Windows Media Center Problem
Paging Charlie Owen… Charlie Owen, to the operating room…
Hi, my name is Ken and I’ve been having some trouble with windows media center on my HP media center computer. Whenever I open windows media center it comes up with an error message that says messenger failure. I know messenger is installed but it comes up anyway. I then tried to uninstall and reinstall rollup 2 because that’s what some help forum said to do but it won’t reinstall. I just hooked up the cable to my computer so I could watch TV with media center, my PC has a built-in tuner, and now is says tuner not available: the tuner is currently in use by another application or is not working.
On the Messenger front, I don’t know if it’s the Windows Messenger, the Messenger service, or MSN Messenger. Are you logging into your Passport account, Ken? Is the Internet connected to the machine when you get the error? On the tuner front, I wonder if there’s another video app that’s open in the background (for whatever reason)? I realize it’s a bit extreme, but consider clearing out many – if not all – of your Startup items via MSCONFIG.EXE.
And then, there’s a Windows Movie Maker Problem…
When I open movie maker an error message pops up saying “The collections file is not valid or is corrupt. A new empty collections file has been created.” When I try to open a movie maker file it says “class not registered”. When I try to capture video it doesn’t work. I tried to uninstall it from add/remove programs and it isn’t in the list. So as you can see I’m in a bit of a mess, which brings me to my solution if I can’t find any other way to fix these problems.
Hrm. Sounds like you may need to register a few files (to the operating system). Try entering: regsvr32 quartz.dll (from the Run command field in your Start Menu). If that doesn’t work, we’ll have to kick ‘er up a notch.
My Solution, unless you have a better idea…
At first I was going to restore my computer to an earlier restore point, sometime in May, but I tried that but it didn’t work twice. So I’m going to try to use the system restore discs, but once again I have a problem, I am missing CD 1, is there a way to restore your computer to factory order by some other mean other than the CDs the computer came with, if not I’ll have to see if I can order CD 1 from HP or something.
P.S. To top it all off I can’t double click on most icons, it just won’t open, I have to right click and open that way. Not sure if you know how I could fix that. I’ll probably end up buying a Mac in the future.
So, Ken lost one of his system restore CDs (why wasn’t MCE put on a DVD?) and he’s having issues with the Explorer shell. It’s a sad state of affairs when he’s ready to trade it all in for a completely separate set of frustrations: OS X. It’s not that Windows is bad, but… people are just sick of putting up with half of these problems. Can’t say I blame ‘em, either.
Users are impatient – and rightfully so.
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18 Comments
Charlie Owen
August 27th, 2007
at 1:10pm
Hi Chris,
Put Ken directly in touch with me and I’ll see what we can do to help him out.
Bob R.
August 29th, 2007
at 4:11pm
Send Ken to an Apple store… By the way what do you mean by “a new set of frustrations: OSX??? The statement doesn’t make much sense.
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/490/opinion
Looks like a classic case of Stockholm Syndrome ;-)
John Chadwell
October 18th, 2007
at 2:40pm
Whenever I try to open Windows Media Center I get a message that says I’m logged on as a Guest and it won’t open. In fact, I’m logged on as the Administrater. Any solution?
Kevin Weir
November 4th, 2007
at 12:58pm
I have a problem with Windows Media Center, it keeps starting up on it’s own and I can’t stop it. I went to log on to my username last night and it said I had 24 programs running, all of them were Windows Media Center and all of them saying that there was some problem with my sound and video cards. When I closed all the windows, Windows Media Center still loads and starts up. It’s been doing it all day long today too. Help???
Joey Henderson
November 7th, 2007
at 4:29am
I have the exact same problem. So far I have not found a fix. It just started recently.
John Chadwell
November 7th, 2007
at 2:39pm
I have tried repeatedly to use the Media Center, changed my profile and jumped through hoops, all to no avail.
Eric Scheffler
January 16th, 2008
at 10:55pm
I seem to have a very strange problem and can’t find any help searching the web. My Media center will open fine and when I scroll around everything usually works, except when I try certain funtions like “my internet” in media center and when trying to shut it off. It will make my screen go crazy and completly distorted. Now the mouse still moves around and things seem to keep working, but my screen is gone to hell and I end up doing a hard restart just to get out of it. I have not seen this before with anything else on my pc and according to my research, I have all the updates and such. This pc came with the media center resource cd and trying to reinstall my opertating system won’t fix it. Anyone know what might be cause WMC to completly freak out like that?
sam bolin
January 31st, 2008
at 4:18pm
I gan’t get my system to restore. I did a RESTORATION and now it wont restore anymore it says: restoration incomplete dose anyone now how to fix that? I talked to HP and did every thing they said to do but it still don’t work i have a HP Media center pc M7160n
Zeeza B
March 1st, 2008
at 3:31pm
I have a problem viewing my project when I am in project mode. If the windows movie maker thinks I have too many fades/transitions it will simply not allow me to play the movie. I have to “make movie” saving it to my computer then I can watch it. It also does this if it thinks I have too many clips. I can not view my movie until I have already saved it as a movie which is a huge problem. Is there anything I can do? Thanks.
Riyad
April 20th, 2008
at 2:13am
hy,
i can not drag the items in timeline, but i did it before. now when i try to add any clip into timeline it shows that Invalid pointer, how can i do it all right.
lewis
October 16th, 2008
at 5:22pm
every time i try to drag a pic down or anything down to the timeline it says invalid pointer, what should i do?
don
October 19th, 2008
at 11:12pm
I deleted windows media center from my windows vista home premium because it was corrupted. when I load a disk it does not do anything. I is not under all program. How can I reload this program windows media center???????or what can I do to solve this problem?
yrui kpa
November 18th, 2008
at 11:36am
how can i open it
Sheri
November 30th, 2008
at 9:40pm
I have had Media Center for years, and recently, it tells me that messenger is not installed and won’ t let me download pics or video. Is there a web site I can download / update it again from??
Rohit
March 6th, 2009
at 10:20am
I Have Windows Vista Home Premium installed in my sony Vaio laptop.After about a minute of opening Windows media centre,it comes up with a eroor message that reads “Media Centre has Stopped Working,Windows is checking for a solution to the problem’
Please help
Tom Barbieri
April 13th, 2009
at 9:40am
Hi,
I keep getting this continuing problem,when I go and try to watch TV Media center says tuner card not available if I reboot it comes back and work like it’s soppuse to for a couple of days then back to the same problem?card is an Asus PHC3-100 and the same thing happens with my DVD-RW its there then it’s gone have to reboot iHAS120 in device manager it says 6 scsi CD ROM
please help
thanks
Tom
Robin Kindred
June 11th, 2009
at 10:52am
I downloaded Internet explorer 8 and now My Movies in the media center will not open. Any ideas?
Robin Kindred
June 11th, 2009
at 10:57am
I have windows xp and every time I open the media center I get a error saying windows messenger failure and I can’t open my movies.