New hotfix available to fix protected content playback errors in Update Rollup 2 for Media Center 2005

As many of you have noticed and posted on my blog in the past (here, here, here and here), there are some problems in some cases related to playing back protected content after installing Update Rollup 2 for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. In some cases, workarounds could be applied to allow playback to start working again, but they would cause a loss of pre-existing digital rights management (DRM) licenses.

Today, we have released hotfix KB913800 that is designed to fix the currently known root causes of protected content playback errors. In addition, it should fix them in such a way that preserves pre-existing licenses you may have previously acquired. If you are experiencing any errors playing back protected content in Windows Media Center after installing Update Rollup 2, please download and install this hotfix.

Please note that this hotfix is currently only available on the Microsoft Download Center, but it should be made available via Windows Update in the future. You can find more information about this hotfix in this knowledge base article, including symptoms of the problem, possible root causes, a list of affected files, and a link to download the package from.

The Microsoft DRM and Media Center teams are very interested in hearing about your experiences with this hotfix package. Please post comments on this blog post or use my blog contact form and let us know what issue(s) you have been seeing and whether or not the hotfix installs successfully and solves the issue(s).