Windows Vista vista media center is BROKE!

[calvin5]

My System:
WINDOWS VISTA ULTIMATE
HP Pavilion a450n
Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3.00 GHZ
Memory (Ram) 2gb
32 bit operating system
Video Card – ATI Radeon x800 All-In-Wonder (W/TV TUNER)
Happauge WinTV PVR PCII (DUAL TV TUNERS)

Trouble:

For about a month now my VISTA MEDIA CENTER has stopped working and randomly displays 3 errors. The errors are

1. “ Media Center Has stopped working… a problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available…â€ÂÂ￾

2. “Media Center Receiver Service stopped working and was closed ……a problem caused the application to stop working correctly. Windows will notify you if a solution is available.â€ÂÂ￾

3. “…To help protect your computer Data Execution Prevention has closed Media Center Receiver service. …â€ÂÂ￾


Prior to the start of this trouble, Media Center worked fine using the HAPPAUGE WINTV tuner but did not recognize the built in tuners in my ATI RADION X800. Media Center now reports no tuner installed.

1. I have checked all my drivers and they are up to date.
2. I have installed and reinstalled VISTA CODEC packages – no change
3. I have executed Microsoft hot-fix knowledge base suggestions (KB938928- incident #SRX1048238340) -no change
4. I have executed Microsoft hot-fix knowledge base suggestions (KB938929) -no change
5. I have scoured the web and noticed several VISTA users are experiencing the same problem. – no fixes have worked

Can you please shed some light on this ??? as it stands now the MEDIA CENTER IS BROKEN on my system

 

[kemical]

Hi, if all else fails why not do a fresh install? You could also check for virus's and spyware and see if they are causing any problems?

 

[calvin5]

Thanks but do not want to do that unless its the absolute last thing. I refuse to believe that i am the only one that has this problem. there is a fix out there somewhere that does not involve a whole new install

 

[Unregistered]

i have the same problem getting it fixed by dell

 

[Jarette]

FIX!! (that worked for me)

ok, so I was playing with getting all my codecs installed and suddenly after restarting Media center is complaining about it's receiver service.

First of all I went to GSpot and had it scan for the offending codecs.. Secondly I opened regedt32and made an export of the entire registry (took about 10 minutes) After this I went to the registry key of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Drivers32

Most of the conflicting codecs were listed for me in Gspot and I removed them one by one. They are easy to spot as they all start with ms (ex. msdivax.acm) Rescanned with GSpot and removed.. Restarted and everything is working great.. No more crashing receiver service and all videos are playing fine.

Hope this works for everyone else, cause I really was frustrated not having a backup to go to, and the only option to reinstall. Good luck.

 

[Unregistered]

How exactly do you spot the defective codec. I have 274 codecs installed and I don't want to delete all of them from the registry.

 

[kemical]

Hi,
You'll see that the above poster used a utility called 'Gspot' to find and delete the bad codec. You can find the free utility here:
GSpot Codec Information Appliance

 

[ralphtalk]

OK, I see the program and want to know exactly how to apply it to Multimedia Center to determine which codecs are conflicting. In the program it states to run it on the video that will not play. How does this relate to the program (Multimedia Center) that does not work?

Thanks in advance for any and all help.

 

[kemical]

Hi Ralphtalk,

if you follow the instructions on this page:
Super Quick Start
you can't go far wrong. Any codecs which are a problem will be highlighted in red so you know which ones to delete. As the guide states to find codecs for the media centre use 'google'. I hope this helps you with your problem.

 

[ralphtalk]

OK, gave it a whirl and had no conflicts with any video drivers. The 2 error messages I ger are: (1) Windows Media Center receiver service stopped working and was closed. (2) A problem caused the application to stop working correctly. Windows will notify you if a solution is available. These messages come up whenever I try to use the media center in VISTA. I have a call in with Hauppague to see if they have any idea since I am using one of their tuners.

cya

 

[ok93]

Thanks Jarette!

Your recipe for using GSPOT to detect faulty drivers/codecs and removing them in regedit, followed by a reboot worked perfectly! After 2 months of WMP11 not starting - it works perfectly in no time (5 mins)!

Zuperb!

(in my case it was addons to windows live messenger that made a mess of it)