I see a lot of creative work being done to get around the problem introduced by the latest critical patch. As people have accurately surmized, the media center remote actually alternates remote codes when a button is pressed. The media center IR driver can use this fact to debounce key presses. The effectively causes the behavior most folks are seeing in that the pronto (and likely other learning remotes) learn only one of the two codes and the IR driver will only accept it once because it is waiting for the alternate code so it can be sure a 2nd key press was made.

The good news is that there's a registry entry to enable/disable this debouncing behavior in the IR driver. All you need to do is disable it and the pronto and other universal remotes should work fine.

The registry key to disable it is

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\idIr\Remotes\745a17a0-74d3-11d0-b6fe-00a0c90f57da]

You should see a DWORD key called "EnableDebounce". You'll notice it's set to 1. Set it to 0 to disable debouncing.

You'll need to reboot the computer to have this registry change take effect.

That's it. All should be fine now. No need to mess with IRBUS.SYS or other even stranger contortions.

--- Bill

Will the original remote still work since it does toggle?

After setting the registry, does it then accept either of the two commands output by any button as the same?

yes.

You rule, billwagstaff. As a recent purchaser of a Media Center PC and an owner of a MX-500 universal remote I'm happy to say your simple fix removed the pain from transferring the media center remote's codes into my MX-500.

Thanks.

re this not meaning to sound stupid but onlu just got PC.How do I actually do this on my PC?

Start->Run

Enter Regedit.exe Click 'OK'

Drill down through the explorer tree until you find

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\idIr\Remotes\745a17a0-74d3-11d0-b6fe-00a0c90f57da]

or something similar.

Then, in the right-hand pane, double click on 'EnableDebounce'. In the resulting window, change the value from 0x00000001 (1 - decimal) to 0x00000000 (0 - decimal)

Click OK.

Close Regedit

Restart your system.

Voila, you are done.

I might suggest "Windows XP for Dummies" or some other beginning book that discusses managing your system. Although XP is pretty user friendly, it can only help if you understand the underlying technologies and how your system fits together.

The registry is an integral part of the Windows OSes. Understanding what it is, and how to modify it can help resolve many system problems.

great thanks alot it has worked much apreciate it

Additionally, if you need clean IR Codes for the MCE commands, I do have an Excel Spreadsheet posted in the files area. You will need to dig a bit for it, but it is there.

Since MCE uses two RC6a codesets, if you turn off the key debounce in the registry, you are probably better off using all the codes from one codeset. If you "Learn" from your MCE Remote, there is no way to know or to control which codeset you learn, and for instance, if you need to repeat your "learn", the first one will be one codeset and when you press the key the second time, it will be the other.

In addition to the spreadsheet, I believe somebody also discovered another undocumented command at code #80. You can use the IR Code Generators referenced in other threads to create the code for #80, or any other one not listed in the spreadsheet.

Big Hint!! ALWAYS create a backup copy of your Registry before futzing around with it, especially if you are inexperienced with Windows' advanced techniques.

Go to Microsoft's web article via the link below for the "How To" details to create a Registry back up and to restore it if the you don't like the results of any changes you might make...

[Link: support.microsoft.com]

Hope this helps...

You mean you shouldn't just delete the files if you think you've screwed up?!? =P

I was so grateful for this solution, and then my hard drive crashed (unrelated to the change). So, HP sends me a new hard drive and OS installation disks, and as I rebuild, there are no registry keys like the ones mentioned here. Actually, I had originally found this solution in ...HidIr... not ...idIr, but it worked before.

So, I have a buddy who has the same machine and I asked him to export the keys in the HidIr and I imported them, changed debounce to 0, but I am still SOL. What is very weird to me is that the remote that came with the PC worked just fine before I imported those keys, implying that there must be something in the registry that supports that device, but I couldn't find anything using various searches.

Do you have any other suggestion for me to solve this problem? I would really appreciate it.

You might try to contact HP and explain that they sent you the wrong software or incomplete software. See what they can do to fix your problem.

Thanks for this info
I drilled down and got as far as Services
there is no idIr in my reg. ??? Tried a search for idIr and Remotes but came up with nothing

Any idea what I can do now?
ANy info would be much appreciate
Marc Pearce

Did you look for HidIr?

CJ

Better yet, do a Search in RegEdit looking for Debounce or whatever the value was above. This way, you can find more than one occurrence should it exist.

Lyndel