Hi Tim,

Thank you for your reply.  I for one will not touch the KB950126 update.  I have been waiting for the longest time to be able to time shift the analog cable content that I pay for.  For me, the ability to avoid the restricted content errors is much more important than the resuming of video playback.  Of course, a fix to that would be welcomed.  I hope your fix for the unpausing doesn't reverse the ability to record CGMS-A protected content.

It’s likely the bug was induced when trying to addressing the issue of the blank screen that occurs when you switch between fullscreen and windowed mode while you play videos.

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Richard Miller Media Center MVP 2006

This should not be related to the CGMS-A resolution.  Agree that initial assesment indicates this was unintended consequence of the alt-tab switch.

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Tim Schreck
Media Center SE

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Just in case it helps Microsoft isolate the problem...

After this update was installed my VMC machine would hang with a black screen when the STOP button was pushed while play physical DVDs.  The PC was unresponsive to the remote, including the green button.  Un-installing the update removed the problem.

(It seemed to happen most often when my wife and daughter were watch The Gilmore Girls. Perhaps a commentary on the particular disk?  )

-- Pete

Poorman:

Just in case it helps Microsoft isolate the problem...

After this update was installed my VMC machine would hang with a black screen when the STOP button was pushed while play physical DVDs.  The PC was unresponsive to the remote, including the green button.  Un-installing the update removed the problem.

(It seemed to happen most often when my wife and daughter were watch The Gilmore Girls. Perhaps a commentary on the particular disk?  )

-- Pete

Just to confirm that after installing this update, we too are seeing VMC lock-ups when pressing "STOP" while viewing certain physical DVDs.

We also have the "unpause" problem after the screen saver kicks in or the monitor is turned off using the power features (I tried turning off the screen saver and the problem is still there).  This is VERY annoying since our daughters have taken to watching Live TV right before supper and insist on pausing it so they can watch the rest after supper (so every 10 minutes she runs into the family room to "re-pause" the Live TV).

On top of that, we also have the blank screen issue almost all the time when we stop watching Recorded TV.

One final issue that we have is often we have to press "back" twice, to get out of the "Play, Resume, Restart, Delete, etc." screen.  For example if we want to get back to Recorded TV after watching a show, we first start off with the annoying blank screen.  We then hit "back" and we see the normal screen showing the various "play, delete, etc." options.  We then hit "back" again and the screen refreshes to the same "play, delete, etc." options screen.  We then hit "back" a third time and finally we get into the "Recorded TV" list so we can select the next show to watch.

In addition to all this, our VMC installation has been somewhat unstable (since some updates auto-installed in late 2007) with certain HD Recorded TV.  After this new update was installed, VMC now consistently crashes the second time we click on "play" on an HD recordings.  VMC "gracefully" restarts automatically and our HD recordings do play 100% of the time after a VMC restart.  Unfortunately if we stop watching any show and then try to watch an HD recording, it will always crash.  Whatever the bug causing the crash, it seems to have been made much worse after the installation of this update.

I'm going to reformat and reinstall Vista in a couple of days to "hopefully" get around all of these crashes (I did a test fresh Vista install on a second partition and it is rock solid).

Is there any reason to consider installing KB950126 with the fresh install?  Do these bugs "only" show up on systems that have been patched consistently since freshly installing Vista?  In other words do these bugs not appear if I do a fresh install and let Windows Update auto-update everything, including KB950126?

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STB w/R5000HD USB I/O, Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4, Quad Q6600, 4.0 GB RAM, ATI HD 3870 512MB, Ultra XVS 600W PSU, 3x SATA 500GB, 2x SATA 300GB, LG GGC-H20L, PVR-250, Toshiba 51H83 (51" HDTV), Yamaha RX-V2400 Amp, 5x Energy Speakers, SVS Sub, Harmony 880 Remote

TimSchreck-MS:

This should not be related to the CGMS-A resolution. Agree that initial assesment indicates this was unintended consequence of the alt-tab switch.

Tim,

Per my previous post, I am planning to perform a fresh Vista installation in a couple of days to resolve the various issues our primary Media Center is experiencing...

Since the bugs introduced with KB950126 significantly affect our enjoyment of VMC I want to ensure the fresh install doesn't suffer from them and I have a few questions:

1. Would you recommend I install Vista with auto-updates turned off and then manually disable KB950126 using Windows Update before turning back on auto-update and letting it update?
2. Will Windows Update automatically install all of the other VMC updates at this point or will I need to manually download and install the other updates individually?  If I need to manually update VMC, which updates do I need to download and install?
3. Once an update is released by Microsoft that resolves the problems with KB950126, will Windows Update at that point automatically install future updates or will they require me to install KB950126 as a prerequisite?

