3
I made the mistake of uninstalling Windows Media Center, then changed my mind and tried to reinstall it.
I've tried the standard procedure over 6 times:
- Go to Control Panel => Programs and Features, and click Turn Windows Features on/off. Uncheck Windows Media Center.
- Reboot.
- Go again to Programs and Features and enable Windows Media Center again.
- Run Windows Media Center and reinstall.
Every time I'm told via the same error message:
[Window Title] Windows Features / [Content] An error has occurred. Not all of the features were successfully changed. / [OK]
But in fact nothing has changed. I have neither Windows Media Center or Windows Media Player installed.
I've run the sfc /scannow from an elevated prompt but nothing happens.
Can anyone suggest how to break this cycle and get both features reinstalled?
It will be much appreciated.
Frank D
Frank D
Posted 2013-07-27T22:47:45.167
Reputation: 66
1Does the SFC scan run at all? If so, does it find any problems and is it able to fix them? – Tim De Baets – 2013-07-30T18:56:05.767
Yes, I've run SFC /scannow from an elevated prompt, but it reports no changes, some things that can't be fixed, and nothing changes afterwards. – Frank D – 2013-07-31T21:07:48.890
1If you run the SFC scan with your Windows 7 install DVD inserted, is it able to fix the errors then? If that doesn't help, I suggest that you uninstall all versions of the .NET Framework and try installing Media Center again. – Tim De Baets – 2013-08-01T16:14:15.093
I re-ran the sfc /scannow command, this time from the Windows 7 install DVD command line (in repair mode), but after rebooting and checking it out, there was no change. Windows Media Center is still totally unavailable and I judge that can't be repaired. I tried to do an in-place reinstall of Windows, but the install finds a legacy scanner, which I can't remove even after cleaning the registry of all traces, and it will not run. So my only option to recover the Windows Media Center is to do a bare-metal reinstall of Windows, which I am not about to do. And my backups don't go back far enough. – Frank D – 2013-08-02T17:38:08.720
I'll try your suggestion of (1) uninstalling all versions of the .NET framework, (2) try to reinstall WMC, and then (3) reinstall all the .NET frameworks again, although it seems odd to have to do something like that. – Frank D – 2013-08-02T17:42:20.663
I've done the procedure I outlined above. There was NO CHANGE. I'm reinstalling all the .NET frameworks to get my system back to where it was. It looks like I'll have to live without the Windows Media Center. Thank you for your help. – Frank D – 2013-08-02T21:18:59.210
1In a lot of cases, issues with
Turn Windows Features on/offare caused by a broken .NET Framework installation, which is why I suggested reinstalling it. An in-place Windows reinstall is the next thing I would have suggested. Weird that it gets blocked by a legacy scanner, but this shouldn't be too hard to fix (possibly by asking it separately on Superuser). – Tim De Baets – 2013-08-03T19:15:12.3071
Another thing that's worth a try, is analyzing the
– Tim De Baets – 2013-08-03T19:16:29.077checksur.logfile generated by the System Update Readiness tool, and trying to fix the problems it reports.I've run the SUR and looked at the checksur.log. It's very short and there's nothing in there remotely referencing Windows Media Center. :( Why can't Microsoft make a simple install/uninstall file for WMC? – Frank D – 2013-08-04T13:54:40.953
It doesn't necessarily have to reference Media Center for it to affect
Turn Windows features on/off, so it's probably still a good idea to look into the reported problems. – Tim De Baets – 2013-08-06T18:53:09.263The reported problems concern only the sample images that came with Win7 in the Public images folder, which I deleted long ago. The Windows Media Center problem occurred just a few weeks ago. – Frank D – 2013-08-06T19:52:59.513
All those files are either jpg's or wmv's and there are also a couple of hyphenation and spelling files. That's it. – Frank D – 2013-08-06T19:59:26.923
I still suggest that you try repairing the hyphenation and spelling files. Coming back on the SFC scan, I assume that running it from the DVD repaired all corruptions and that it doesn't find any more problems now? – Tim De Baets – 2013-08-09T20:10:26.447
I appreciate your suggestions and help, but I feel that trying to do things like this are beyond my ability, and that in trying to fix things I will end up making them worse. So I am not going to go any further in this direction. Thank you again. :) – Frank D – 2013-08-09T22:26:08.147