Windows 7: Media Center has taken control of my daughters laptop

If WHS idea did not work, go with the repair

Hmm, just tried both and they worked perfectly - means your system is really mucked up. I have to think. Richard's neurons work faster. Maybe he has another idea - LOL.

With my repair, you boot with a dvd. Did you try that?

And once you booted as Rich says, you could run Command Prompt and use the same commands as I suggested for the Run box. That works too. Just make sure you type it in exactly as posted. Command prompt is very unforgiving with typos.

The run scannow take me to WMC. I am about to try the Windows 7 DVD system repair. I will report back. Thanks so much for hanging with me here.

Try the DVD with WHS method. If no dice, go with my repair. It should work.

The DVD repair did not work. I did notice there was an option for system restore, so I am about to try that next, from the DVD.

Yes that is what you are suppose to see. Go for it.
The DVD does not fix, it allows you to get to repair options, Everything is going the way it should.

Got it to system restore from the DVD. Tried to restore it to yesterday. System Error, Did not work. It suggested I try to restore to an earlier date. I am restoing to day before yesterday now. I'll let you know.

go back 3 days before the problem started.