Troubleshooting suggestions for guide download errors in Media Center

I have heard from several customers so far who have encountered television guide download errors after installing Update Rollup 2 for Media Center 2005. One of the customers sent me a link to a lengthy newsgroup thread that has several suggestions to fix or workaround guide download issues. I wanted to consolidate some of the suggestions listed there and also include some other suggestions I have heard from other sources to try to unblock anyone who currently cannot get guide download working correctly.

  1. Make sure that your system clock is set to the correct time and time zone for the region you are located in. Note also that daylight savings time ended this past weekend in the United States and also earlier in October in Europe so if you do not have the box checked to automatically adjust the time for daylight savings time changes, you may have to manually adjust your clock to account for this
  2. Eliminate possible XML parsing problems caused by previously downloaded guide data by renaming the directory %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Application Data\Microsoft\Ehome\EPG (I suggest renaming rather than deleting in case you want to revert back to the previous data later on). Then open Media Center, go to Settings, then TV, then Guide, then Set up Guide Listings and configure guide download one more time to regenerate this folder and (hopefully) the contents
  3. Launch Media Center, choose Settings, then General, then Media Center Setup and choose to not use the guide. Then restart the machine, relaunch Media Center and run Media Center setup again and choose to use the guide again
  4. Re-register the Media Center guide DLL by clicking on the Start menu, choosing Run, typing cmd and then running the command line %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\regasm.exe %windir%\ehome\ehepgdat.dll
  5. Temporarily disable any anti-virus, anti-spyware or firewall software that you have installed on your system, then launch Media Center and try to download guide data again
  6. Uninstall McAfee Privacy Service if you have it installed

If none of the above suggestions work, you can do the following to look for more detailed error information:

  1. Click on the Start menu, choose Run and type eventvwr.exe
  2. Right-click on the Application event log and choose Save Log File As
  3. Save the log file as appevent.evt
  4. Locate the Media Center guide download log files. They should be located in the directory named something like C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\ehome\EPG\TraceHelper

Our development team is also working on debugging a couple of guide download issues that we have been able to get access to repro machines for. I will continue to update my blog as we find out any new information about these issues.

<update date="12/8/2005"> Added additional suggested workaround of running regasm.exe for ehepgdat.dll </update>

<update date="12/14/2005"> Added additional suggested workaround of disabling anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall software on the system </update>

<update date="1/9/2006"> Added additional log information that can be useful in tracking down guide download issues </update>