I have a problem with my Vista (U) Media Center.

Within a short time of Media Centre opening I receive an error that says "A critical Windows Media Center process has failed. Please restart the computer and try again."

I have tried this and it still happens. The next step offered by this error message is to contact my hardware vendor but they are HP and their software support is next to terrible since they outsourced. They will look at this and want me to ship my PC to them so they can reinstall  a base XP media centre on it. (long story - but in short despite providing an upgrade to Vista HP this is the only support option they offer even though I have a support upgrade CarePak).

I have checked the application event logs. There are two errors on startup relating to (c:\Windows\system32\endmgmt.dll and DfsrPerf.dll) but I don't think they are related. I have run a check disk and also located the files and all seems okay not sure why they are erroring though.

When I go into Recorded TV, there is a show from Thursday evening that is showing as currently recording. (At time of writing it is Saturday). I have tried stopping the recording using the GUI. I have tried restarting and deleting the output file. I have also recovered Vista to a point before the show started.

This may have been caused by my forcibly shutting the PC down whilst it was recording this show on Thursday evening after a couple of drinks. (Okay I am a stupid user and should know better)

Is the fact the show is still recording likely to be a symtom of another issue or the problem in itself?

The Problem Reports is showing tha thte Windows Media Center Host Module stopped working at the same time as I shut down on Thursday. It is point to ehrec.exe with a NullReferenceException.E44FC2D3. I cannot locate the files on my pc it says will help describe the problem. (Version.txt, memory.hdmp and minidump.ndmp).

All I can offer I am afraid is a promise not to do it again. Any help or guidance would be appreciated.

Thanks

Rob

Did you try deleting everything from your Recorded TV folder?

I've been getting the same problem for the past fews, maybe a week. I also cannot get guide updates and Windows Udate is boken with an error code 80080005.

I googled the error code and didn't find anything helpful. I am in the process of reformatting and starting over as I post this from my Mac.

I didn't try deleting everything; just the offending show that was being recorded. This did not stop the icon and message in Recorded TV.

Since posting I have tried recovering the c:\windows\ehome files (which had no effect).

Under pressure I have recovered the C: from a backup taken just under a week ago. I store my Recorded TV files on another drive and I did not restore these; I just left that drive as it is. The system has come back and the problem has gone away.

The problem has been fixed by restoring C: from a Home Server Backup.

 

My solution worked too, eventually. After the reinstall Windows update worked fine. I had to try 6 or 8 times before I got guide info to download but eventually it worked. So far so good. Hopefully I get another 7 or 8 months before things corrode and seize up again.

I can't seem to find a thread on here that matches my problem as closely as this one, so I'll try posting here to see if anyone has suggestions.  A couple months ago, I started getting the error described above (a critical windows media center process has failed...) almost every time I would try to watch live TV.  This seemed to start happening after a media center-related update was installed, but I'm not quite sure of that.  Shortly thereafter, I also started getting an error that says "TV signal not available" when I tried to watch live cable TV.  This new error happens more frequenly than the other one, and ever since I installed Service Pack 1, it happens all the time.  The only way that I am able to watch live cable TV is to record the program first-- if I select a program from the guide, it gives me one of those two errors.  If I record I program from the guide, I can immediately click on it and watch it as normal.  If it helps any, my PC has two ATI Theatre 650 PCI cards and two external USB Digital Cable Tuners with CableCards installed.  Also, I am able to select over-the-air HD channels with no problems.  The issue only occurs when I try to use the external Digital Cable Tuners.  Before I started receiving these errors, all four tuners worked flawlessly for about 8 months.  Any ideas?

I had SP1 installed when the problems began but I installed the day it was "accidentally" leaked via Windows Update. That was in late February, I believe, and the system ran fine after that for a couple of months. I suppose it could have something to do with a more recent update that only gets installed if you have SP1 but that is barely speculation.

A more likely possibility is poor judgement on my part; I tried a beta version of F-Secure 2009 and I'm fairly sure things started to go wonky shortly after I un-installed it.