Microsoft MCE Remote - Vista and newer

[Pharmboy]

as crazy as this sounds and i am sure you may have read it already...


uninstall the service (you have to run eg as admin)


uninstall all of the drivers for the remote.

anything labeled with the ehome as well as anything labeled with USBCIR

do this from device manager without unplugging your receiver/blaster

reboot your computer. while your computer is rebooting press any button on the remote while it is aimed at the receiver. and keep doing this until windows fully loads. and then keep doing it..

you should hear 3+ driver successful installation chimes.

there is a glitch in how some remotes work. they go into a "sleep" mode before windows gets the chance to fully install the drivers. and it looks as tho everything is ok. but it really isn't

give it a shot. it may work for ya

Recently I upgraded my HTPC to the 64bit version of windows 7 to utilize my 8gb of memory. Actually I did a fresh install and reloaded all of my multimedia programs. After installing the latest version of EG and the MCE plugin (win 8.1 and later) I had problems with getting double key press on certain buttons. I recall several years back that I had the same issue and finally was able to get to work but couldn't remember what I had done. So after reading this forum and following kgschlosser's suggestion all was well. I'm not sure if it was just magic and mirrors, or there is an issue with the driver not getting loaded because of a timeout problem with the remote. At any rate I am thankful for this suggestion because it works for me.

I think that's what I did successfully the last time I had the "double keypress" problem (after a previous windows 10 update), but the problem reappeared yesterday after windows 10 creators update, but today I didn't manage to resolve it (I tried several times)...

[loveleejohn]

I'm still having a really weird issue with the service failing to run when eventghost is first started. I am forced to manually uninstall and reinstall the service several times to get it started. It seems to run fine after doing this. Just wanted to let the coders know about this behavior. I'm using 0.5rc and running on a 64bit windows 10 box with an MCE remote like this one http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-MEDIA-CENTER ... 3d385a67bb.

[kgschlosser]

the service starting has nothing to do with EG. it is an actual windows service. what i would do is set the service to a delayed startup you can do this by going to administrative tools /services. the delayed startup would let windows finish loading most all other services. also check your windows event viewer and find out what is causing the startup error. and paste it in here.

[kgschlosser]

@Pharmboy

go to this link http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usbdeview-x64.zip this is a piece of software i absolutely love. a must have with USB. just because you "uninstall" a driver via the device manager doesn't mean it actually gets uninstalled. this piece of software allows you to see everything that is installed even if it is not in use. there could be something stuck somewhere. run the program (it's portable) and then unplug your receiver and watch which ones turn gray.. those are the ones you are going to uninstall.. DO NOT REMOVE THE FILES. then follow the above procedure with rebooting and what have you give that a shot and see what happens. and let me look into another program that will give a more detailed overview of the driver installation process.

[Pharmboy]

@Pharmboy

go to this link http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usbdeview-x64.zip this is a piece of software i absolutely love. a must have with USB. just because you "uninstall" a driver via the device manager doesn't mean it actually gets uninstalled. this piece of software allows you to see everything that is installed even if it is not in use. there could be something stuck somewhere. run the program (it's portable) and then unplug your receiver and watch which ones turn gray.. those are the ones you are going to uninstall.. DO NOT REMOVE THE FILES. then follow the above procedure with rebooting and what have you give that a shot and see what happens. and let me look into another program that will give a more detailed overview of the driver installation process.

My last post lacked informations, I had already used the program and it didn't show anything particular (only 1 "line"). After a reboot, when I press continuously a key, the LED on the receiver is always on except for a fraction of second during windows loading, but nothing special happens (no device detected or driver installation sound).

I managed to resolve (temporarily, until next reboot) part of the double keypress problem by uninstalling the 3 items in the keyboard section of the device manager : it works for the numbers, "up", "down" and "OK" buttons, but I still have double keypress for the "replay" and "skip"...

[loveleejohn]

the service starting has nothing to do with EG. it is an actual windows service. what i would do is set the service to a delayed startup you can do this by going to administrative tools /services. the delayed startup would let windows finish loading most all other services. also check your windows event viewer and find out what is causing the startup error. and paste it in here.

Here's the most frequent error that appears in event viewer;
"The AlternateMceIrService service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this 1 time(s)."

This occurs intermittently and is not accompanied by any additional errors.

[kgschlosser]

ok so you will want to open the event. and click on the xml tab. and copy and paste the data so we can see what exactly the error is.

