Hi Cowboy,

Also many thanks from me for your excellent and thorough investigation. I have written a small tool around this which will hopefully assist others. See a small description below. Thanks again!

riesm.

How does it work?

1. Download the EPG_ChangeDownloadTime.zip and extract it to your desktop
    
2. Double-click the file EPG_ChangeDownloadTime.exe
   
    
3.  The main screen will start and looks like this:
   
    
4. In the left top corner you will notice the last time the guide was downloaded
5. Now set the preferred time by changing the hour and minute indicator and click "Set"
6. A message box will show that the new time was set. It also indicates that you need to restart the computer to take the new settings into effect!
7. Quit the application and then restart the computer.

Check if it worked

To check the change (after you have restarted the computer), you can start up the event viewer (Click Start / Run... and enter "eventvwr" and click OK). In the Application Log you will find an entry from the "Media Center Scheduler", double-clicking that entry will show you the time the next download will occur:

Why do I need to restart?

The media center scheduler is an active process and will only read the new download time from the registry when it starts up. The easiest way to do so, is by restarting the system. The other way (expert users only) is to kill the "ehSched.exe" process and start Media Center (starting MCE will restart ehSched.exe as well).

Thanks To

Many thanks go to Cowboy for his excellent article on guide download time published at the greenbutton website at http://www.thegreenbutton.com/community/shwmessage.aspx?forumid=42&messageid=80831. I have written this small tool to accommodate people who don't want to mess with the registry.