4
Mar

Fixing Windows Media Center TV Setup

   Posted by: Dante   in General

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Given certain circumstances, Windows Media Center will get stuck at “Downloading TV Setup Data” and do nothing else. This generally occurs after some sort of hardware change, as it happened to me on a motherboard change and on a hard drive change. YMMV.

For the sake of clarity, this entire post refers to Windows 7, but it could apply to Vista as well, given that the paths are relatively the same.

Anyway, there are a few posts around the Web that tell you to run a command line for mcupdate.exe with some switches. That’s like getting a tire patch, it’ll work for now but won’t last. Here’s the new tire solution:

1) Go to the Control Panel, Programs and Features, and click “Turn Windows Features on/off”. Uninstall Windows Media Center.

2) Reboot.

3) Empty out the folder C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\eHome\

4) Go to the features and enable Windows Media Center again.

5) Run Windows Media Center and do the TV setup.

This solution is the only one that worked across reboots and allowed me to go and reset the TV signal without hassle. Please leave a comment if something else worked for you.

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 4th, 2011 at 12:00 am and is filed under General. 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.

15 comments so far

kennyinbmore
 1 

Didn’t work for me, but I appreciate the attempt though

March 7th, 2011 at 5:56 pm
Dante
 2 

If you do find a solution, please post back and I’ll update the procedure.

April 22nd, 2011 at 11:06 am
Eats Wombats
 3 

Worked for me. Many thanks!

October 30th, 2011 at 7:41 am
nitefly
 4 

Worked great for me! Thank you so much!

December 19th, 2011 at 8:28 pm
daveee
 5 

worked wonderfully. Hope I dont have to do this again after I move and need to change cable providers

February 8th, 2012 at 4:06 pm
Isabelle
 6 

Didn’t work for me, can’t reinstall WMC 🙁

April 1st, 2012 at 12:03 am
CSTONE
 7 

Before you do this, check and make sure that the following folders exist on your windows 7 C drive: C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\eHome\

THey did not exist on mine…

June 17th, 2012 at 7:21 am
perspect
 8 

The eHome folder exists for me, but, when I turn off media centre the eHome folder disappears until I turn it back on, what do I do?

August 22nd, 2012 at 2:14 am
Dante
 9 

You should be ok, because the folder needs to be emptied out anyway…

August 25th, 2012 at 7:57 am
Bill Smith
 10 

This is a miracle! After many searches to solve this problem, including the Microsoft help sites, this is the only strategy that actually resolved the issue.

Thank you!!!!!!

November 13th, 2012 at 5:59 am
gbsparks
 11 

The solution worked perfectly. Thank you.

November 25th, 2012 at 8:41 am
Bill Smith
 12 

Okay, it worked (perfectly) the first time. However, it doesn’t resolve the issue. After 2 weeks I have to do it all again . . .

November 26th, 2012 at 5:55 am
Kevin
 13 

How do I view this topic using Internet Explorer 9. It says I should download Chrome or Firefox

April 25th, 2013 at 10:49 pm
Kevin
 14 

I still cannot view this page using Internet Explorer 9. I can understand to not allow IE 6 or previous browser, but IE 9 (and perhaps IE7 and IE8) is a fine browser. Please enable this page (site) for recent versions of IE.

July 18th, 2013 at 5:03 pm
David
 15 

Like so many others I have repeatedly lost the TV channels in Windows Media Center, sometimes it seems, after applying Microsoft updates! So far all the suggestions I’ve found on the internet have not resolved this serious issue for me.
If it hangs trying to download the setup, running the command “C:\Windows\ehome\mcupdate.exe -manual -nogc –p” whilst WMC is waiting then frees it. However, then it just returns the error: “TV Setup has encountered a serious problem… ”.
I’ve now finally located the cause and I have not found it mentioned anywhere on the internet. Since there have seen many other unresolved cases I thought I would share my findings. In my case it has been caused by the Task Scheduler! To check if that may be the issue on your PC just open Task Scheduler by either typing “task” in the Start Menu search bar, or by opening All Programs – Accessories – System Tools. If you get an error message along the lines of: “The selected task “{0}” no longer exists. To see the current tasks, click Refresh” it may be the cause of your WMC problem. Anyhow this is what I did to resolve it using a combination of some suggestions found on the internet:
Firstly this should remove the Task Scheduler error(s).
1. Open the Registry Editor.
2. Go to the following: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Tracing\SCM\Regular.
3. Add/Change the following value
a. Name = TracingDisabled
b. Type = REG_DWORD
c. Value Data = 0
4. Reboot the PC
Secondly uninstall Windows Media Center by:
1. Going to Control Panel – Programs and Features, and click “Turn Windows Features on or off”.
2. Click on ‘+’ by Media Features and untick Windows Media Center.
3. Reboot as instructed.
4. After restarting delete the contents of folder “C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\eHome\” but not the folder itself.
Thirdly re-open the Task Scheduler and verify that you no longer get the “The selected task “{0}” no longer exists” error.
1. Now click on Task Scheduler Libary, Microsoft, Windows, Media Center Click on Media center and all the relevant tasks should open.
2. Look for Recovery Task and highlight it.
3. From the Action menu choose Run and it should soon start running.
Now open Windows Media Center and it will start as a new install. Choose express set-up and then continue to TV Set-up Tuners.
Finally, if like me you do not leave your PC on overnight, you may want to return to the Task Scheduler and change the trigger time of mcupdate_scheduled from the default of 2am each day!

October 28th, 2013 at 2:55 am

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