[Jinded]

I managed to resolve (temporarily, until next reboot) part of the double keypress problem by uninstalling the 3 items in the keyboard section of the device manager : it works for the numbers, "up", "down" and "OK" buttons, but I still have double keypress for the "replay" and "skip"...

Hey just wanted to say thanks for figuring this part out. On my end the only devices I have to remove to get rid of the double keypress are:
Keyboards > Microsoft eHome Remote Control Keyboard keys
Human Interface Devices > Microsoft eHome Infrared Transceiver

I found a way to assign removing these devices to a button in EventGhost, and I'm sure you could use a similar method to run a command at Windows startup:

1) Download and install the Windows Driver Kit at the link below. As part of this, it will install a tool called DevCon that lets you run Device Manager commands from the console:
https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=845980
2) Open the Device Manager > Keyboards > double-click "Microsoft eHome Remote Control Keyboard keys" > Details tab > Device instance path
3) Note the value of this path, something like "HID\IRDEVICE..."
4) Create a new Action in EventGhost that runs a command
5) For the Command Line, use the following:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\Tools\x64\devcon.exe" remove @HID\IRDEVICE...

Where the value after @ is the value noted in step 3. You can also use * as a wildcard, for example my command looks like this:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\Tools\x64\devcon.exe" remove @HID\IRDEVICE*004

6) Uncheck "Disable parsing of string"
7) Check "Run as Administrator"

Now when you run this Action, it will remove that device until the next reboot. You'll need to repeat this for each eHome device you want to remove.

[loveleejohn]

ok so you will want to open the event. and click on the xml tab. and copy and paste the data so we can see what exactly the error is.

Been so busy lately. Almost forgot to post this.

Code: Select all

- <Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
- <System>
  <Provider Name="Application Error" /> 
  <EventID Qualifiers="0">1000</EventID> 
  <Level>2</Level> 
  <Task>100</Task> 
  <Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords> 
  <TimeCreated SystemTime="2017-05-23T00:08:38.277242700Z" /> 
  <EventRecordID>149149</EventRecordID> 
  <Channel>Application</Channel> 
  <Computer>unknown</Computer> 
  <Security /> 
  </System>
- <EventData>
  <Data>AlternateMceIrService.exe</Data> 
  <Data>0.0.0.0</Data> 
  <Data>4eda3c4c</Data> 
  <Data>ntdll.dll</Data> 
  <Data>10.0.14393.479</Data> 
  <Data>5825887f</Data> 
  <Data>c0000374</Data> 
  <Data>00000000000f8283</Data> 
  <Data>88c</Data> 
  <Data>01d2d34de650a40f</Data> 
  <Data>C:\ProgramData\EventGhost\plugins\MceRemote_Vista\AlternateMceIrService.exe</Data> 
  <Data>C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll</Data> 
  <Data>23d9ca0f-2a66-4ef6-9351-e06a4f93c5b1</Data> 
  <Data /> 
  <Data /> 
  </EventData>
  </Event>

[kgschlosser]

that would figure there is no event ID associated with the event.

have you tried uninstalling the Alternate IR service rebooting and then reinstalling it?

remember this has to be done while running EG as an administrator

[VANQ]

@VANQ: Are you still using XP? Because for Vista and later there is a new one: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=6044

I'm using Windows 10.
Okay.
Question: this latest version of the plug-in is in the Latest release: EventGhost 0.4.1.r1722, Feb 03 2016?

Or it is necessary to install separately? And how to install this plugin?

P.S. Excuse me. English is not my native language.

[kgschlosser]

no the latest version of the plugin is not in EG it will be in that link that was posted.

and also my suggestion to you since you are on Windows 10 is to upgrade to EG 0.5 it has been updated to run better with windows 10. you will still have to download the latest version of the plugin from that link.

[CrazyTimes]

Is there a known issue with this plugin regarding not being able to learn IR codes?

[Sem;colon]

Not with the latest version (from the first post)
Do you have issues with it?

[CrazyTimes]

I am, or was anyway.

When you mentioned using the latest version attached to this thread I did a sanity check to make sure I was current. While I had been using the 1.1.4 installer and assumed I was up-to-date, however checking within EG showed a much older version of the plugin.

I wasn't sure what was going on until I realized the installer was loading the plugin into the ProgramData directory instead of using/overwriting the old version in /Program\Files/.

EG apparently gives priority to the /Program\Files/ directory in this case.

Perhaps these egplugin files should do a version/directory check, especially if the install directory is going to be changing.

Anyway working now!

Thank you.