Well there are two registry entries relating to one group policy setting that specifically says whether or not media center is allowed to run or not, but not whether it is installed or not. The third entry just specifies whether it is allowed to run through program access and defaults, which is not an available option in server 2008 under the add/remove control panel applet (there might be a way to enable those options), so I found the registry entry for that instead. the winsxs files and folders installed ok after i took ownership of them, althought the registry entry regarding "LocalService" and "LocalServiceNoNetwork" needs to have entries modified in the registry by hand, otherwise you end up overwriting other entries listed in that key. I tried to automate the ownership of files in my batch file using takeown and icacls, but it would not work without me doing so manually through the explorer menus. The policy reg entries I found so far are:For per-user settings available in the User Configuration tab: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\WindowsMediaCenter] MediaCenter For per-machine settings available in the Computer Configuration tab: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\WindowsMediaCenter] MediaCenter Both should have a setting of 0 (a setting of 1 disables media center) The other registry entry I found that causes the error is this one: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Media\Windows Media Center\InstallInfo] IconsVisible If the IconsVisible value is set to 0, then Windows Media Center will not run. If there are other entries, I have not found the, yet. There were a few entries that I had to remove from your reg file so that it would import successfully, I isolated the entries down to the ones that would cause it to fail, I can post them here if necessary. Has anyone looked into the setup inf's from a vista install? Perhaps they can provide some insight as well.