Sick of Media Center/Media Player

I can't understand why media center and media player have such issues. I have had problems with windows media players since I built my machine. I've been troubleshooting for about a year now and nothing works. The only real reason I have tried so hard to find an answer is I would like to use a remote to control my player since I use my system for everything including entertainment. at this point, in my opinion, windows should be on Fail Blog with the rest of the meat heads. "Watch me try and play an MP3..." FAIL!! what a joke...

Yes VLC will play almost everything, but there has to be a way to use a remote with another piece of software. Any suggestions?

Windows 7 x64, x58-Pro MOBO, i7 920, 6GB 1333 DDR3, Ati 4870 512MB, 2 SSD raid 0 (OS), 2 HDD raid 0.

I personally think that Windows Media Player and Media Center aren't that bad and I have learned how to cope with them and I still use those programs and I don't use third party players but there is something in your system that make them go bad cause they don't behave like that for no reason so I wouldn't immediately put the blame on Micro$oft. Do you remember installing anything that has anything to do with your media programs? Third party stuff, codecs?

Vertex - "Do you remember installing anything that has anything to do with your media programs? Third party stuff, codecs?"
Yes, I always install shark007 for windows 7. Already tried a reinstall of shark007. VLC has no trouble playing any of my library, the trouble being I cannot control vlc with the ir remote. DMHolt57 - that's a cool piece of software, I just have no need for that kind of phone.

I like windows media center's interface with streaming movies, tv, and my own library from one place when I want to sit back and use my system like a Theater. SFC /scannow found corrupt files and cannot repair them. Since WMC and WMP are the only parts of the system that seem to be affected I'm not too worried since this happens (corrupted files found with sfc) every install. Unless windows has trouble functioning in a raid, none of my tweaks have any affect on media so there shouldn't be a configuration issue. I'm still scratching my head. I read somewhere that my ati video drivers won't function so well in a windows system and nvidia does. So this fall I'm upgrading my video anyways so I'll get a 1G nvidia card instead.

Well, there is this small utility called FixWin. It has a few tools that can fix some issues with Windows Media Player and also a utility to flush, sort of reset Windows Media Center's database, maybe that can fix some issues. Its also has a link to launch SFC but as you said it detected errors but were not able to fix them.

http://www.thewindowsclub.com/repair...fixwin-utility

Also try to do a malware scan. There's a possibility that these problems are related to malware and people on this forum would recommend you to try a fully updated Malwarebytes. Good Luck.

Gave it a shot, but no dice. windows media Center still will not add anything to the movie library. what about microsoft EMET. is there a security setting that cannot be used with media player such as sehop, aslr, dep, and what not? I've been looking but haven't found any comments on whether or not certain settings work.

How about Windows Media Player, did it go any better now? Were you able to add movies in the movie library on Media Center before this problem occurred? Another option I would try is to disable then re-enable Windows Media Center.

Go to Start Menu, type Programs and Features, look at the left hand side panel and Turn Windows Features on or Off, there you see a list of Windows Features, one of which is Windows Media Center which is under Media Features. Uncheck Windows Media Center (you might do the same for Windows Media Player since you have issues with that as well), reboot the computer, re-enable it, reboot again and see if it does any better next time. If not, then it may be a damaged system file, Registry error or malware.