There is a bug in the installation logic for the recently released Windows Vista Media Center SDK 5.3 that was briefly mentioned in this Media Center Sandbox blog post, and I wanted to link to it here as well in case anyone runs into it.

Description of the issue

The installation logic for the Visual Studio 2008 project templates has an error that causes the Windows Media Center Application (that implements the Media Center application step-by-step instructions) to not appear in Visual C# 2008 Express or Visual Studio 2008 unless the system also has one or more edition of Visual Studio 2005 also installed.

This means that if you have a development system that only has Visual Studio 2008 installed, you will not see this Media Center step-by-step application project template in the VS 2008 new project dialog after installing the Windows Vista Media Center SDK 5.3.

How to work around this issue

There are a few options that will allow you to work around this issue if you run into it when installing and using the Windows Vista Media Center SDK 5.3.

Option 1 - Install a VS 2005 edition and repair the SDK

1. Close Visual Studio 2008 if it is running on your system
2. Install any edition of VS 2005 (such as VC# 2005 Express Edition, Visual Studio 2005 Professional, etc)
3. Go to Add/Remove Programs and choose to repair the product named Microsoft Windows Media Center SDK 5.3

Option 2 - Manually copy and register the project template for use in VS 2008

1. Close Visual Studio 2008 if it is running on your system
2. Download the Windows Media Center Application project template zip file from http://astebner.sts.winisp.net/Tools/MediaCenterAddIn.zip
3. Copy it to the project template location for the version(s) of VS 2008 that you have installed on your system.  For example:
   
   For Visual C# 2008 Express Edition - C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\VCSExpress\ProjectTemplates
   
   For Visual Studio 2008 up-level editions - C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\ProjectTemplates\CSharp\Windows Media Center
   
4. Click on the Start menu, choose All Programs, then Accessories, then right-click on the item named Command Prompt and choose Run as administrator to open an elevated cmd prompt
5. In the elevated cmd prompt, re-register the project templates by running the appropriate commands depending on the versions of VS 2008 that are installed on the system:
   
   For Visual C# 2008 Express Edition - "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\VCSExpress.exe" /setup
   
   For Visual Studio 2008 up-level editions - "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe" /setup

Note - the exact paths listed in steps 3 and 5 above will need to change if you have VS 2008 installed to a non-default path or non-default drive letter.

Option 3 - Install the supplemental project template MSI

1. Close Visual Studio 2008 if it is running on your system
2. Download and install the supplemental Windows Media Center project templates (described in more detail here) from http://astebner.sts.winisp.net/Tools/mce_project_templates.zip