WMC jittery "splash screen" in Windows 10 1803?

Discussion of getting WMC to work on Windows 10 (unsupported)
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Kusaywa

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WMC jittery "splash screen" in Windows 10 1803?

#1

Post by Kusaywa » Sun May 06, 2018 5:23 pm

I installed WMC_6.3.9600.16384_x64_v12 on Windows 10 1803. While the functionality once inside WMC seems to be ok, the "splash screen" is jittery. You see the WMC logo briefly then it disappears, then you are on the navigation screen. Audio appears ok. It doesn't smoothly open. WMC opened smoothly on 1709. Anyone else have this issue? Thanks

PrplHaz4

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#2

Post by PrplHaz4 » Mon May 07, 2018 5:42 pm

In my case this came about when I ran into problems with 1709 and starting messing with the compatibility settings - mainly "Enable Fullscreen Optimizations" and "Scaling performed by"...

hansolo89

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#3

Post by hansolo89 » Tue May 08, 2018 5:55 am

maybe try a different refresh rate. wmc runs better 59hz than 60hz for me

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DavidinCT

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#4

Post by DavidinCT » Tue May 08, 2018 4:30 pm

Do you have the newest video driver ? Do you have DirectX installed ?

WMC's animations are not always smooth if DirectX is not installed, this goes back to Windows 7...
-Dave
Twitter @TheCoolDave

Windows Media Center certified and WMC MVP 2010 - 2012

Kusaywa

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#5

Post by Kusaywa » Mon May 21, 2018 6:00 pm

Yes, tried all the suggestions above and still no help. Not impressed with 1803, problems with network and installing drivers. Think they rushed it!!!

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aquadextrous

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#6

Post by aquadextrous » Mon Jul 30, 2018 8:15 pm

You may have already solved this, but i have spent AGES trying to figure it out. My intro screen was really annoying me by not working and just showing a frame or two of animation and then crashing into the menu. I know i could have disabled the splash screen but i like it!

You need to have optimisations turned off in the program settings to make WMC run full screen properly, but this causes the startup animation to either not load or not work properly. The fix i found was to go to Windows Settings, choose System, Focus Assist and turn "When I'm Playing a Game" off.

This seems to work for me, i have full screen optimisations turned off so i can use WMC full screen and my startup animation works! Horay!


NOW... if only someone can tell me how i can get the remote's Green Button to load WMC from windows again that would be great!


Kusaywa wrote:Yes, tried all the suggestions above and still no help. Not impressed with 1803, problems with network and installing drivers. Think they rushed it!!!

technodevotee

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#7

Post by technodevotee » Thu Aug 02, 2018 5:46 pm

Ehtray.exe (the process that shows the the system tray recording icon and update progress) used to start automatically at boot in older versions of Windows but something was changed and it doesn't any more.

Furthermore, while it used to stay running all the time, it now stops running when WMC is closed and there is no recording activity taking place. So the tray icon doesn't always appear when it should.

To get round this, TGB user StafanR wrote a script called checktray.vbs which, when started by a task or some other mechanism, stays resident and fires every so often to starts the ehtray process if it should be running and isn't.

I found out that If you press the WMC button on the remote when WMC is closed but the tray icon is active (or else just after Stefan's script had started ehtray), WMC would open. This suggested that Ehtray.exe needs to be running for the remote natively to work in Windows when WMC is closed.

I tried modifying Stefan's script so that it started ehtray if it wasn't running but it only works a few times and then stops running altogether.

I did extensive research into changes to Windows and came up empty.

Another alternative I tried was using eventghost to capture the remote signals but it messed evrything up.

At the moment it seems that is that.

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aquadextrous

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#8

Post by aquadextrous » Thu Aug 02, 2018 7:18 pm

technodevotee wrote:Ehtray.exe (the process that shows the the system tray recording icon and update progress) used to start automatically at boot in older versions of Windows but something was changed and it doesn't any more.

Furthermore, while it used to stay running all the time, it now stops running when WMC is closed and there is no recording activity taking place. So the tray icon doesn't always appear when it should.

To get round this, TGB user StafanR wrote a script called checktray.vbs which, when started by a task or some other mechanism, stays resident and fires every so often to starts the ehtray process if it should be running and isn't.

I found out that If you press the WMC button on the remote when WMC is closed but the tray icon is active (or else just after Stefan's script had started ehtray), WMC would open. This suggested that Ehtray.exe needs to be running for the remote natively to work in Windows when WMC is closed.

I tried modifying Stefan's script so that it started ehtray if it wasn't running but it only works a few times and then stops running altogether.

I did extensive research into changes to Windows and came up empty.

Another alternative I tried was using eventghost to capture the remote signals but it messed evrything up.

At the moment it seems that is that.
Thanks for the comprehensive answer. I’m using a harmony remote, so maybe I can sort out some shortcut from that. In the mean time I have used task scheduler to launch WMC at login, so at least it’s there when I turn the telly on.
I guess it’s no biggie reaching for the mouse occasionally when I close down WMC!

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#9

Post by technodevotee » Fri Aug 03, 2018 9:28 am

I have a couple of non Media Center IR remotes and I saw the same results with those as well: they only launch WMC when ehtray is running.

