Please restart the computer and try again. If the problem persists, contact your hardware manufacturer for assistance."
I'm posting this problem again, with the first line as the subject heading, hoping to get new (MORE) responses, since the "fix" that was posted for me in the Dell forum and worked temporarily has quit working, and although I've posted that in my original thread, I'm not getting any more responses. I thought if I started the thread with the error message, itself, maybe more people would recognize it.
This is QUITE frustrating, as almost everything else in Vista is working fine (it's NOT keeping time like it should, but I'm working on that one). Of course, as in the past, with MEC, error messages NEVER come with any assistance from Windows, OR Microsoft. I posted about this on Microsoft's website, along with a comment that took up the maximum amount of space allowed in a comment field, but haven't received any response from them yet. I've NOT asked their tech support for help, yet, since this IS an OEM version, and I figure they'll just refer me back to Dell, and this last time, the best the Dell tech could do was copy and paste the "fix" the other person on the Dell forum came up with (get into Command Prompt as Administrator, type "regsvr32 wmp.dll" Hit ENTER, and RESTART the computer).
As I said, that did the trick for a few days, but no more.
If I don't get this fixed soon, I may, regrettably, be going BACK to XP JUST to have a functioning Media Center, since my dual TV tuner does me NO GOOD if MEC doesn't work, huh?
Help is GREATLY appreciated!
Jeff
Hi JeffAs i have said before - please write a list of hardware within your machine...All hardware..and BIOS revision
OK, ZosoDK
It's a Dell XPS 410, CDCR, E660 (2.4 Ghz), BIOS Revision 2.2.0
13-in-1 media card reader built in
16X DVD+R/RW CD-RW Combo drive, built in
250 GB SATA II 7200 RPM Western Digital drive, built in
2 GB DDR2 SDRAM 667 MHZ-2x1GB,, built in
IEEE 1394A Adapter, DIM9200 card for firewire, PCI -- pre-installed
Hauppage Angel dual TV tuner, PCI -- pre-installed
V.92/56KPC PCI DataFax int modem, PCI -- pre-installed
Nvidia e-GeForce 7600 GT KO 256 MB Video Card, PCI-E (added by me to replace pre-installed Nvidia 7300Le)
2 more GB of RAM same as above (added by me)
I have Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 installed from XP, which remained installed during the upgraded, although Vista warned me there could be problems with it and said there is a known conflict... Earlier, in testing the various OTHER features of Media Center (TV is all I usually use, so I really hadn't even looked at most of them), I discovered that when I clicked on "Photo," it attempted to open Photoshop Elements (unsuccessfully), and I'm increasingly thinking the incompatible Photoshop Elements 4.0 installation (for which there is STILL no Vista-compatible upgrade -- and it appears there never WILL BE) may be the crux of the whole matter. I had NO IDEA the new version of Media Center would use Photoshop as a component like that.
As I DO have the need for some of Photoshop's editing features on occasion, I picked up Version 5 while I was out this afternoon, which doesn't INSTALL in a Vista version but DOES have a Vista upgrade on the Adobe website. Now I'm not sure if I should try upgrading from version 4, uninstall and delete version 4 and start fresh, uninstall the entire OS and start over, or WHAT... or even if this IS the problem... It's still entirely possible that Photoshop incompatibility still ISN'T the issue.
Any thoughts?
OK, So I went ahead and uninstalled Photoshop Elements 4, restarted, then ran the regsvr32 wmp.dll "fix" again, restarted again, then ran Media Center again and it's still giving me the same Application Failure, so if Photoshop Elements 4 was part of the problem, uninstalling it didn't solve the problem.
As I didn't really need any of the "new" features of Elements 5, I'm not going to install it under Vista (or open the package, for that matter) until I have a good reason to, because if I end up having to revert to XP to use my Media Center until Vista gets its act together, I'll be plenty happy re-installing Version 4 on my XP installation until such time I'm ready to go back to Vista.
Just more information, in case anyone has any thoughts.
Well, HECK, no more help or ideas offered, here, or anywhere else -- I even sent an email back to the Dell technician just after I made this new post, and no response so far.
I'm OUT OF TIME, and about to miss one of my favorite shows tonight as two of them have new episodes at the same time in an hour and 45 minutes, so I guess I'm going to start over with a re-install of XP for now.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat!
vista is so new, we're still listening to issues to see what those fixes were. this sounds like it might have been something installed or changed just before it broke. its hard to guess what might have been changed. I keep a notebook on any major changes like installing/uninstalling, physical changes, even minor little tweaks. this way when I break something, I can go backwords on my list until I fix it then I can start to put things back in to find what broke it.
I also use a lot of backups. this way I can just restore. depending on what I'm restoring, it can be as fast as 10 minutes to completely go back to an old setup vs the hours to reinstall. its worth considering a better backup before making changes plan. especially with things like tv where you don't have all weekend to fix it.
btw, from your specs, hauppauge doesn't make the angel tuners.. they are 2 different brands.
