media center & using your PC

I had a question regarding these two instances. With Windows XP Media Center, it seemed easier for my PC to run the Media Center on the secondary screen, and i was able on my primary monitor to surf the web, type a paper, etc. And the switching between the two monitors with minimal trouble.

I like the functionality of Media Center and i like using Windows 7, but i would like to know why it is so difficult to try and use my PC while media center is running. It wasn't hard in XP MCE for me to do both. It seems as though that whenever i try to use my PC while Media Centre is running it won't let me (in both Vista and 7). When it does, i can do it for a little bit until the mouse decides to jump to the media center again. Please can anyone shed some light of anyone has the same issue and/or knows why this happens?

Yeah in full screen it wants to own the mouse. If you make it windowed, then stretch it as big as you can it's fine.

It might have something to do with your system RAM and CPU....not enough. Definitely upgrade your RAM to the maximum. The CPU might be a little on the under size for dual functionality of multiple apps and WMC but with the upgade in RAM should help a lot.

Thanks for your advice Desslock - it worked for the most part.

Bassfisher6522 - The issue i don't think is just the machine's specs itself. I am running a single core processor Intel Xeon , but its is over 3 Ghz, and the system memory is 3 GB. I do use a dedicated graphics card, a ATI Radeon 4350 HD. I had a friend that had similar specs running Windows 7 but the processor is a Core 2 Duo running at 2.6 Ghz, similar graphics card, and same amount of RAM. The same thing happened that the media center makes it hard to try to do other tasks on the pc when the media center is running (like the mouse keeps jumping screens while i try to, for example, surf the web). The performance is not the issue, its the fact that it seems media center wants to take primary control. so whenever i minimize my web browser, it immediately jumps back to the MC.

On my personal laptop, with Intel Extreme 2-64 MB shared w/ 1 GB of DDR 333 memory, 1.5 Ghz Pentium M 1MB L2 cache, S-Video out to my TV, can do both (w. Windows 7 Media Centre), but again the media center makes it hard to jump from the secondary display to primary. Also once i am able to surf the web it will frequently jump back to media center. I think judging from all 3 machines, i think Media Center will take over the computer no matter what since it is fully integrated into the OS rather than the add-on for XP-MCE. With the latter of the two, i found that it didnt give me headaches jumping back between screens and doing things on my PC while the MC is running.

For my personal laptop however, i did not use a PC Tuner card since it did not come with one (6 yr old laptop). I played a video file and then tried to jump screen to go to Firefox browser. the pointer kept jumping screens and the pointer would get "trapped" on that secondary monitor. Thanks for your advice, but i did check out the hardware and compared with another computer. I appreciate the help and thoughts!

Yeah it's not PC performance. I have an i5-750, 4GB of DDR3 1600mHz RAM, and a GT220 vid card with 1GB of DDR3, and I experience the same.

thanks for your reply. i was sure of it, but since software and hardware in computers change so rapidly, i was not sure if it was a performance/hardware issue, or if it was simply b/c Windows puts media center as a top priority so no matter what the mouse pointer will jump to media center's screen, and go to that application.

I was thinking also that it seemed as though MS built the media center as also an interface layer for Windows so that it is strictly a media center and nothing else (pending if media center is running or not).

I thought i was just crazy that i found it hard to switch and do tasks in windows vista and windows 7. then i thought about maybe using a dual core processor, but my friend had the same issue. Thanks again!