As you might be knowing, Media Center is not a part of the Windows operating system any more. Microsoft decided to remove it and will not maintain it for future Windows versions. Many users are not happy with this situation. If you switched to Windows 10, you might be interested in obtaining genuine Windows Media Center for Windows 10 Anniversary Update.
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Many users do not even know that the primary purpose of Media Center was watching and recording TV when TV tuner hardware was present in your computer. It was often misunderstood for simply being a fullscreen media player. Since there is nothing else from Microsoft that is a substitute for the TV functionality, the loss of Media Center came as a shock to many home theatre PC (HTPC) enthusiasts. The reason it was discontinued was very low usage. Many people have adopted the "cord cutting" phenomenon and dumped their TV subscriptions in favor of internet-based subscriptions like Netflix or they resort to piracy since almost anything is readily available on the internet.
Earlier, we covered previously how the Windows Media Center issue can be partially solved in Windows 10 by using alternative apps as mentioned here: "Windows Media Center for Windows 10 – here is a solution". Some of those apps only did some things better than Media Center but being able to record TV, including encrypted, copy-protected content with a cable card tuner, and pause, rewind and fast forward live TV with a gorgeous Microsoft-designed interface was truly unique. You could also add infinite storage by adding a few huge hard drives and you had integration with the media library collections on your PC.
Well, here is how you can get the genuine Windows Media Center for Windows 10 Anniversary Update.
- Download the file archive from this website: Download Windows Media Center for Windows 10.
- Unpack its contents to any desired folder.
- If you are using Windows 10 64-bit, go to folder WMC64, otherwise go to the folder WMC86. See How to determine if you are running 32-bit Windows or 64-bit.
- Right click the file named "Installer" and select Run as administrator from its context menu.
- Wait till the process is done:
- Restart Windows 10.
- Now, go to Start menu - Windows Accessories - Windows Media Center. Enjoy the application. Tip: see how to navigate apps by alphabet in Windows 10 Start menu.
Enjoy:
To uninstall the Windows Media Center for Windows 10 package, use the included "Uninstaller.cmd" file.
Credits go to all participants of the following MDL thread.
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Thank you so much! I had realized that WMC wouldn’t launch with the old method of side-loading on the Insider builds of Windows 10. This is amazing.
Yep, it works.
too bad Windows Media Center is not a Microsoft anymore! :(
Using the latest zip file and instructions: after a successful test rights command, when I run the installer as administrator, two windows open sequentially but disappear in less than a second and no installation takes place. Help?
the problem seems to be “path not found”. Help…
I installed the anniversary update but media center can’t be opened. I reinstalled it following the instructions above, but when I click windows media center icon, nothing happens. I tried to uninstall and re8nstall it many times, although the installation is completed and successful, i still can’t open media center. P)ease help.
It looks as thought the exitutable (ehshell.exe) is not being installed after the anniversary update was brought in. I’ve been trying to see if there was a work around but alas nothing yet. If I can’t get it to work soon, it looks like a reinstall of windows 7 is in order.
Hi Jason,
I had the same issues, the home theatre PC had issues, but the bedroom one didn’t. I found errors in the event log, but no searching around found any help, so I starting poking around.
I noticed in the troubleshooting it referred to backing up the path “C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\eHome”. So i zipped up a copy, uninstalled MC, deleted the directory tree and then reinstalled, it’s currently scanning the TV channels now…
HTH.
Hi Brenda, I tried as you said, but it still doesn’t work. First, I can’t delete ehome directory completely. Second, after I uninstalled and reinstalled media center, still cant run media center. I even located the file c:\windows\ehome\eshell.exe, double clicked it but nothing happened.
Then I tried it on my another win 10 laptop, and it works smoothly.
I had to do a clean reinstallation of windows 10, and it is working now.
new windows 10 Install tried to install Windows media center get error; 0x800f081e