Look back a few pages and try what is suggested in post 8497 https://forums.mydigitallife.net/th...ible-alternatives.61061/page-425#post-1389238
Yeah, my 8.8.1 1709 installation with disable full screen optimizations was working fine all last week till it just froze mid playback this morning. Froze the whole machine in fact. Just copying existing ehome folder to Program Files didn't get it, had to remove WMC, reboot, reinstall, restore settings and then copy. Interesting thing was that the compatibility disable full screen optimizations bit was already set (I'd shift-deleted the previous copy) so that's a little curious. I would note that my full screen lockup seems to have been precipitated by a Google Earth Pro update because there was a new icon on my desktop so maybe that triggered sdbinst. Appears to be working again (crosses fingers, knocks on wood)... Nope, after the machine slept and woke up it lost full screen functionality again. Good thing an enormous window is almost as good as full screen. What's more you can switch out to other tasks in between plays without having to pause and minimize WMC, I think I like it. And I can see the clock all the time. Rationalization I know...
Here's a way to run Windows Media Center, in full screen, on Windows 10 version 1709! It's easy to give up hope after all the negative posts about there being no workarounds, but it's worth it to kept trying because WMC is by far the best DVR option. Unfortunately due to the site's rules bs posting rules, new posters can't post links, so this is going to be harder than it has to be. (Too bad they are control freaks here, in multiple ways.) In order to make this as easy as possible, despite being held back by site masters here, here is a list of easy steps to follow: 1) Google "Download the 64 bit v8.8.1 Windows 10 Media Center installer". 2) Only one site comes up from that search. Click on that site and look under step 1 of the instructions for "Download the 64 bit v8.8.1 Windows 10 Media Center installer". 3) Download and unzip the files. 4) In the zip file, run Uninstaller.cmd just to clean things up. 5) Run _TestRights.cmd as administrator (you already know this, but new people won't) . 6) Run InstallerBLUE.cmd (or maybe InstallerGREEN.cmd but IDK as I didn't try it) 7) You should be good to go. If you can't find the shortcut, just use Windows Search to find WMC and drag the shortcut to your desktop. My pc did have a system crash after exiting once, so it's still not perfect.
Just wait. We're all successful initially and pretty much everyone here understands how to download and install 8.8.1 (there are links to it after all in the banner page for this thread). However after a short interval you'll find WMC under 1709 freezes in full screen mode. So you'll apply the Disable fullscreen optimizations fix. And it might work for a bit. And then it won't, maybe it takes a couple of hours, maybe a week. After that Windows has the MO on eshell.exe and it's not going stop interfering with it. So you'll set the taskbar to auto hide and you'll run WMC in windowed mode and make it's window as big as you can (you can push it's title bar above the screen so you only loose a few pixels of screen real estate versus true fullscreen) and aside from having to hide the cursor some place and push the title bar above the screen every time you run WMC it'll work pretty damn well. Well enough that I'm not personally about to install an earlier version of the OS which is pretty much the only other option at this stage.
hello, I have 8.8.1 I can't make recording work. I see recordings in Temp, but I don't see any new recordings in RecordedTV folder Scheduled recording isn't working, nothing wake up Win10 What I'm missing? What can I check? thanks
Looking back on some of threads, it's not clear everyone is experiencing the same thing. Looking here, 8.8.1 seems to work on a clean install as long as "WMP Tags Plus 2.6" installed, which didn't install because I don't know what it is: Some else said the icon stopped working, which I can confirm, but I had 2 shortcuts created, and the one I wasn't using still works (so i copied it again). Another user says the the green button on an IR remote no longer works, and I can confirm that. Other people are saying the guide is no longer downloading, which might be true, but on my fresh install the guide is somehow current. And I can confirm the green icon is missing the from the notification icon. I think Microsoft is trying harder to kill WMC, claiming no one uses it, which they know isn't true by now, which sucks worse than normal because it's great easy to use software. Microsoft is looking like it's gonna win, by making us lose.
Windows 10 Pro 15063，Running media center, error prompt: software strategy to prevent it from running.How to solve?
Suggestion for....EhTray and FullScreen problems. Has anyone tried? "Disable Smart Screen Filter" 1) Disable SmartScreen 2) Run WMC 3) UN CHECK always ask
You sure that's not because the file needs to be unblocked in the properties of the file? Interesting, I use Windows Enterprise and there's no Smart screen settings in the System and Security however when I go and dig it out of the Defender Security panel where it appears to have been moved in the Creator's Update changing it's setting doesn't affect WMC full screen, as soon as I click the maximize button it freezes till you alt tab away from it and make it a regular window again. There's no Security Warning dialog presented. I suspect the full screen issue might be a long standing issue that's only just come to light with recent tweaks in the 1709 release because using WMC in windowed mode I'm not noticing the occasional hitches in the user interface I used to see fairly frequently. I used to attribute them to the various zombie WMC processes you can wind up with but (a) I haven't seen any of them recently and (b) certainly no hitches after watching something and then deleting the recording.
Could be.... Thanks for the suggestion of unblocking. I just threw this Smart Screen thing out there for you guys. Interesting that Smart Screen settings have been assigned to Defender. I would imagine that Defender has control of the Firewall....Could Firewall be the source of the Freeze? It appears that Smart Screen checks with M$ for approval to run EhTray, and when it gets no approval it comes back to me to hit the override. Slightly different set of messages when this box is disconnected from the internet. A software named Fiddler would tell you what is going on with Smart Screen's request to M$.
