gquiring:I have been staring at the error now for the past few days. I just received this Xbox this week. I have a Vista 32 with SP1 loaded. No firewall or Norton/McAfee install ever. I only use AVG freebie. Xbox Live works fine. I have found my exact issues on several forums and no one has a fix.
I get the error message:
The Xbox 360 was unable to prepare a connection to the Windows Vista Media Center- based PC Restart your Xbox 360 and try again
Steps to re-create my problem:
1 On the Xbox 360, choose the "Media Center" button
2 Write down the "setup key" given by the Xbox 360
3 On the PC, go to tools, setup, extenders and add extender
4 Enter the "setup key" from the Xbox 360
5 At this time, the Xbox 360 changes screens to indicate it's
communicating with the PC. The "Media Center Extender" device driver
successfully installs.
6 When the media center PC gets to the last step of the set-up process, "Connecting to Extender" the XBox outputs the error "The Xbox 360 was unable to prepare a connection to the Windows Vista Media Center- based PC. Restart your Xbox 360 and try again".
7 Several minutes later the PC outputs the error: "Restart the computer and the XBox"
8 The Computer shows the xbox as a "ready to use" extender in media
center
Make sure you are connected to the Internet during the setup process
Make sure you don't use a Domain account on the PC
Remove any fingerprint s/w you may have on your PC (if any)
Make sure you have Vista SP1