How to get rid of the annoying POPUP about Jan 2020 Guide going away

[joelkirzner]

Yep, the nag reappeared this weekend on all three of my HTPCs. Very annoying.
Can Microsoft just STFU and be done with this!
We get it, you've dropped the guide!
Hopefully after tomorrow, January 14, 2020, OFFICIAL END OF LIFE for Windows 7...this nonsense will stop for good. We should theoretically no longer receive ANY security updates.
Right?

[IT Troll]

That's how mine initially behaved when this started back in (I think) December. Maybe it was November.

But then last week it started doing it almost non stop. It would do it every time I entered WMC and even pop up again after I acknowledged it. Trying to remember the chain of events but I think it started with the high frequency nag last week sometime. Didn't go away until I went through setup and chose do not agree. Could be a coincidence but that's what I observed.

My last nag was on the 10th Jan and my epgDeprecationNoticeTimeLastSeen setting was set to the same. As an experiment I set it back one month and launched Media Center. It immediately displayed the nag and afterwards epgDeprecationNoticeTimeLastSeen was set to today. I think setting it to the current date each day will do the trick. I may do this if it gets annoying. I suspect this will go on for period even after the EPG feed ends.

My hasOpenedGuide setting is set to 1 and so I don't think that is a factor.

[Windom]

After installing some Windows updates on my Windows 7 MC this morning, it rebooted and displayed a new nag screen! It's an all blue screen that says "Your Windows 7 PC is out of support" and recommends switching to Windows 10. Luckily, there was a Don't Remind Me Again option so it shouldn't keep showing up. It did freak my out when I first saw it.

Then I checked for Windows updates and there was another one. Will that be the last one?

[IT Troll]

Should be. There are no more updates for Windows 7. This is a different nag to the EPG one though.

[cassel11]

EPG nag just started again after installing KB4536952.
Plan to give it a day or 2 before doing registry investigation.

[calmman42]

Any news on this topic? I've tried most everything here, I now get the pop-up on almost every action I take in WMC. It is supremely annoying! There has got to be some registry edit than can disable this.

[festusdog]

As another guy said here, Paint's solution is not accurate, at least not for everyone. My Win7 Home Premium is up-to-date with patches as of today Jan 16 2020, and when I ran his command remove KB4525251, it said that it was not installed on this machine.

And I am using Schedules Direct, fresh Win7 MC install, never agreed to the terms of MS Guide, etc.... and I am getting these annoying guide messages every-single-time I press to open the Guide.

So if anyone else has a working solution, please advise.

[Starflare5]

Ok, what are those updates for Windows 8/8.1? They are not numbered the same as the Windows 7 updates.

[joelkirzner]

As another guy said here, Paint's solution is not accurate, at least not for everyone. My Win7 Home Premium is up-to-date with patches as of today Jan 16 2020, and when I ran his command remove KB4525251, it said that it was not installed on this machine.

And I am using Schedules Direct, fresh Win7 MC install, never agreed to the terms of MS Guide, etc.... and I am getting these annoying guide messages every-single-time I press to open the Guide.

So if anyone else has a working solution, please advise.

Same here. Tonight has been unbearable with hitting the guide and having the popup appear EVERY TIME!
Dammit, Microsoft, enough of this crap already!!!

[mustpushbuttons]

[/quote]
Same here. Tonight has been unbearable with hitting the guide and having the popup appear EVERY TIME!
Dammit, Microsoft, enough of this crap already!!!
[/quote]

MSFT sucks. always has. always will. this popup is such a pita.

[wgf_bean]

I got rid of the pop up by going through the TV setup again. It came back with that most recent update, so I went through it again and it's gone again. Also cleared up the yellow warning from EPG123 as a result of the update. Green now.

[dougsmith]

Patience helps... I installed several updates yesterday, including KB4536952, and the guide popup came back. Today it's gone. I think the daily update of EPG123 fixed it, but I suppose it could have been something else.

[Paint]

I run this as a bat script to update the key to the current time a few times a day.

