Media Center failing to install on nlite'd Windows MCE 2005

[fivegorillas]

Hi, I've been trying to get an nlite'd Windows Media Center Edition 2005 working but during the installation I get a popup telling me Media Center failed to install. After I dismiss the popup the installation completes normally and everything is fine except for Media Center. I checked to preserve Media Center in nlite but it still fails every time. Here's my lastsession.ini, any insight on what needs to be kept?

LAST SESSION.INI

Here is also the log produced during the installation.

MedCtrOC.txt

Thanks.

Edited November 27, 2010 by fivegorillas

[Sp0iLedBrAt]

Welcome to MSFN.

First of all, please tell us if your copy has one CD or two, and if two, hot did you use them in nLite?

The first thing that catches my eye, and can be known to cause problems (especially if you integrate a Service Pack) is you are using Vista or 7 on your host PC. nLite produces the best results on XP.

Cheers

[fivegorillas]

Welcome to MSFN.

First of all, please tell us if your copy has one CD or two, and if two, hot did you use them in nLite?

The first thing that catches my eye, and can be known to cause problems (especially if you integrate a Service Pack) is you are using Vista or 7 on your host PC. nLite produces the best results on XP.

Cheers

Hi, thanks. It's a one disc install with sp3 already integrated. I installed it without using nlite and everything was good so the disc should be fine. I'll try nlite this time on the freshly installed MCE and report back.

[johnhc]

Hi, thanks. It's a one disc install with sp3 already integrated. I installed it without using nlite and everything was good so the disc should be fine. I'll try nlite this time on the freshly installed MCE and report back.

fivegorillas, you have taken out too much. I recommend that you do not remove Administrator VB scripts. Also do not remove OOBE or you cannot activate your system. "Launch folder windows in a separate process" exposes a Windows bug and should be removed. There are posts here describing the problem if you are interested. Always start with a fresh copy of your CD files/folders and run nLite only once doing all your work. If your next test is unsuccessful, then I recommend you remove all your removals/tweaks and see if that works. Leave you driver and Unattended section. I also recommend you use a virtual system for testing. VMware Player, VirtualPC and VirtualBox are all free. BTW, how was SP3 integrated - after purchase of the CD, how? Enjoy, John.

[fivegorillas]

I went ahead and tried your suggestions, running nlite on xp and adding back some components. Still the same error. I then set the tweaks and options like "remove duplicate files" back to default and the install went through perfectly.

But when I tried to run Media Center ehshell.exe started complaining that dbgeng.dll was missing. Looking around it looks dbeng.dll deals with the debugging engine but I'm not sure what needs to be preserved so it's not removed. Dr Watson seems to be dependent on it as well but I think removing Dr Watson doesn't affect the dll.