Aaron Stebner's WebLog

Thoughts about setup and deployment issues, WiX, XNA, the .NET Framework and Visual Studio

Common Tasks
Search
News

All postings are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. Additionally, views expressed herein are my own and not those of my employer, Microsoft.

About this blog...
My Troubleshooting Guides
WiX Developer Blogs
Other Blogs I Read
My Useful Tools
Other Deployment Blogs
Tags
Recent Posts
Archives
Archives

Resolving Tuner Not Found errors in Update Rollup 2 for Media Center 2005

MSDN Blogs > Aaron Stebner's WebLog > Resolving Tuner Not Found errors in Update Rollup 2 for Media Center 2005

Resolving Tuner Not Found errors in Update Rollup 2 for Media Center 2005

27 Dec 2005 11:57 PM
  • Comments 66

I have heard from some folks who have been encountering Tuner Not Found error messages when trying to view live TV in Media Center 2005 after installing Update Rollup 2.  Many of these errors have been caused by the .NET Framework versioning issue that I previously described in this blog post.  However, recently I have seen this error on systems that had no error messages listed in their setup log files.  Fortunately, I got a chance to look at one of these systems because we found a repro machine that belonged to a Microsoft employee and they brought the system in for us to take a look at in our lab.

On the system I looked at, the Media Center receiver and scheduler services (named ehRecvr and ehSched) were installed and registered, but were in a stopped state.  I could verify by running sc query ehrecvr and sc query ehsched that this was the case.  However, when I tried to manually start these services by running sc start ehrecvr or sc start ehsched, they each failed with an error message and an error code stating that a class was not registered.

I used the following steps to fix these services, and once I did this, live TV started working again in Media Center 2005 with Update Rollup 2.  Note that before running these steps, I verified by looking at the setup log files that setup ran correctly and that the setup error described here was not present:

  1. Click on the Start menu, choose Run and type cmd
  2. Run the command regsvr32.exe atl.dll
  3. Run the command %windir%\ehome\ehrecvr.exe /unregServer
  4. Run the command %windir%\ehome\ehsched.exe /unregServer
  5. Run the command %windir%\ehome\ehrecvr.exe /service
  6. Run the command %windir%\ehome\ehsched.exe /service

Note that the command line parameters to unregister and re-register are case sensitive, so you must spell it /unregServer with a capital S and /service all in lower case.

If the above steps do not help, I have also seen the following steps work in some cases to fix Tuner Not Found error messages in Media Center 2005:

  • Update your video card and tuner drivers from the websites for your hardware manufacturers
  • Launch Media Center, go to Settings | TV and try to re-run the TV setup wizard
  • Use the MceRepair tool created by Peter Rosser to forcibly re-register all Media Center binaries (note that this tool does things that standard setup does not do, so please use it with caution)

 

Comments
  • Guylain Tremblay
    29 Dec 2005 10:33 PM
    I've tried every patch I saw on this web site, and others like ones appearing on Peter Rosser web site(MCERpair). I've made a lot of researchs on the web. I've uninstalled, reinstalled RU2, ans so on...
    I've always the same problem: "The Media Center Receiver Service service terminated unexpectedly...".
    So Tv functionnality is unavailabele since october 20th (TV recording and viewing). I've to disale receiver service to operate my PC, as this error happens every 10 seconds.
    Could someone make something to help me? I've a HP Media Center with MCE 2004 upgraded to MCE 2005 from HP with the official DVD. All Microsoft patches are applied, including reinstalled FrameWork 1,1.
    I just don't know how to resove this issue, except to erase my disk ans reinstall MCE 2004, MCE 2005 upgrade, and apply all Microsoft and HP patches; a lot of job indeed!
  • Guylain tremblay
    30 Dec 2005 9:02 AM
    Hi again,
    Here is the state of ehrecvr service after error:
    SERVICE_NAME: ehrecvr
    TYPE : 10 WIN32_OWN_PROCESS
    STATE : 1 STOPPED
    (NOT_STOPPABLE,NOT_PAUSABLE,IGNORES_SHUTDOWN)
    WIN32_EXIT_CODE : 1067 (0x42b)
    SERVICE_EXIT_CODE : 0 (0x0)
    CHECKPOINT : 0x0
    WAIT_HINT : 0x0
  • Procyon
    30 Dec 2005 8:45 PM
    Same here... i'm going crazy... and to be honest i'm kind of giving up on Microsoft...
  • Aaron Stebner
    31 Dec 2005 1:05 AM
    Hi Guylain and Procyon - I am not sure from your comments - have you tried to use the steps listed in this blog post to unregister and re-register the Media Center services? If you have and that did not help, can you please gather the log files listed at http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2005/10/16/481689.aspx and send them to me at aaronste@microsoft.com so I can take a look and try to help further?

  • quietus
    5 Jan 2006 3:42 AM
    copied from a post by Peter Rosser
    at www.thegreenbutton.com
    here
    http://www.thegreenbutton.com/community/shwmessage.aspx?ForumID=41&MessageID=138854&TopicPage=4


    We do have a fix for this, but for legal reasons I'm not allowed to give it out to non-NDA people. I tried to see what needs to happen to get individuals on NDA, but since it requires GM-level approval and signature (that is, someone 4-5 levels higher than me) for each one, I was told it was not possible outside the normal beta and partner programs. I sincerely apologize for the delay; since there is a workaround (use one tuner, or rollback), and it wasn't security- or crash-related, the bug does not qualify for a "critical" hotfix, so it will go out with the next QFE release, scheduled for early CY06 Q1 (the date is not public yet).