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STB w/R5000HD USB I/O, Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4, Quad Q6600, 4.0 GB RAM, ATI HD 3870 512MB, Ultra XVS 600W PSU, 3x SATA 500GB, 2x SATA 300GB, LG GGC-H20L, PVR-250, Toshiba 51H83 (51" HDTV), Yamaha RX-V2400 Amp, 5x Energy Speakers, SVS Sub, Harmony 880 Remote

Hi HT Slider -

KB950126 can be problematic for some people depending on how they use Windows Media Center.  If the issue introduced in KB950126 is problematic, my suggestion would be to just uninstall KB950126 - I don't think a clean install is necessary. 

If you were planning on doing a clean install anyway, then there are several options:

1.  Your option #1 (disable auto-updates, manually disable KB950126, re-enable auto-updates) is viable.  If you go this route, you will need to manually install the previous Windows Media Center Cumulative Update (KB947172) from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=537901fc-b333-4a9c-b6fb-5e5af6a1f687&DisplayLang=en.  KB950126 supersedes KB947172 and I WU will not offer KB947172.

2. Leave auto-update enabled.  WU will install KB950126. You can then just uninstall it and mark it on WU as hidden.  After the uninstall, I would install KB947172.

We've identified the issue with KB950126 and are testing a fix.  The plan is to include this fix in the next Windows Media Center Cumulative Update.  It's too early in the process to indicate a date when this will be available, but we are working hard to get this out as soon as possible.

Tim Schreck
Media Center SE

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

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Tim Schreck
Media Center SE

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

TimSchreck-MS:

Hi HT Slider -

KB950126 can be problematic for some people depending on how they use Windows Media Center.  If the issue introduced in KB950126 is problematic, my suggestion would be to just uninstall KB950126 - I don't think a clean install is necessary. 

....

Thank you for the quick reply.

Last night I uninstalled KB950126 and almost all of the problems resolved right away.

Unfortunately our new Media Center system still "crashes and auto-restarts Media Center" roughly once out of every 3-10 times we click "play", "resume", or "restart" with HD content and roughly once out of every ~20 times we do this with SD content.  It has been doing this for roughly a year.

I've been working with Ian Kennedy to try to resolve the issue and after several months of trying different things we are at the point where a fresh install seems the only option.

The issue is a strange one since only our main Media Center crashes (we have 5 Media Center PCs that don't crash with the same content) and only Media Center itself crashes.  Absolutely everything else on this system works flawlessly, including PowerDVD Ultra and video games such as Crysis, etc.

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STB w/R5000HD USB I/O, Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4, Quad Q6600, 4.0 GB RAM, ATI HD 3870 512MB, Ultra XVS 600W PSU, 3x SATA 500GB, 2x SATA 300GB, LG GGC-H20L, PVR-250, Toshiba 51H83 (51" HDTV), Yamaha RX-V2400 Amp, 5x Energy Speakers, SVS Sub, Harmony 880 Remote

Finally....someone who is experiencing the same problems I have since installing the update...only I have it worse.  My Vista Media Center crashes every time I click on a task.  The program will open, but as soon as you click something a message comes up saying "An unknown problem has caused Media Center to close."  This happens every time.  I have not gotten MC to work at all since the update.
i wonder if anyone else has had this problem, and would really like to know how to fix it.  Thanks.

AC

AlanLC:

Finally....someone who is experiencing the same problems I have since installing the update...only I have it worse.  My Vista Media Center crashes every time I click on a task.  The program will open, but as soon as you click something a message comes up saying "An unknown problem has caused Media Center to close."  This happens every time.  I have not gotten MC to work at all since the update.
i wonder if anyone else has had this problem, and would really like to know how to fix it.  Thanks.

AC

By uninstalling the update our system went 100% back to its previous state.  With the update it was always crashing, even with SD content.  Without the update it crashes once in a while and only with HD content (as it has since last November/December).

Try uninstalling KB950126.  If that doesn't work and after running Vista's memory test, I recommend creating a second Vista boot partition (shrink down the existing install if necessary by ~30GB and use that) and confirm for certain if it is a hardware problem (mine is definitely a problem with Media Center, not a hardware problem).   At that point your best bet is probably to reinstall Vista fresh (of course if there IS a hardware problem, the solution is to fix it).