Ooops, Sorry about that, Accident. I just checked Device Manager, and the Angel tuners are Lumanate, not Hauppage... not sure how I got the idea they were Hauppage.
At any rate, out of disgust (plus figuring that no matter WHAT I did at this point it would require re-installing Vista, and THAT would likely require another CLEAN installation of XP), I started over from SCRATCH about 8:30 by DELETING my C: partition after booting from the XP installlation disk and then reinstalled XP, then reinstalled all the drivers that shipped with it on a separate disk, along with the Trend Micro PC-Cillin, and my NVidia driver (and unsuccessfully tried installing and updating EZTune, which I ended up having to do again after my shows), but was done with the others in time to get Media Center fully set up and get my recordings set to record and started JUST IN TIME for 9:59 p.m., with not a MINUTE to spare, lol.
I've since fixed the EZTune installation and also reinstalled MS Office, done the 100 or so Microsoft Updates that were necessary since the system originally shipped for the OS, software, hardware and drivers, installed the Audigy software that also came with the PC, and ONLY my Adobe Photoshop and Premier Elements are still uninstalled (Premier had no conflicts with Vista -- only Elements V. 4).
So far, everything's working just FINE with XP again, and so I'm not sure if I'm gonna stick with XP for a while again, or try upgrading to Vista again and just NOT install the Elements V. 4 this time. It's just a couple of hours each time, and most of it is automatic, without too much interaction required by me (and I do it while I'm watching TV, anyway... while there aren't duplicate programs I need to record, so if I do reinstall Vista, it'll be during a SLOW TV time for me).
Assuming I reinstall without installing Elements 4.0 and Media Center DOES work this time, I'll probably know that was the problem, I guess.
Then again, although I really liked a few of the new things in Vista, like the nicer interface and the Sidebar, I may just wait for a while.
What do you folks think -- particularly YOU, Accident, as you appear to be something of an expert in this field, perhaps a Microsoft techie, even?
Yeah, Zoso, you probably got that "clean install" idea the same place I read it -- Ed Bott on ZDNet, lol. I actually considered doing that THIS time, as after less than 24 hours at XP again (and actually MISSING some of Vista's "goodies," lol) danged if Media Center in XP didn't quit working in XP for me -- along with some strange changes, and I suspect I had visited a suspicious website -- and although that was AFTER Microsoft's latest Security update, I still didn't want to take any chances, so once again I started from scratch and reinstalled XP from scratch (that's when I seriously considered just doing Vista from scratch), and THIS TIME I actually let it do a slow format of the hard drive first, installed ONLY the software that came with the computer, then went directly into "Upgrade-to-Vista" mode, and so far (just a few hours, now) EVERYTHING in Vista is working great!
HOWEVER, on the question of "sound card," this computer doesn't have a specific "sound card" installed. It has integrated sound built-in, and I bought it with "Audigy Soundblaster Advanced MB," a software-only version (I'd originally ordered the computer with an Audigy Card, but that was one card more than the computer had slots for, so it kicked out the sale, and that was the lowest priority)... Anyway, that was also the ONLY software that came with the computer that REQUIRED a software activation key every time I reinstalled it, and today it told me my key was EXPIRED (I'm guessing I've used it too many times and some anti-piracy thingie kicked in, and I'll have to call tech support AFTER Easter). I still get decent sound, so if I don't get my Vista version of this back, it's just $25 down the drain and A LOT of bad blogging by me about THEM... TRUST ME, lol.
At any rate, THIS TIME, every time I change ANYTHING (driver, new installation -- ANYTHING), the VERY NEXT THING I DO will be to open Media Center and test if it works, or not. Oh, by the way, last night, while it said that it was missing video codecs needed for TV display, it would STILL RECORD TV, it just wouldn't PLAY it.
Microsoft has REALLY made Media Center WAY too complicated and too difficult to troubleshoot and fix when there are problems. Some of these error messages have been around for YEARS... I sent Microsoft emails about the "missing files" error message more than three years ago, and yet they STILL have not addressed them. They choose to simply IGNORE user needs to be able to deal with Media Center problems, and since it's just an integrated part of this GIANT, AMORPHOUS MONSTER called Windows, when there IS a problem, unless you have a really good idea what to do or where to start, you're at a complete loss. Microsoft is seldom any help. They have essentially NO responses to their various "error messages." Media Center isn't even called that ANYWHERE on the hard drive. If you don't know that the core executeable is called "eHome," you'd never know that was what runs Media Center... The various parts of Media Center are quite likely scattered ALL OVER the hard drive, in various Windows and System folders, and no telling where else.
What the HECK are we supposed to do?
So far, the ONLY way I've found to fix most of these problems is to TOTALLY RE-INSTALL Windows every time one of these serious Media Center issues crops up and won't go away. Having to COMPLETELY RE-INSTALL an operating system JUST to get one component of it to work again is COMPLETELY RIDICULOUS!!!
Microsoft does a really tremendous job with so many things, but they REALLY NEED TO GET THEIR ACT TOGETHER when it comes to helping customers who are having issues with Media Center!