "Save" or "Run" the installer, select "Save").
  3. The downloaded iTunes installer should be in your Downloads folder and will be named either iTunesSetup.exe, iTunes64Setup.exe or iTunes6464Setup.exe. Locate the appropriate file and right-click it, choosing "7-zip → Open Archive" from the popup menu.
  4. In the 7-zip window opened by the previous step, double click the "AppleApplicationSupport.msi" file to install "Apple Application Support". WARNING: ServeToMe requires the 32-bit version of Apple Application Support (named "AppleApplicationSupport.msi"). Running the "AppleApplicationSupport64.msi" installer will only install the 64-bit version and will not satisfy the ServeToMe installer.

Windows service requirements

ServeToMe 4 runs as a "Windows Service" (a background task). To ensure that the service can play any of your files, it is strongly recommended that you select the option during ServeToMe installation to run the service under your Windows username.

Running as a service requires:

  • Your Windows account must have a password (you cannot run a network service from an account without a password)
  • You will need to enter your Windows account password during installation (the password is used during installation to configure the service and is not retained)

If you can't comply with these requirements, you can choose to run the service under the default "LocalSystem" account but this account may not have permissions to access some locations (any location set to "Deny" access to SYSTEM) and might not be able to connect to network drives that require a password (network passwords are associated with user accounts).