Vistaar wrote:
Hello mtreehugger, I was beginning to think you had given up - and who could blame you? It does seem likely that either Centurylink or Norton has caused you to fail where others have succeeded. Unfortunately for you, Centurylink is not my ISP, and the only thing I know about Norton is how to get rid of it. (My PC came with a Norton free trial back in 2008, and when I was forced to do a factory restore some time ago - which BTW is why you really need to learn about imaging software - that old free trial came back to haunt me.) Is it possible to turn off Norton's firewall long enough to attempt setting up TV signal 2 or 3 times? I'm sure Norton has a forum, and probably Centurylink does too. I have posted at my ISP's forum a few times to complain about slow connection speeds. All I can really do is wish you the best of luck! BTW, if you think you might want to restore your system to a point before TV Pack was installed, it might be best to do so before installing Windows Updates for September. Only so much space is alotted for restore points (although there's a way to increase that), and Windows Updates automatically create a new restore point.
Success! Success! Success! Success! Success! Success! Success! Success! Success! Success! Success! Success! Success! Success! Success!
Thanks Vistaar, dkrom, tillerr, steelwill, and all the rest of you helpful folks! I now have Rovi guide data, at long last!!!
I e-mailed centurylink who passed me on to the Norton tech group located somewhere near the Indian Ocean. There they did very little, but told me that I'd need to uninstall Norton before I could contact either Microsoft or Dell because those folks would not troubleshoot my issue with Norton running--even though I was guaranteed that Norton was not the cause. (Yeah, right.) This time, however, I was told not to use the Norton uninstaller that Vistaar had brilliantly suggested to me, and due to that previous installation I now, unlike 2 weeks ago, had the option of uninstalling Norton at control panel/programs and "saving the settings" (which actually means saving the many megabytes of virus updates). So, in the end I still got stuck with downloading 130 MB of Norton, but did not get stuck with downloading several hours of updates.
During the time Norton was uninstalled, I also turned off the Centurylink installer, then ran setup, but it still didn't work. But in case Norton had previously prevented my TV Pack etc. updates from installing correctly, I tried to reinstall them again, but again was told they didn't apply to my system (which actually means I already had the updates because I'd done this earlier and got results). I next re-attempted some instructions I had lying around, which I'd gotten from this link:
http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... ing#p92479
This was the key, it would seem. It is unlikely that Norton's uninstallation was a factor here, although it is remotely possible. More likely is that my ability to interpret the above instructions and execute them was better this time around. For one thing, the writer has spaces in his path notations and commands that, if you're using a command prompt (i.e. DOS commands), will result in an error. This probably foiled my earlier attempt. The other thing is the instruction to "delete any folders that start with mc3peg.." I had no such folders, but I suspected that the writer may have made a typo, so I instead renamed my folder that began with "mcepg.." along with the similarly named file. (FYI, renaming is better than deleting because you can go back at any time and return it to its original name--thus restoring it--if there's a problem.) And finally, I think I probably made the changes to the wrong host file the first time out, as there are multiple hosts files in my system that I found. It's the hosts in the "etc" directory that you want to modify, which I did using the DOS "edit" command. Then, still with the elevated command prompt, I typed "ipconfig/flushdns" (with no spaces, at C:\windows\system32--I think).
So now, thanks to this thread, I've got my Norton working properly (Vistaar saved me much time here), I've got Rovi guide data, and thanks to PlayReadyPC I've got a whole bunch of new OTA channels that I didn't have before!
(It was an unholy ordeal, however.)
I hope than any user of WMC and 32-bit Vista Home Premium who has been plagued by the download error who subsequently finds this thread can benefit from my experience.
Thanks, and good luck!