During the last stage of configuring the card, my MCPC had to download a new PlayReady update. It kept failing and throwing a very non-descriptive error message. We did some research and after trying each of the other options that seemed to fix some people’s error and striking out each time, I had a bright idea:
I decided to install the Zune software and log in with my ZunePass account. I figured that if I could play a song from the Zune service, I could rule out a DRM issue. It turns out that I was unable to play a song and got a similar error. Doing some searching about that error brought up a DRM Reset tool that Microsoft released. Be careful because this will wipe out all DRM on the machine so if there were any playable files before, they won’t play any longer.
I ran that tool and was able to get a little farther with the error, but it would still not let me play a Zune file. I did some more searching and found another tool that Microsoft released, the Playready client setup. After selecting the x64 version and installing it, I could play a Zune file!
Download the PlayReady 32-bit Windows installer here.
Download the PlayReady 64-bit Windows installer here.
The next step was to get Media Center to see it. We started it up again and proceeded through the configuration and saw the same message about installing the update. My heart started to sink again as I selected the install button, but it didn’t error out this time! It ran all the way through to the end and we were able to verify that the cable channels were working.
Thanks Dale for being patient while I figured out this issue. Hopefully it will come in handy for you if you see it again in the future!