My Media Center has been misbehaving a bit lately, much to my (and the family’s) annoyance.

First off, it the receiver started showing “tuner not available” errors. Restarting the machine would resolve the problem, but only temporarily. Installing the newer Hauppauge driver 7.9.1.28162 seems to have mostly fixed that (from the Hauppauge UK website). Along the way to resolving this, I also tried swapping the card into the other PCI Express slot, just in case that helped.

Then the Microsoft Remote stopped working. The display on the front of the Antec case said something like “bad command” for any button I pressed. Opening up the iMON software, I enabled sounds for invalid commands, and sure enough every button press resulted in the warning sound. Bizarre! The batteries in the controller were still fresh, so the only thing I could think of was to find the original IR receiver that came with the controller and plug that in. I’d never used it as the Antec case came with a receiver built in. In any case (ha ha), that seemed to resolve that one.

Then a few hours later, the sound spontaneously muted. Attempts to increase the volume worked briefly, then the volume would automatically wind back down to zero/mute. Alternatively, it rolled right up to 50 (100%). Rebooting and that one went away – not sure what’s going on there.

So I’m keeping a close eye on things. Maybe the MCE is feeling jealous that the XBox 360 is getting some of it’s screen time 😀