When I said I did extensive research on this, I mean I had two PCs side by side, one running an old version that worked and one running a newer version that didn't and spent a couple of weeks comparing all the registry entries and writing a custom file comparison program to find out which files had been changed.

As far as I can make out, ehtray intercepts the messages coming from the Human Interface Device subsystem and calls a process that opens Media Center.

I used a diagnostic called showkey to view the data coming from the IR receiver and although it showed the messages that should open WMC, it didn't know what they were.

Running procmon showed how the process was being started but didn't help understand the difference between the PCs.

I think the functionality in the core Windows O/S that 'knew' about ehtray and started it was removed. Something else that was changed makes it stop running when it used to continue running.

I couldn't find anything useful and gave up for the sake of my sanity.

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#10

Post by stefanr » Fri Aug 03, 2018 4:55 pm

technodevotee wrote:Ehtray.exe (the process that shows the the system tray recording icon and update progress) used to start automatically at boot in older versions of Windows but something was changed and it doesn't any more.

Furthermore, while it used to stay running all the time, it now stops running when WMC is closed and there is no recording activity taking place. So the tray icon doesn't always appear when it should.

To get round this, TGB user StafanR wrote a script called checktray.vbs which, when started by a task or some other mechanism, stays resident and fires every so often to starts the ehtray process if it should be running and isn't.

I found out that If you press the WMC button on the remote when WMC is closed but the tray icon is active (or else just after Stefan's script had started ehtray), WMC would open. This suggested that Ehtray.exe needs to be running for the remote natively to work in Windows when WMC is closed.

I tried modifying Stefan's script so that it started ehtray if it wasn't running but it only works a few times and then stops running altogether.
I'm not sure if this will help (I don't have a remote to test this) but here is a potential solution.

My original script woke up every 60 seconds and started ehtray.exe if Media Center or Media Center recording was running - this displayed the tray icon. Once Media Center or Recorder stopped running, extray.exe would close within 10 seconds.

There is a registry entry that will control how long ehtray.exe will wait before exiting - If you go to REGEDIT (do this at your own risk) and navigate to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center you can add a new Dword (32) key called EhtrayExitDelay - and set the value to the number of seconds you want ehtray to wait before it closes. For example, setting it to 3600 would wait one hour before closing ehtray.exe.

Next, add the following script as a .vbs file and run it - unlike my previous script, this just checks if ehtray.exe is running and restarts it if not.

Code: Select all

dim service, trayrunning, i, objProcess, objShell
set service = GetObject ("winmgmts:")

Do While i = 0
    trayrunning = "No"

    Set colProcess = service.ExecQuery ("Select * from Win32_Process where NAME like 'eh%' ")

    For Each objProcess in colProcess
        if objProcess.Name = "ehtray.exe" then
            trayrunning = "Yes"
        end if
    Next

   
    if (trayrunning = "No") then
        Set objShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
        objShell.Run "C:\Windows\ehome\ehtray.exe"
        Set objShell = Nothing
    end if
   
wscript.sleep(60000)
Loop
So each minute the script will wake up, launch ehtray.exe if it is not running and ehtray.exe will stay running for at least one hour (using the above example registry key) after Media Center is closed. If it does close, it will be restarted within 1 minute.

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aquadextrous

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#11

Post by aquadextrous » Fri Aug 03, 2018 9:29 pm

Thanks for the replies.

I tried the registry for the exit delay last night (i saw your post at MDL)and i thought it was working great - but after rebooting the machine over night it seemed to cause issues today - my TV channels (from DVBlink) would not load and i lost all thumbnails from recordings etc. I tried reinstalling dvblink and doing the registry hacks once more to get thumbnails back and many reboots later neither worked. I then removed the script for ehtray and deleted the registry entry, rebooted once more and everything is normal again.

It may not be linked - may have just been a coincidence, but ya know, WMC is so hard to keep things running at an acceptable level these days, i've decided to just give up using the remote to launch and have reverted back to the scheduled launch on log in and keeping a mouse handy for when the remote isnt quite enough! :D

Thanks again though!

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#12

Post by technodevotee » Tue Aug 07, 2018 5:18 am

stefanr wrote: There is a registry entry that will control how long ehtray.exe will wait before exiting - If you go to REGEDIT (do this at your own risk) and navigate to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center you can add a new Dword (32) key called EhtrayExitDelay - and set the value to the number of seconds you want ehtray to wait before it closes. For example, setting it to 3600 would wait one hour before closing ehtray.exe.
Thanks Stefan, I'll give this a try.

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#13

Post by technodevotee » Tue Aug 07, 2018 3:10 pm

The good news is that the remote launches WMC.

The bad news is that Media Center hangs/freezes/misbehaves generally and fast forward and rewind don't work.

I assume this is because it is being launched in it's default mode without the options (compatibility mode, disable desktop composition, visual themes and scaling on hi dpi settings) that I have set in my advancedrun shortcut.

I think I'll just stick to using a trackpad or mouse to launch and control it from now on.

One step forward and one step back.....

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