Code: Select all

@echo off

for /F "tokens=2" %%i in ('date /t') do set mydate=%%i
set mytime=%time%
echo Current time is %mydate% %mytime%

reg add "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\MCE.PerUserSettings" /v epgDeprecationNoticeTimeLastSeen /t REG_SZ /d "%mydate% %mytime%" /f

[IT Troll]

I run this as a bat script to update the key to the current time a few times a day.

So my theory/workaround is doing the trick?

Given that Windows 7 is not getting any more updates there might not be another patch to remove the nag. Hopefully the nag code already contains logic which will stop it displaying once we reach a certain date.

[wgf_bean]

My solution requires no script, no uninstalling of updates and is working for me. If anyone still has the nag I'd suggest you simply go through the TV setup procedure from start including using EPG123 even if you already did this. Everytime Microsoft has an update that touches WMC they seem to be deliberately invoking the nag. But it also appears this same code stops the nag if you go through the setup procedure again after the fact. This has worked for me each time they updated WMC.

It's a PITA to go through the setup again, but hopefully they won't touch it anymore so the solution is permanent. If I start seeing the nag again without another WMC update then I'll report back. But so far so good.

[DaveD]

This gets rid of the EPG popup box for me:
- Manually set the system clock ahead one day
- Click OK on the nag box
- Restore system clock back to today

Then the popup is gone for about a week.

[DSperber]

Starting late this afternoon, I am seeing the popup "Switch to an alternate TV Program Guide Provider" message from WMC (each one accompanied by a DING), pretty much getting into and out of everything I do. Of course you just navigate left-arrow and push the OK button and the message box goes away. At least you can do this on the WMC window presented on your local monitor.

However on my Linksys DMA2100 extenders, the timing of when this message box (and DING) appears is prior to the presentation of the opening Windows Media Center blue screen. So my extender and TV is stuck at the "starting" message on a black background, and the blue screen never actually appears. Hence I can't left-arrow and push OK because the message box isn't actually on the screen. I've tried "blind" using the remote keys, but it's obvious the extender isn't yet responding to remote key input. So I can't ever get started, on any of my four extenders.

I've talked with another user who has XBox extenders and the software on that device at least presents everything when you boot it, so that it (like on my local monitor) is possible to left-arrow and OK to make these constant message go away. So at least he's not dead in the water like I am.

A few weeks back in anticipation of January 14 this message started appearing occasionally. Then it stopped. So today's symptom is a new one. And it seems serious. I wonder if this is something MS is triggering, or if these WMC setups are running "on their own" out here in the wild.

Anybody else?

[Moderator note: topic merged; search before posting]

[DSperber]

Well, patience is a virtue.

Turns out I wasn't waiting long enough for things to clear up on my DMA2100. I was trying to overcome the issue right away, and being unsuccessful immediately I lost patience and went back to the prior "power on" starting screen. But just now I happened to have started my kitchen DMA2100 again (of course not really expecting anything to work differently than it had earlier, because I'm not insane) and happened to be putting my groceries away at the same time. So I didn't get back to the remote for a few minutes.

Well, amazingly, something must have timed out or just taken a long time to overcome some unexpected status, but lo and behold WMC actually finally started up. Of course there was that message box in the lower right corner, but at least I could now see it and left-arrow and OK to make it go away. So I can at least now watch TV again, and that's what was critical.

So, disaster averted. I'm still not thrilled with the current status of being bombarded with this stupid message and DING everytime you do common things, and also when you BACK up to higher levels or the main screen, etc. I hope this will go away eventually, because it's very annoying.

But at least I CAN WATCH TV.

Fire doused.

[Space]

I long ago changed that "ding" sound when you get one of those popups (like when deleting a video). That "ding" just seemed way too grating for this purpose.

[nikleb]

So, I switched to EPG123 about 3 weeks ago and everything appears to work ok.
However, I am still getting a windows warning that guide support will stop or has stopped. Is this expected and how to I get rid of it?

[Moderator note: topic merged]