I'm still planning to reinstall Vista and I'm going to start working on the system some more today (backing everything up, moving things around and off the boot drive, etc.).

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STB w/R5000HD USB I/O, Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4, Quad Q6600, 4.0 GB RAM, ATI HD 3870 512MB, Ultra XVS 600W PSU, 3x SATA 500GB, 2x SATA 300GB, LG GGC-H20L, PVR-250, Toshiba 51H83 (51" HDTV), Yamaha RX-V2400 Amp, 5x Energy Speakers, SVS Sub, Harmony 880 Remote

Same issues here as well... unistalling 950126 solved the issue here.

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My VMC setup:
(2) Xbox360s
System 1 -
Dell XPS410 (2.6Ghz C2D, 2GB Ram,Nvidia 8600GT, Blu-ray internal, HD-DVD external (X360 drive), (2) Vboxx DTA150s (OTA HD), 1 HVR-1150 (OTA HD) and Dish Network

We've not seen the crashing behavior inhouse.  Can you provide additional detail - system configuration (processor, memory, video card, video driver version, etc) and take a look in Event Viewer and see if you can identify any event logs associated with this crash?  This would likely be under Windows Logs\System or under Application and Services Logs\Media Center and be listed as red exclamatin mark - Error.

Thanks!

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Tim Schreck
Media Center SE

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

TimSchreck-MS:

We've not seen the crashing behavior inhouse.  Can you provide additional detail - system configuration (processor, memory, video card, video driver version, etc) and take a look in Event Viewer and see if you can identify any event logs associated with this crash?  This would likely be under Windows Logs\System or under Application and Services Logs\Media Center and be listed as red exclamatin mark - Error.

Thanks!

My system details are included in my signature below.  There are tons of crashes in the event viewer and tons in Problem Reports and Solutions that have been sent to Microsoft (literally there are now close to 1000 Media Center crash reports - all have been submitted to Microsoft).

Our Media Center is heavily used by our entire family for all of our TV viewing.  The way Media Center crashes it automatically restarts every time and after a crash it always does what it is supposed to do right away (watch TV, etc.).  The problem is when we then select another show to watch, it often crashes (always when the patch is installed and "just" regularly with it not installed).  The system never blue screens and is 100% rock solid stable for every single application - except Media Center.

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STB w/R5000HD USB I/O, Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4, Quad Q6600, 4.0 GB RAM, ATI HD 3870 512MB, Ultra XVS 600W PSU, 3x SATA 500GB, 2x SATA 300GB, LG GGC-H20L, PVR-250, Toshiba 51H83 (51" HDTV), Yamaha RX-V2400 Amp, 5x Energy Speakers, SVS Sub, Harmony 880 Remote

Tim -

About 3/4 of my crashes could be traced to guide issues.

The guide has no program data for a channel, and yet the show is still listed in the epg xml.

For example... I lose Discovery and I try to record Deadliest Catch... since the Channel Guide and the xml don't jive it CTDs.

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My VMC setup:
(2) Xbox360s
System 1 -
Dell XPS410 (2.6Ghz C2D, 2GB Ram,Nvidia 8600GT, Blu-ray internal, HD-DVD external (X360 drive), (2) Vboxx DTA150s (OTA HD), 1 HVR-1150 (OTA HD) and Dish Network

Thanks for the responses back, but need your help to help me narrow this down.  If reports were sent, then maybe an easier place to look to get the info that would be helpful for me is under Control Panel, System and Maintenance, Problem Reports and Solutions, View Problem History.

Under Problem History, see if there's a section for Media Center.  If so, see if there is problem described as stopped working or app crash.  Open one of these up and you should see something similar to what's below.  It'd be great if you could do this immediately after a crash, so can correlate the problem report date/time with the crash.

This will give the info I need to find the exact problem reports submitted for these.

Description
Stopped working

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: CLR20r3
Problem Signature 01: <some file name>
Problem Signature 02: 6.0.6000.16386
Problem Signature 03: 4549c25b
Problem Signature 04: <some file name>
Problem Signature 05: 6.0.6000.0
Problem Signature 06: 4549bcf8
Problem Signature 07: 32f
Problem Signature 08: 0
Problem Signature 09: <description of problem>
OS Version: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033

Extra information about the problem
Bucket ID: <numeric value for issue bucket>

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Tim Schreck
Media Center SE

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.