1Solution to Media Center Library Error

A couple of days ago I star­ted get­ting an error on my HTPC when I tried to change lib­rary loc­a­tions — either adding or remov­ing. Media Cen­ter shows the error which says “A neces­sary com­pon­ent of win­dows media cen­ter did not start prop­erly. Restart win­dows media cen­ter”. I under­stand this error can also affect Media Cen­ter Extenders

Some googling res­ul­ted in about 30 links. It seems this error can be caused by a vari­ety of prob­lems which I will attempt to list below in case the solu­tion that worked for me does­n’t work for you. Even­tu­ally, thanks to an anonym­ous poster on win­dows experts, I solved my prob­lem by run­ning Win­dows Media Cen­ter as admin­is­trat­or, going into the edit lib­rary set­tings, quit­ting back out and rerun­ning as normal.

If for some reas­on this does­n’t work for you, here are a list of oth­er options that oth­er people have found helpful

1. Unin­stall oth­er apps which seem to interfere…

• Zune
• Nero
• iTunes

2. Check that the appro­pri­ate ser­vices are run­ning and set to automatic…

• Click Start, type “services.msc” (without quo­ta­tion marks) and press enter
• Check the fol­low­ing ser­vices are star­ted and that their star­tup type is Automatic:

• Cryp­to­graph­ic Services
• Port­able Device Enu­mer­at­or Service
• Win­dows Audio
• Win­dows Driver Found­a­tion — User-mode Driver Framework
• Win­dows Media Play­er Net­work Shar­ing Service
• Win­dows Media Cen­ter Ser­vice Launcher

3. Switch Media Play­er to the x64 ver­sion by default (64bit Win­dows only)

• Click start, type “cmd”, right click on the search res­ult and select run as administrator
• In the com­mand prompt type unregmp2.exe /SwapTo:64
• Then type exit to quit the com­mand window

4. Re-register 3 required dll’s

• Click start, type “cmd”, right click on the search res­ult and select run as administrator
• In the com­mand prompt type each of the fol­low­ing lines
• regsvr32 jscript.dll
• regsvr32 vbscript.dll
• regsvr32 wmp.dll
• Then type exit to quit the com­mand window

5. Clear Media Cen­ter and Media Play­er Libraries

• Click on start type “%systemdrive%\ProgramData\Microsoft\eHome”
• Delete mediacenterdatastore.db
• Click on start, type “%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Media Player”
• Delete all files and folders

6. Repair Media Player

• Click start, type “cmd”, right click on the search res­ult and select run as administrator
• In the com­mand prompt type “unregmp2 /UpdateWMP”
• Then type exit to quit the com­mand window

7. Repair sys­tem files

• Click start, type “cmd”, right click on the search res­ult and select run as administrator
• In the com­mand prompt type “sfc /scannow”
• Then type exit to quit the com­mand window

8. Rein­stall Media Center

• Open con­trol panel
• pro­grams and features
• Turn win­dows fea­tures on or off
• Untick Media Cen­ter and click ok
• When unin­stall is done, retick media cen­ter and click ok to reinstall

9. Try sys­tem restore

• Click on start
• Type “sys­tem restore” and press enter
• Fol­low the wizard