BTW - I had to disable Defender runtime scan and Smart Screen as it blocks WMC and guide updates I need to figure out what to add as exceptions to Defender I'm on last updated Win10 Pro 1709+
One has a background that's largely blue, the other green. The green came about with win 8 and it's tough on my eyes, was very glad when T-S came up with the option to restore the blue one.
Hmm, when you downloaded the 8.8.1 install package did you unblock it before anything else? I admit the 8.8.1 installer I use was downloaded eons ago and I did have to unblock it (right click, properties, general tab and choose Unblock if it's there under Advanced Attributes) and it could now be the case that Defender absolutely won't trust it but it seems more likely you guys are missing this unblocking step than the installer package now being regarded as malicious. I'd calculate a checksum of mine but I only have the unpacked version of it these days...
Good idea but I'm pretty sure it's not a blocking issue mucking up the full screen as an alt-tab doesn't reveal any Defender/Smart Screen warnings and indeed once it's windowed everything is golden. Further you can switch back to full screen and have it freeze (if you do it during playback it actually continues but you can't see it) and alt=tab out and back and forth any number of times between a correctly rendered window and a frozen full screen. It's possible patrikp's solution of copying the binaries out of the Windows folder might work with a fresh OS install or it's possible renaming eshell.exe (note, not ehtray) to throw Windows' database of compatibility off the scent might work but at the stage I'm happy with windowed mode (the machine is also my development system so purging it's OS isn't a task that's lightly undertaken).
Usually these sorts of problems are that the installer (InstallerBLUE/GREEN.cmd) wasn't run from the command window that the TestRights script opens for you (ie in that command window type InstallerBLUE.cmd or just I TAB that will autocomplete it, one used to have to CD to the installer directory but latest installers seem to be free of this constraint). This is no ordinary window, instead it's running with super user (or root) permissions to modify the OS beyond the usual admin privilege that's needed to install programs and without it a bunch of things like installing services to record will not have the right permissions. Same thing goes for EPG problems, pretty sure the day I realized how to run the installer properly was the day my EPG problems went away. Of course, since then I've saved the settings from that install and I always run the installer the proper way so I can't vouch for it but that's my distinct impression.
thanks for the reply. I managed recording working, not I got into another strange issue TV Guide downloads Ok, but I can't do search to find anything - it shows in yellow that there are no indexes yet and I need to wait till indexes are built but, it was almost a day after TV Guide was downloaded for the next 2 weeks and I asked for more updates, but no indexes how I can fix this issue? tnx
Decoder Error [FIXED] Hi, I've been battling with the Decoder Error "The video decoder is not working, is not installed, or is not supported. Try installing the codec or restarting your computer. For more information about codecs, see Windows Help." for the last couple of days and have finally solved it. The thing that bugged me was I knew that despite the error, I had all the correct Codecs because literally 2 nights ago I was watching Live TV and also playing back recorded TV as per normal. My PC had rebooted since then and some Windows Updates had been installed so I figured it had broken my WMC installation somehow. My setup is Windows 10 Pro Version 10.0.16299 Build 16299 WMC_6.3.9600.16384_x64_v12 Audio Codecs Video Codecs So far so good. But why didn't WMC work? Initially WMC wouldn't even start. So after multiple attempts at Uninstalling Reinstalling and many reboots later I got WMC starting but it then would display the Decoder Error when trying to watch live TV or playing a recorded wtv file (AVI was fine. Windows Media Player was also fine with wtv files). I tried many of the common suggestions around audio (2 channel vs 5.1) and it "might not be the codecs..." line of checking. Nothing worked. Finally I decided to run SysInternals Process Monitor and started capturing all events for Process Name = ehshell.exe while reproducing the error in WMC. After reproducing the error I paused capturing and started to trawl through 1600 events looking for a needle in a haystack . Starting at the bottom and moving up the list of events these highlighted entries caught my eye! In particular the 1st two regarding not finding the Registry Key for PreferredMPEG2VideoDecoderCLSID (the third one told me I was in the right area since that's the wtv file I was trying to play in WMC). Sure enough, when I went to that location in my registry here's what it looked like No wonder WMC was displaying an error. The place it was looking to figure out which decoder to use was empty! Thankfully I had another machine that had an install of WMC on it so I checked its registry to see what it contained for that key and it looked like this Well that looks promising! So I exported that key from the other machine and imported it to my machine and VOILA! It FIXED it! WMC is back to playing live TV and recorded programs. I've uploaded the registry key as a text file to save transposing it from a screenshot . Hopefully it saves others with the same problem some time in fixing their Decoder Error too
Sounds like you've got some serious machine stability issues. I'd be running a disk check and memory test because TBOMK that's not one of the usual sort of WMC issues that arise. Once it's got it's EPG data it might take a few minutes to update it's indexes, worst case on my machine I have visit the guide twice because the new days of data aren't displayed. I guess if your underlying machine is stable you might be looking at an EPG database corruption. I'd be a little leery of just blowing it away wholesale because I suspect you can nuke your EPG configuration data as well and if you've just got that working you don't want to smoke that. Posts I was reading some time ago (probably on other sites) detail the contents of the C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\eHome directory so you might want to Google that and see if you can find instructions on preserving the setup data but blowing away the corrupted database files. The posts will be old as this is something that predates all the win10 weirdness.