Possible fixes for IR receiver or remote problems after installing Update Rollup 2 for MCE 2005

There have been a few reports so far from customers who have installed Update Rollup 2 for Media Center 2005 and have had problems getting their infrared (IR) receivers or devices such as remote controls or wireless keyboards to work correctly afterwards. Update Rollup 2 setup installs an updated set of IR drivers (also shipped independently as KB888795) that have caused some sporadic issues. Here is a list of the workarounds we have seen be successful so far to resolve IR receiver/remote control issues after installing Update Rollup 2:

1. The IR receiver appears to be installed correctly but pressing buttons on the remote does not do anything

In this scenario, it is possible that the remote control has been configured to broadcast on a channel range that was supported previously but has since been removed. You can use the steps that I previously posted here to reconfigure your remote control to broadcast on a different channel to resolve this issue

2. One or more of the IR drivers is configured incorrectly in Device Manager

In this scenario, if you look in Device Manager (by going to the Start menu, choosing Run and typing devmgmt.msc), you will see yellow exclamation points next to one or more items in the Human Interface Devices category. The following steps will resolve this issue in most cases:

  1. Go to the Start menu, choose Run and type devmgmt.msc
  2. Expand the Human Interface Devices category
  3. Right-click on each of the items with eHome Infrared Transceiver in the name and choose Uninstall
  4. Unplug the IR device from the computer and wait for approximately 30 seconds
  5. Plug the IR device back into the computer and wait for Windows plug-and-play detection to kick in and re-install the device

3. Some remote control buttons (number keys, arrows, enter) fail to function, while other buttons work as expected

We have not yet been able to reproduce this scenario in our test lab, but we have seen this set of steps resolve this issue on some customer machines so I wanted to post it here in case someone runs into a similar problem:

  1. Delete the file named %windir%\inf\keyboard.pnf. Please note that the correct file to delete ends in PNF - do not delete keyboard.INF.
  2. Go to the Start menu, choose Run and type devmgmt.msc
  3. Expand the Human Interface Devices category
  4. Right-click on each of the items with eHome Infrared Transceiver in the name and choose Uninstall
  5. Unplug the IR device from the computer and wait for approximately 30 seconds
  6. Plug the IR device back into the computer and wait for Windows plug-and-play detection to kick in and re-install the device

4. If none of the above suggestions work

There are some cases that we have seen where none of the above suggestions work. A customer posted a comment indicating that it sometimes helps to short the Media Center remote control to forcibly reset it. You can see more information about how to do that in this blog post.

<update date="12/29/2005"> Added a link to a new post I created with a description of how to short a remote control </update>