Media Centre failing ... HELP!

[MazzaTT]

Hi, can anyone help me?
My Sony Media Centre is having trouble. It states that it is recording multiple programmes at once, and repeatedly comes up with the message:

"The Guide has been updated and a new recording conflict exists. You need to manually resolve the conflicts on teh Scheduled page in Recorded TV."

However when I go into the schedule there are no conflicts at all. When it does record it often does so only for a few minutes instead of an hour (or whatever length the programme is), then will record another few minutes of the same programme again. I have checked the there is ample space for recording so not that the hard drive is full.

I also keep getting the message:
"A critical Windows Media Center process has failed. Please restart the computer and try again. It the problem persists, contact your hardware manufacturer."

Can anyone help? I bought the computer in Nov 2007 so warranty no longer applies (I don't think.)!

M.

[ChalkyWhite71]

Hi Mazza, and welcome to ClubVaio UK!

Also, welcome to the world of your living room being run by Windows! Not always a joy.

You don't mention XP or Vista, i'll assume XP. It would be great if you can edit your profile on here, and enter your machine's specs in your signature. That way each new question asked, shows us all what machine/OS you are running.

First tip i have is to remove any unnecessary software, and make your living room machine just one for recording TV reliably, i.e. no Skype, games, Google Earth, Picassa, etc. That way you can discount problems caused by rogue DLLs/services. I even removed Channel4 on Demand and Iplayer downloader to solve some of my issues. There is a sticky article at the top of this forum showing what you can safely remove from an XL201.

There is also a tool called MCE Reset which will take your EPG and other settings back to default, and (depending on what options you choose) let you setup MCE from scratch again.

Another issue i find is that if i browse the EPG whilst it's downloading a new one, the guide can quite often crash/corrupt.

Hope this helps? Cheers, Tony