Windows Media Center Has Stopped Working - SOLUTION!

I thought I would share the solution to this problem with my readers. I struggled with the "Windows Media Center Has Stopped Working" problem for months before finally dedicating a good few hours researching for the solution. Nothing I found on the web worked, even after hours of searching through Google. And then I while just doing some testing I found the solution to my problem.

Windows Media Center Has Stopped Working - SOLUTION!

Actually, for me, the problem started with my Xbox 360 always losing the media center folders I had setup. I couldn't figure out what the problem was and when searching Google for other people experiencing the same problem, I found literally NOTHING. I couldn't believe. I guess that's why I'm so good at troubleshooting things, I seem to always the most bizarre issues.

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Windows Media Center Has Stopped Working - SOLUTION!

I want to briefly explain the issues I was having with my XBOX 360, so that hopefully Google will index this page and others experiencing the same problem will find this solution. Basically every time I would turn on my XBOX 360 and launch the media center it would open up but all my video, music, and photo files I had previously added were gone. And the XBOX media center would tell me there are no folders and ask me if I wanted to add videos or folders to media center. I would go through the wizard and select the drives on my PC that I wanted to have added to media center on my XBOX 360 and that would add the files. Then I could watch my movies, TV shows, etc. However, once I was done, I would turn off the Xbox and then the next time I would power it back up, the folders were gone and I would have to add the folders again. This would happen every time I restarted the XBOX. A royal pain in the ass.

Windows Media Center Has Stopped Working - SOLUTION!

Anyways, when searching the web for people experiencing this issue, I came up with nothing. So I just lived with it for a while. Then I finally just got feed up with it and had some free time one day so I went over to the PC and tried to launch Windows Media Center to see what folders were currently added there. To my surprise I get a Windows Media Center has stopped working window after I tried to launch the executable for WMC. GREAT! Now I have an issue with my WMC on my PC! Okay, now I'm making the assumption that the two are linked.

So I start to research this phrase "Windows Media Center has Stopped Working". I found a few good sites with people experiencing this problem and most of their solutions were the same. I have copied and pasted their recommended solution below:

1. Exit any running instance of Windows Media Center.

2. Delete the following file:
%SYSTEMDRIVE%\programdata\microsoft\ehome\Mediacenterdatastore.db

To do this, follow these steps:
a. Click Start button, type run in the Start Search box, and then click Run in the Programs list.
b. In the Open box, type %systemdrive%\programdata\microsoft\ehome,and then click OK.
c. In the details pane, right-click mediacenterdatastore.db, and then click Delete.
d. Click Yes to confirm that you want to move the Mediacenterdatastore.db file to the Recycle Bin.

3. Start Windows Media Center.

On my PC there was no mediacenterdatastore.db file but there WAS a file with something.db. I went ahead and deleted this and tried to relaunch WMC, no dice. So I continued my search until I finally gave up as nothing seemed to work.

So what was my solution? Well, the problem was that SOMETHING was definitely corrupted. I'm not sure what, and I didn't really care to try to isolate, but I found the solution. I realized the problem was something that WMC set with my user profile, because when I logged into my PC with a different user and launched WMC, it came right up without any trouble at all. So at this point, I knew it was something to do with my user profile. I went into my user profile, copied the desktop items and anything else I wanted to save and then logged in as a different user and deleted my user account. Then once it was removed from my system, I created another user account with the same name. Logged in, copied my data back to the desktop and launched Windows Media Center. It came right up. So that was my solution. AND it also solved the problem with the XBOX360. On my PC I added all the folders I wanted to share with my XBOX360 and then turned on my XBOX, launched WMC and bam there were all my folders, videos, and TV shows. So now I am back up and running with everything functioning as it should. Just an FYI, I am using Windows 7, so not sure if this issue is something to do with Windows 7 and WMC, or it may also affect Windows XP. Good luck and hopefully if you have searched all over the web and nothing helped, hopefully this solution does.

Written by Josh R Bellendir, 2/27/2011
Check out http://www.jbellendir.com for more articles, stories, tutorials, and reviews!

Windows Media Center Has Stopped Working - SOLUTION!