WMC won't start up after Power Outage

[billqs]

I'm running Windows 7 32 bit Ultimate SP1 on the machine in my home theater. We had a power outage yesterday morning and now I get an error every time I try to open Windows Media Center. The error states "Program has encountered a user-defined breakpoint". It gives me the option to close the program, search online and close the program or debug the program. None of the options has WMC then starting. I pulled up Event Viewer and it showed an exception at "ehshell.exe" with the module "mcstore.ni.dll" each time I tried to start WMC.

I ran sfc scan and it showed W32UIRES.dll as a corrupt file it couldn't fix and the file was corrupt in the copy as well. I ran the sfc several more times to see if it would fix but it wouldn't. I replaced W32UIRES.dll with a dll from another working Windows 7 installation. I also tried to replace ehshell.exe with one from the other computer but it would not let me as the other computer was a 64 bit version. I searched but could not locate mcstore.ni.dll to attempt to replace it.

I did a lot of websurfing on the various issues but got nowhere. User-defined breakpoints seem to be problems that occur for programmers, so I think it is probably just the OS' best guess as to why WMC won't work. I know ehshell is the main application for Windows Media Center and that mcstore.ni.dll involves guide updates or some such. I just can't come up with a solution that will work. My guess is that the computer was in the middle of an action when the power outage hit and it caused file corruption. I'm open to any and all help.

[holidayboy]

Does sfc come back as clean if you run it now?

You could try forcing a guide update maybe?

Run the below in a command prompt window:

C:\windows\ehome\mcupdate.exe -uf -dbgc


It will take a while as the dbgc bit goes through the database and clears out any unused stuff.

If that doesn't work then you may have to reset Media Center completely - post back if you want to try it......

[billqs]

I tried the above. I still get W32uiRes.dll is corrupt and unfixable. I grabbed another copy from a 32bit Windows 7 that runs WMC successfully and it still gave me the same error. I think the module that's hosed is mcstore.ni.dll, but I can't locate it on any of my machines. The place it is supposed to be is a folder full of assembly language files and the subfolder "Nativeimages" doesn't exist.

I tried the mcupdate and got the same error due to a fault in mcstore.ni.dll. After that I cleared out the ehome folder in Program Data and it still would not work.

How do we reset Media Center completely?

[Scallica]

Go to Control Panel-->Programs and Features-->Turn Windows Features On or Off. Unselect Windows Media Center, reboot, repeat and reselect Windows Media Center.

[kmp14]

Just throwing spitballs here - but more than once when I had weird problems I couldn't solve, it was the power supply not providing stable power. Especially after a power outage, which my have also included a surge, the power supply may be damaged. Usually a wonky power supply wouldn't necessarily exhibit consistent weirdness like you are seeing, but maybe?

[billqs]

I appreciate everyone's help but in the end I installed MediaPortal on the PC in the Home Theater. I used to use it back when I was running XP. WMC's strength IMO is it's DVR functions, but I don't DVR from this PC and luckily I don't have to reformat anything on my media server to get MP to work. It was either go with something else or reinstall the OS.

[Crash2009]

It was either go with something else or reinstall the OS.

I don't think Media Portal has big enough kahuna's to hold your OS together.

[billqs]

You could well be right. I'll know by the end of the weekend...

[holidayboy]

After turning off media center in control panel and then rebooting, it might be worth deleting the two main ehome folders (c:\windows\ehome and c:\programdata\microsoft\ehome).


Then reboot again for good measure before turning media center back on.


I don't think that just turning MC off and on will remove all of the old (possibly corrupt?) files...