You've Got to be Kidding Me...

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About a week before I left for PDC my XBox 360 gave me the 3 flashing red lights of death.  While the console itself was out of warranty this particular problem they will still fix for free.  While annoyed I’d have to wait 2-3 weeks to beat Darth Vader in “The Force Unleashed” I was able to quickly use the online support request form to have them send me shipping materials to ship the XBox in for repair. 

As luck would have it the repair took less than a week (not surprising since they just sent me a refurbished replacement) and the console made it back home while I was out at PDC.  When I got home I hooked up the console and finished dealing out a cold plate of revenge on the Sith Lord.  While gaming was back to normal (well, almost…from time to time there seem to be stutters in the game that I don’t recall having before…) I needed to re-establish the link between the XBox and my 2005 Media Center PC.

When I ran through the setup application on the PC I got the following error:

“There is a problem with the installation of Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005”

It went on to say I should uninstall the Media Center Update and then reinstall.  Nice of it to tell me WHICH update it was referring to .  A quick Google search later and I was looking at the following KB article on Microsoft support: “Error message when you try to install a program for the XBox 360 Media Center Extender in Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 with Service Pack 3: “There is a problem with the installation of Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005"” (KB 954622).  That definitely looked like what I was experiencing.

The KB article indicates that the issue is that when XP SP3 was installed a specific registry setting was removed.  The XBox 360 extender setup application was looking for that setting.  It then gives three options to correct the issue:

  1. Install a specific update referenced by another KB article.

  2. Temporarily Uninstall SP3

  3. Manually add the registry setting.

You’ve got to be kidding me!?  Temporarily uninstall a service pack?!  How long would that take?  What else would that screw up? 

I ended up adding the registry setting, which worked like a charm and took less than 3 seconds since they even provided you the text to add the key directly from the Run command.  Seriously, why was temporarily removing the SP even an option?  It makes me wonder if the update that is option 1 simply is an installer that adds the registry key.