Vista - Media Center has never opened

My OS is V-home premium 64bit. I've owned this Dell for about 3 weeks and have never been able to open Media Center. When clicked, I get this error message:

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727\mscorwks.dll could not be loaded

I had a Dell Tech log into my computer to find "patches," etc. To no avail. His only advice was to restore back to new.

By the way, opening ehshell.exe gives me the exact same message.
I thought I had found the correct patch re: framework applications in the Win Knowledge Base. After a complex set of downloads I finally ended up with the same error message.

Is there something I can do short of full restore?

Hi yellowspring,


You can run SFC and also Checkdisk. You might have missing/corrupt files.

Here's how.
System Files - SFC Command

Check Disk - chkdsk

Thanks for your help, Airbot. First I ran Scandisk. It found corrupt files and corrected them. Unfortunately though, I received the same error message when I tried to open MC.

Then I ran the SFC. It also found corrupt files but said it could not fix them.


And so you know what happened when I tried to run the MC...nada.

Thanks for assisting me though. It appears that scandisk fixed some problems I didn't know I had!

If you or anyone else has another idea, I'm all ears/eyes. So far, my computer has already benefitted in ways I didn't realize.

Yours,
yellowspring

have you downloaded the latest .net framework redistributable? since it is one of the files that are not loading, Download details: .NET Framework 3.5

Thanks for the help MrNeeds. This was the same action I did before. But, hope springs eternal, so I tried again and received a message that there was an error in the installation...

See below

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 (x64) 'package': [2] Error: Installation failed for component Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 (x64) 'package'. MSI returned error code 1603
[01/04/09,12:37:16] WapUI: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 (x64) 'package' is not installed.

I'm not one who can decipher this kind of language...

Am I running out of options? Do I really need the Media Center?...just a thought!

Hi yellowspring,

Glad you got some problems fixed. No, you don't really need media center. It's not a necessary app. But it's up to you to decide if you ever need to use it. There is a Net uninstall tool that is supposed to help with the uninstallation of the Net framework. And then you could reinstall it but I've never used it so I personally wouldn't know if it helped or not. The question you have to ask yourself though is, how did all this corruption happen in the first place. Bad installation or uninstallation of something, using a Cleaner program that deleted/corrupted some important files,etc.


Aaron Stebner's WebLog : .NET Framework Cleanup Tool User's Guide