I’ve had a very irritating problem with my new Windows 7 Media Center HTPC setup. I have 7MC set to load fullscreen on startup (as the PC is a dedicated HTPC), but something I changed at some point was causing the taskbar to show on top of Media Center (i.e. Media Center didn’t have window focus) and therefore my remote control didn’t work until using the mouse function to click on Media Center to refocus it (at which point the taskbar disappears).
The eventual solution to this problem was very strange, but entirely successful — simple change the windows theme back to the default windows aero theme. Not only did this solve my issue but it also reduced the startup time by about 5 seconds!
Cheers to NickW who posted this solution on the GreenButton forums
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