    I want to reiterate that the problem is actually caused by the driver, and not by MCE. The fix was to do some streaming analysis and detect when the tuner gave us bogus timestamps for caption samples, and reset them to a dynamic baseline. Presentation timestamps (PTS) are a time index set for every video, audio, and caption sample that specifies when, in relation to the content's "start time", the sample should be rendered to its output device. So if a PTS is set to 0:15.010, and the current time index is 0:11.140, it will be held in the buffer another 4 seconds or so, then sent on to be rendered. This is done because samples can be encoded out-of-order to improve efficiency (bi-directional encoding). The problem here is that the tuner driver interleaves (PTS) from one tuner and then the other onto the stream (which is BAD), which causes those samples that got a bogus PTS value way in the future to be held in the buffer until the PTS becomes "current". Since the buffer holds about 15-20 seconds of video, and is shared among video, audio and captions, it quickly fills with caption samples, and once full, all samples are dropped until the samples can be delivered from the buffer.

    I know nobody cares whose fault the problem is, as long as it's fixed, but the geek in me just had to explain it. Call it OCD. [Unsure]

    Peter Rosser
  • anonymous
    7 Jan 2006 1:06 PM
    I fixed my "media center receiver service" error by installing the latest Hauppauge driver, actually the beta version.
  • Procyon
    28 Jan 2006 5:52 PM
    Well, it didn't do anything to me... i guess i tried out everything... maibe waiting for someting else, i read somewere that the problem is somehow from the Thoshiba Tuner drivers... but it know very little about it...
  • Guylain Tremblay
    2 Feb 2006 5:31 PM
    Hi Aaron,
    Just read your answer on december 31th!
    I'll send you the logs.
    Additionnal infos: I suspected compatibility with Hauppauge drivers and WinDVD decoder, so I installed latest drivers from Hauppauge and purchased WinDVD Recorder. WinDVD recorder works perfectly, as well as the capture utility of Hauppauge. The DVD decoder is MCE and Media player 10 compatible, according to Microsoft MCE diags. But I see Pinnacle decoder in red in diags. WinDVD decoder is selected as the preferred decoder.
  • Isabdo
    3 Feb 2006 8:43 AM
    Hi, I just baught a Toshiba Qosmio G20 and as per Procyon's note, I assume that "ou" issue won't be easy to solve!
    But what is really stange, is that I re-installed my system using the repair DVD provided with the computer and I tried to make the tuner TV working. The big surprise is that it was working fine, but as soon as I shutted down and restarted
    the computer, nothing works anymore!
    Which, for my point of view, is a good thing. It means that it can work! (at least once...)
  • Isabdo
    3 Feb 2006 9:34 AM
    I'm already back as I browsed the net to get different points of view.
    For some persons, it seems that there is a conflict between WinDVD and MCE as both of them are using the same service (MC Reciever).
    And for some other, it is due to the fact that a windows update corrupts the tuner tv driver.
    But I'm gonna work on this tonight... I'll let you know as soon as I have good news!
  • 14 Feb 2006 3:42 PM
    Recently I've purchaced a Dell Dimension XPS 400.
    It has a nVidea G-Force 6800
    and an ATI-TV Tuner Card.

    I am expiriencing a conflict when AIM runs with Media Center.

    Scenerio #1: I boot my computer Load AIM --> Cannot Get TV TUNER TO WORK, Get this message:
    [URL=http://img111.imageshack.us/my.php?image=10ft.jpg][IMG]http://img111.imageshack.us/img111/1425/10ft.th.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

    I Used to get a "TV Tuner Is Unavalible" mesg. until i used "http://blogs.msdn.com/peterrosser/archive/2005/10/20/482974.aspx" That UTILITY (I guess I made things worse)

    Scenerio #2: I boot my computer, LOAD Media Center and turn on live tv--> then boot AIM  -- EVERYTHING WORKS GREAT

    However, if I then close Media Center, the TV Tuner will not work.

    Scenerio #3: I boot my computer and Load media center and NEVER load AIM, EVerything Works Perfect

    Scenerio #4: Boot Computer Load AIM -- NEVER load media center, everything is perfect



    PLEASE HELP ME!!!



  • 15 Feb 2006 3:56 PM
    Hi Lawrence - I'm afraid I haven't heard of this issue before, so I'm not sure what to suggest to try to help solve this.  In scenario 1, can you look and see if a file named %windir%\ehome\ehshell.crash is created and paste the contents here if so?  You may want to take a look at the Media Center forums/newsgroups and see if any other folks have run into similar issues with AIM interactions with Media Center and see if there are any helpful suggestions there.

    Sorry I'm not able to be more helpful here.
  • 16 Feb 2006 9:32 PM
    Well, I do not get this error anymore, "http://img111.imageshack.us/my.php?image=10ft.jpg" I fixed that, however, I still get the TV TUNER IS NOT AVALIBLE. It seems to be a common issue with dell. I dont know what to do :(
  • 17 Feb 2006 10:45 AM
    I have the problem tuner not found, the pc had mce 2005 preinstalled and I updated all the updates including rollup 2. The pc did not have a tuner card installed prior updates. I installed the pci-e theater 550pro and after setup the card worked great,but after shutdown and restarting I get tuner not found and have to go through the setup process to get it to work again,I have noticed once working I noticed blk box with stopped,then live tv works again.  I would like to try sc query ehrecvr , but being a newbie not sure how to do this,viewing  setup log files etc. any help would be appreciated
  • 17 Feb 2006 9:29 PM
    Hi MsgHockey and DartChucker - You might want to try to try the more detailed steps that I just posted at http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2006/02/17/534559.aspx, and also try to update your tuner drivers from the website of the hardware manufacturer.
Page 1 of 5 (66 items) 12345
Leave a Comment
  • Please add 1 and 3 and type the answer here:
  • Post