XBox extender must be re-paired after every boot of PC

[spocks.boss]

Hi everyone,

I've been following this forum for a long time (and the original TGB too). Never had much of a problem until I tried to help a friend setup a Media Center system.

The friend's setup is a Win 7 Pro 32-bit PC, wired to an XBox 360 S. I'm not sure about the hardware in the PC, but it shouldn't matter in this situation.

There are two HDHR3-US (HD HomeRun "Dual") tuners connected to an external antenna (ATSC).

The problem comes whenever the PC is rebooted. The XBox must be "paired" (or whatever you call it) to Media Center every time the PC is booted. This involves going through the whole "add an extender" process, and entering the 8-digit code that is displayed on the extender.

Does anyone have an idea of what might cause this?

I appreciate any suggestions.

Thanks in advance,
James

[jjwatmyself]

Is the PC rolling back / crashing on reboot? Every extender is added as a special user with 'RDP like' access and NTFS permissions to recorded TV, etc. I think event viewer may offer some valuable clues. Also, disable AV and FW in order to see if they are an issue. I hate to use the word corruption, but there is something very wrong.

[spocks.boss]

Thanks. I've looked at the event logs before, and I didn't see anything of particular interest. I'll look again.

I didn't check to see if the extender is being added as a "new" user every time. I'll check that.

The PC is running Windows Firewall and Microsoft Security Essentials. Nothing special.

I've been thinking about re-installing the OS... it won't lose any recordings since everything is OTA... but I really hate to do that.

[jjwatmyself]

I would cut your losses and reinstall the OS. It sounds like you don't have any major barriers to doing this.

[spocks.boss]

No, except my time. It's not my PC, so it really doesn't affect me much. But every time I have to reinstall Windows, it takes me several hours to setup everything again so that a novice user can use the PC without much trouble, and without having to install all the things that make a PC "work" these days... like Java, Flash, etc.

[SilverRubicon]

1. Delete all unnecessary extenders from within windows media center.
2. Delete all old profiles from disk (http://helgeklein.com/free-tools/delpro ... tion-tool/).
3. Delete all old profiles from the registry (http://www.kreslavsky.com/2009/03/delet ... istry.html).
4. Reboot and re-pair the extender. Reboot is a catch-all but what the hell.

This should do the trick. Quicker than an OS install but still a small amount of work. Step 2 may do step 3.

[spocks.boss]

Thanks. I'll try it. I'm going to visit my friend's house this weekend. Of course, I'll make a system image before I do anything.

There is only one extender, but it has been added multiple times, so there may be multiple MCX users.

My friend doesn't have a UPS. I recently acquired two of them, with bad batteries. Both were free, and the batteries were only $16.50 including shipping. I plan to give my friend one of them. This will help with the problem, but it would still be nice to correct the issue. She should not need to re-pair the extender every time the PC requires a reboot.

[bryankennedy2]

I had a similar issue like this with the Echo and had a post on the issue - http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... =69&t=5336

Essentially, I updated the firmware on my Netgear WNDR3700v1 to the most recent version on their website, which apparently had a bug in it that caused this problem. Never had a problem with prior firmwares, so I just downgraded. Anyways, you might want to try taking your router/switch over there and seeing if things work better. Not saying this was the problem, but wanted to throw my experience into the situation before you tried messing with the OS.

[Crash2009]

Maybe give the PC a static IP so the xbox can find it after it reboots.