Playready not working

[pdean]

I had problems with media center so I restored an image from 12/15. My problem is fixed but now I can only get the guide for a few HD local Chanel's and the guide update will not work and when I run setup I get the message that play ready will not update which I have tried reinstalling.

I have win 7-32 and silicon dust tuner with Comcast.

I have restored images before and have never seen this. I know I have seen guide problems before around the time change. I checked and my date and time are fine but I first had to change the time by an hour.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[DSperber]

You restored an image from December 2015??? It is now August 2016. You haven't take one additional system image in the past 9 months?? Not a great idea, honestly.

Have you made any hardware changes since December 2015 when that image you just restored was created? Have you changed motherboards, or CPU, or added memory since then?

PlayReady should not want to reinstall itself or update itself unless the newly determined hardware setup after you restored that old system image is different from the hardware setup implied by that system image you restored. So is your current hardware configuration different than it was back in December 2015?

Also, does your SD external HomeRun tuner use cablecard or not? Do you have copy-protected program recording capability, or is it all copy-freely unencrypted from Comcast (e.g. you don't have any premium channels like HBO) and you don't use a cablecard at all? Do you have an OTA/ATSC roof antenna as well, feeding your SD box?

I ask because if you had been recording copy-protected content for the past 9 months, and now you've restored a system image from December 2015, you have just lost the ability to play any of the copy-protected content recordings you might still have in your Recorded TV list. The restored Windows and DRM key from December 2015 means you can only now play copy-protected content from December 2015 and older. You will not be able to play anything recorded more recently, i.e. in the past 9 months! That's just the DRM law.

You may just have to reinstall Windows from scratch at this point as the easiest cleanest most dependable way to get yourself back in business (although that, too, would still lose any copy-protected recordings you might still have).

There's a separate "recipe" for completely uninstalling WMC as a "Windows Feature", and then reinstalling it from scratch (retaining your existing Windows 7 and avoiding the need to install it from scratch). Again, you lose any copy-protected recordings you might have, but you do get WMC and PlayReady working again while avoiding a complete reinstall of Win7.

If you say you only have some local HD broadcast networks, this sounds to me like you have a different cablecard in your SD box than you had back in December 2015. By restoring the December 2015 image you have restored the "cablecard pairing" info from back then, but if you are actually using a replacement cablecard you switched to in the past 9 months then you would not be able to receive anything encrypted from Comcast since that requires your cablecard inserted into your SD box to be "paired" with the Comcast headend.

Sounds to me like lots has changed in your setup over the past 9 months. Restoring a system image from 9 months ago is a very extreme course of action to recover from some current disaster. Hard to believe you never saw fit to take one single system image backup in all that time, but it's catching up with you now I'm afraid. You may have to "start over", as I would speculate you've lost the ability to play any of your copy-protected recordings (if you have any) no matter what you do now to get things working again.

Uninstall/reinstall of WMC will get things working going forward without having to also reinstall Windows and all of your customization and 3rd-party apps. But it's still going to put you back where you were years ago when you first launched Windows Media Center for the very first time, and had to set up absolutely everything from the ground up.

[pdean]

I have made no hardware changes since the last backup and use cablecard. I know the backup is rather old but I also know I have used this setup for years and have restored it the same way multiple times over the years and have never had this problem before.

The problem after the restore was the guide not wanting to update and I know they had been problems at times in the past for everyone. I learned about play ready when I was trying to get the guide ready by running setup.

How might I uninstall and reinstall media center and then afterwards would I need to run the setup.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[pdean]

For whatever reason this morning manually getting guide updates works but I wonder if there is anything else I might want to do. If I try the setup again and cannot do play ready might I want to do a clean install and then backup do things work for the future.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[DSperber]

How might I uninstall and reinstall media center and then afterwards would I need to run the setup.

Just remember, you will lose access to any protected content.

Note that you will have to run through the media center setup again.

Important: This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully.

This "recipe" was found on the Internet. Steps to follow:

a. Uninstall PlayReady from the 'Programs and Features' control panel.

b. Turn off Windows Media Center in Control Panel/Programs and Features/Turn Windows features on or off. Remove the check mark for Windows Media Center in the "Media Features" section. Ok your way out and reboot when prompted.

c. Enable Windows Explorer to show hidden files and folders in the Folder Options Control Panel.

d. Go to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\ and delete eHome and PlayReady folders.

e. Go to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\DRM and delete all files and folders underneath (don't delete the DRM directory itself)

f. Open the registry with elevated privileges. To do so, click Start, click All Programs, click Accessories, right-click Command Prompt and then point to “Run as administrator”. In the command prompt that opens, type regedit.exe.

g. Go to HKLM\Software\Microsoft and delete the DRM key. (You may have to change Permissions in order to delete the key.)

h. Restart the computer.

i. Reinstall Windows Media Center from “Programs and Features: Turn Windows features on or off.” by checking the box for Windows Media Center (this is the reverse of how you uninstalled WMC earlier). This should also regenerate the DRM keys for your machine. Reboot.

j. Run Windows Media Center setup.

k. Run the PlayReady install from inside Media Center.

That should be it.

NOTE: earlier this week I actually had to follow this recipe (before removing the added RAM which had broken DRM for me in the first place and then restoring a system image from a day earlier). I was unable to delete the DRM key (described in step g) no matter what I tried, and I didn't understand what "you may have to change Permissions in order to delete the key" meant). Also, I never did have a \DRM directory which step e said to delete, but that may have already been removed from the uninstall of PlayReady in step a.


A lesser extreme "solution" to DRM/PlayReady issues may simply be to uninstall/reinstall PlayReady and reset DRM. This is described in another thread on TGB. It is not necessary to uninstall and reinstall WMC itself, but only to uninstall PlayReady, reset DRM, and then reinstall PlayReady from within WMC which this time should complete.

[robnitro]

None of those things worked for me. I even couldn't get the tv setup data to download.

I ended up doing a windows 7 SP1 upgrade on top of existing. That fixed it. But freak you microsoft for not telling me WHY IT'S FAILING. Nothing in event viewer etc.

And none of the microsoft forums give any help besides the stupid "reinstall" or "system restore" garbage

[DavidinCT]

Sigh, If you want to keep a SOLID running WMC machine. Backup once a week. I use Acronis and every Saturday @ 4am it does a full backup of just the C: drive (OS drive). I keep only 3 weeks of backups. This is so if I ran into a problem that I didn't notice I have a roll back.

You could even get away with once every 2 weeks....

Even more with cablecards, as 3 week old DRM protected recordings will be unplayable.

Restoring an image from over a year is just asking for trouble....on any OS where updates are enabled.