Over the past few days I have had a very strange occurrence. I would try to tune in Live TV and instead of live TV I would see the following screen:
For some reason Media Center could not find my tuners. I checked my tuners to see if they were still listed in Device Manager and they were. I tested my HD Homerun tuners and the TV signal was still coming in. So what could be the problem?
Next I checked my history under recorded TV for the shows that did not record and saw the following error message: “The Windows Media Center Receiver service stopped responding.” Now I had something to go on. I tried restarting the service and it would not restart. I then killed the process and restarted the service and like magic everything was working again.
I have no clue as to what happened. There is nothing that I can point to as recent software install/update. Looking at Windows Update there was an update on October 21 that may have something to do with but I am not sure.
I searched on the Green Button and it looks like I am not the only one seeing the problem. There is a possible solution in the post. I tried it out and not it’s just a wait and see. Anyone else seeing this?
UPDATE: Looks like I forgot to include this link in my original post: http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/p/78070/390896.aspx
My Network Project 
Yes, I've been experience the same thing and its been driving my wife crazy. The funny thing is, this was not happening in Windows 7 RC. To resolve the problem, I've been restarting my computer multiple times. Anyway I'm glad you made this post and I'm not the only one this has been happening too.
I tried the registry trick that is in the Green Button post I linked to and it seems to work for me. I don't think it's the ideal solution so I have posed the issue/question to a contact at Microsoft.
I had similar problems with my setup.
I use 2 HDHomeRuns.. the workaround is to disable the background scanner.
I was having the same issue everyday.. Since applying the workaround, I haven't had it once.
http://www.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7406
That is the fix I tried and so far so go. The question is what I am not getting by disabling the scanning.
Here's the answer from a Silicon Dust developer from when I asked that same question a few months ago.
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The background scanner runs a channel scan every few hours when idle looking for new channels. In my experience, it usually doesn't do anything helpful, but will occasionally cause duplicate channels to appear.
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I've had it disabled since August and haven't seen any issues.
Thanks Tom. I have tried the solution and so far so good.
I've tried the registry trick and its not working for me. Any suggestions of what I'm doing wrong?
Thanks for this post. I know for a fact that the signal scan has a chance to freeze. When I was configuring Windows 7 WMC for the first time, the signal scan got to 3 percent and froze (I went to bed allowing 6+hrs pass to make sure it wasn't a thorough scan). I got past that eventually, but I have been having the exact same problems as described in your post where I get the Tuner missing and unexpected failure to record. I will be trying this fix tonight. I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks.
I let 3 days pass with this fix in place. This fix has Media Center working as normal. Thanks again for this post.
jigga – did you reboot your computer after updating the registry?
Jammer,
Thanks for the reply. I re-checked the registry and realized I had made a mistake. I've been running WMC for a couple of days now without a tuner unavailable error.
Interestingly, I have been getting a error code 1535 error which results in some of my schedule recordings failing to record. Has anyone encounter that error?