MCE services came back (3 Viewers)

[Statick]

i was running MP earlier today and we had a power cut
after power came back up, i ran MP again and now it seems the MCE services are back

pressing the green button to load MP also loaded MCE, and the directional arrows operate twice when pressed once.

i'm running IR server suite and the "disable MCE services" option is still enabled. after unchecking and rechecking it, MCE no longer loads with the green button, but the problem with directional arrows remains.

i'm running MP1 RC4 and latest version of IR server. i do have MCE replacement installed but it didn't seem to work on my system (the "configure" button on the first page causes a .net crash), nor indeed did it seem necessary as IR server suite does everything i need, so it's disabled and will likely be uninstalled soon.

(incidentally, i'm curious as to what the purpose of MCE replacement is, when the MP controller for IR server includes MCE remote mappings, surely this is the same thing?)

IR server has been working fine for the last week, only since this power cut has there been a problem.

any ideas ?

ok here's some more info :

the MCE services themselves are not enabled.
however the remote still loads MCE with the green button, and still gives me double clicks. disabling the IR input service should mean the remote no longer functions - but something still receives it. even with MP shut down, windows still responds to remote controls (up/down arrows scroll windows etc), despite there being no service running which should do this (the HID service is disabled, all MCE services disabled, and IR input service disabled).

i'm running XP MCE 2005, it's a fairly clean install only a few weeks old, with very little software on it. MP1 RC4 is running, and latest build of IR server.

help !

 

[Statick]

right i think i've solved it. the behaviour seemed a little random at first but i managed to figure out the pattern :

windows would boot and MP would auto-load. menus at this stage working fine with single clicks off the remote.
i'd close MP and do something in windows (most likely ripping a DVD), then use the green button to start MP again - i have the IR translator set up to do this, and this has been working for the last week or so. however since this problem started the other night, at this point the green button would now load windows MCE instead. so i'd close that down, and go into the IR server configuration to confirm that "disable MCE services" is checked, and it is. the IR input service would then restart, and after doing so the next time the green button is pressed it correctly loads MP.

i've also tried this last step without loading the IR server configuration, and instead manually restarting the IR input service, and this also leads to the same result - the next time the green button is pressed, it correctly loads MP.

however now it suffers from the double-click problem. this seems to arise from whenever windows MCE is started - prior to this the remote functions correctly, after MCE is loaded the double-click problem begins, and persists until reboot. the windows MCE for some reason will start off the green button instead of MP, despite "disable MCE services" being checked.

i've also confirmed the following, in each case the setting appeared correct, but to make sure in each instance where possible i've switched the setting, rebooted, switched it back, rebooted again, and the problem still persisted.

in IR service configuration "disable MCE services" is enabled
in MP remote configuration "enable MCE remote" is disabled
in IR MP control plugin, my remote is loaded and correctly mapped, all settings as they should be

and still the same - before MCE is loaded, the remote works fine, but if i close MP then try and re-open it using the green button (as per my translator mappings, which were previously working and had not changed) MCE loads instead, and begins the double-click problem, presumably that MP receives instructions from both the IR input service and the standard MCE driver.

one thing that crossed my mind, was perhaps when MP runs at startup, before the problem begins, maybe MP was using the standard MCE driver to run the remote, and that only after the IR service was restarted would the IR MP control plugin begin to work as well, causing the clicks to come from two places. to check this, i tried some of my custom remote mappings in MP before the problem began, and they did work. which means that upon first load, MP with IR input service was operating correctly, the mappings i tried are definitely not in the MCE standard layout. but for some reason windows would still insist upon loading MCE off the green button after MP was closed.

in the end, i went into computer services, and although all the MCE services were shown as "stopped" they were also shown as loading "automatically". i switched these to "disabled", rebooted, and the problem went away. i also disabled a process from loading on startup called something like "ehometray" (i forget the exact spelling but it looked like something to do with the windows ehome driver i'm using for the remote), i did this before manually disabling the services and although it didn't make a difference at the time, it may still have contributed to solving it.

 

[Das Hammer]

Thanks for all the info. It helped me confirm I had done things the correct way.

BTW: the file you are talking about is ehtray.exe. This runs at startup on MCEXP, but you can prevent it from doing this by running "msconfig" in the start-Run menu. Uncheck it on the startup tab. If this file is not disabled, MCE will start when "the green button" is pressed.