Media Center – Near Death Experience

I have an older WindowsXP based Media Center pc made by HP. It is the model z545. This is a discontinued unit which is too bad. I liked how the black case fits right in with your entertainment gear.

z545 Media Center

Last night my wife says the remote control quit working. This happens now and then, but a simple reboot usually fixes it right up. This unit is connected to dual Directv receivers. I found to my dismay when the system rebooted it claimed something was corrupt and could not see any tuners. Spending my weekend rebuilding the OS was not something I looked forward to.

After some poking around here is what I did to fix it. Otherwise it was time to look into a Mac Mini as a media center. I just liked having my xbox360 be able to pull tv from the directv over my network.

The media center stays powered on all the time. So it can record shows at any time, keep the guide updated etc. So I turned it off and unplugged it. Charge can build up in hardware. Since things were working and suddenly quit this was the most likely main issue.

I found I still had two older movie programs installed. Cinemanow and Movielink. Cinemanow tends to update itself every now and then. It was one thing acting odd and we don’t really use them. So mark these for uninstall.

Since I was getting messages about corruption and suspect Cinemanow did something I rediscovered System Restore Point. This is something I have always ignored.

So after the full power off and leaving unplugged to discharge for 15 minutes I restored to a system point from last month. Then I uninstalled the unnecessary extra media software that might try and update components in the future. Rebooted and everything was working again. Both the unseen hardware components and software component corruption was all fixed up.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 14th, 2008 at 9:14 am and is filed under George Starcher. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

http://www.trackemtigers.com Acid Reign

…..It's possible that Windows Updates are to blame, too. I've got a nearly 3 year old HP Media Center, and after SP3, WinDVD 5 got jerky as all heck. I could watch DVDs fine with Windows Media Center, but forget WinDVD. And of course, WinDVD's position was that I needed to pay $70 to upgrade to WinDVD 9.

…..Uninstall, free VLC player. And they wonder why people don't want to pay for software anymore? Me, if an app like that is obsolete in two years, I feel like I've been ripped off. It's not like the tech on the disks has changed…
http://www.georgestarcher.com georgestarcher

In this case I hadn't been letting the OS do its updates. We dont surf from the box and what we do is on macs. Hardly an easy way for something to get into the home network and jump onto the media center. So I figure the cinemanow self updated and hosed something. In conjunction with the need to leave it unplugged for a while.
http://www.trackemtigers.com Acid Reign

…..It's possible that Windows Updates are to blame, too. I've got a nearly 3 year old HP Media Center, and after SP3, WinDVD 5 got jerky as all heck. I could watch DVDs fine with Windows Media Center, but forget WinDVD. And of course, WinDVD's position was that I needed to pay $70 to upgrade to WinDVD 9.

…..Uninstall, free VLC player. And they wonder why people don't want to pay for software anymore? Me, if an app like that is obsolete in two years, I feel like I've been ripped off. It's not like the tech on the disks has changed…
http://www.georgestarcher.com georgestarcher

In this case I hadn't been letting the OS do its updates. We dont surf from the box and what we do is on macs. Hardly an easy way for something to get into the home network and jump onto the media center. So I figure the cinemanow self updated and hosed something. In conjunction with the need to leave it unplugged for a while.