Program blocked error

"This show requires a mandatory PIN code. Please set this in the parental controls menu"

Problem is, I am in Canada and I have no such menu for TV.

This usually happens in Unrated TV programs or Children's shows.

If I were to set a PIN in the general parental controls, entering the code when prompted does nothing.

I've tried Google, it gives me nothing.

This recently started happening. I did not do any updates of any kind. I am using Windows 7 Ultimate, 32 bit

It's driving me bonkers. I want to watch Spongebob Dammit! :)

Thank you, and it's great to be here.

I have also run into this same problem. A Google search of "mandatory PIN" Windows 7 Media Centre finds this as the only post every made on this subject!!

Has anyone found an answer??

My daughter has a severe disability and her Media Centre PC is her lifeline to the outside world. Any help would be most appreciated.

Hello to the both of you.
I have a few questions, if you're willing to divulge them.

Do you have the Windows Live Family Safety (part of the Windows Live Essentials) installed?
If so, then have you set up some form of parental control?
If not, then have either of you played with any of the settings to do with any form of security? (From Local Policies to firewalls)

Try following this tutorial to set them, then reverse your steps to unset them.

If this doesn't help then I'll have a play around with my settings

I wanted to do some additional testing before responding. And thank you MagicTallGuy for trying to help.

Media Centre with an external USB TV tuner was tried on another computer, with a fresh install of Windows 7. It works perfectly, so there is something wierd happening on my daughter's machine.

I went through the TV setup a second time and was able to see TV stations using Guide for about 10 seconds, then the message started appearing again. Windows Live has not been installed

Again. If anyone has a suggesion, please post it.

As I could not find any other possible thing to try, Windows 7 was re-insallted.

Guess what. Now Windows Media Player works fine.

Heh, well that's one way of fixing it!
I would've suggested installing Windows Live Essentials and seeing if that fixed the issue next.