All - I am new to this community so please excuse this post if it has come up before. 

I have an owned an HP z555 DEC for about 18 months and it generally has performed as expected. I do have occasional jerky video during playback of paused TV or recorded video but defragging my hard drive and limiting what else is running seems to keep it under control.

My biggest problem is that I sent the machine back to HP earlier this year because it would not boot. They sent it back repaired (they claimed to have replaced the mother board and graphics card) but ever since then the Front Panel Display just says:

Welcome to the
HP Digital Entertainment Center

It never changes to show title, album title, clock etc.

I have installed all the updates from the HP site as well as all patches from Microsoft, checked all the physical connections, etc. but still no luck.

In looking into this problem I believe I have discovered the root cause. In the registry there are references to C:\Program Files\Front Panel Display Service but that directory does not exist on my z555. I did NOT remove it or remove anything from add/remove programs that should have caused this to go away.

Can anyone confirm that indeed this directory should exist?  If so does anyone know how to recover the files that are suppose to be in there.

HP support has basically told me to run a restore but there is no way I am going to do that as I am not going to throw away 18 months of tweaking and getting this box fully integrated into my environment.

Any help would be greatly appreciated as this is a small but very annoying problem!

Thanks,
- Rich Bernardo -

I have a z555 and have that directory.   It contains an MCL directory plus 10 other files.   Perhaps there is a way to extract these files from the restore disc?

MCL - directory
CBLight.cpl
ChkPos.exe
ehfpdfw.exe
ehvfdw.dll
mfc71.dll
mfc71u.dll
msvcr71.dll
RegService.xml
ThermalAddIn.dll
WTSVC.exe

I also suffered from jerky playback when pausing live TV and try to resume.  I solved this by adding an external USB hard drive.  (see long thread on this site somewhere).

What is in the MCL directory?

RBernardo, just install the front panel driver from hp's webiste:

 http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?softwareitem=pv-38498-2&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&product=451458&os=228&lang=en

 It should work with XP, Vista and Windows 7.  My z558 has the XP driver installed and it works fine on my Windows 7 install.

I tried it but it did not work. It will only work with Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate editions which have the "Windows XP Compatibility Mode" feature. Anyone with Home Premium or below will not be able to run it. It was created to allow businesses with old proprietary apps, say for accounting or factory machinery, to move up to Win7 without having to recreate their applications. (Unless someone knows of a similar third party program.)

On the bright side you just tested and proven my theory that the XP Mode feature should allow XP drivers, not just applications, to work in Win7. You are a lucky man.