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Suggestions for guide download errors in Media Center caused by the BITS service

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As I have previously written here, there have been some guide download problems in Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 after applying  Update Rollup 2. 

How to diagnose guide download errors

You can use the following steps to look at the Application event log to try to determine the root cause of the guide download failure:

  1. Click on the Start menu, choose Run and type eventvwr.exe
  2. Open the Application event log
  3. Find any errors or warnings with the source name of Media Center Scheduler

If you find that the errors are caused by the Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) not being detected as installed or being configured incorrectly, the following sets of steps can be used to resolve the issues in most cases.

How to fix BITS configuration errors

Various errors can occur when BITS interfaces are not registered or the registry settings are corrupted.

To fix this error, repair the BITS service by using the following steps:

  1. Download and install the Windows XP SP2 support tools
  2. Click on the Start menu, choose Run and type cmd
  3. Run "C:\Program Files\Support Tools\bitsadmin.exe" /util /repairservice /force from the command prompt

Note: the above command line assumes that you installed the XP SP2 support tools to the default location. You will need to adjust the path to bitsadmin.exe as appropriate if you installed the support tools to a non-default path

How to enable the BITS service if it is disabled

This error occurs when the BITS service is disabled, does not exist, has been deleted from the services application, was stopped while download was in progress, or if any service that BITS depends on failed or was deleted.

To fix this error, enable the BITS service by using the following steps:

  1. Click on the Start menu, choose Run and type services.msc
  2. In the list of services, right-click Background Intelligent Transfer Service, and then click Properties
  3. In the Startup type list, select Manual and then click OK

If these steps do not resolve the problem, you may need to enable the services that BITS depends on by doing the following:

  1. Click on the Start menu, choose Run and type services.msc
  2. In the list of services, right-click Background Intelligent Transfer Service, and then click Properties
  3. In the Background Intelligent Transfer Service Properties dialog box, click the Dependencies tab
  4. For each service listed under This service depends on the following system components, select Manual in the Startup type list and then click OK to enable the service

Comments

  • Anonymous
    July 29, 2006
    PingBack from http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/articles/487537.aspx

  • Anonymous
    November 04, 2006
    This article serves as a central location for all links to troubleshooting documentation that has been

  • Anonymous
    February 20, 2007
    I hope I can ask a question here. I have BITS set to AUTOMATIC and STARTED. When Media Center Guide Update runs it changes BITS from AUTOMATIC to MANUAL but leaves it still RUNNING. So the next time I re-boot BITS since it is now set to MANUAL, does not START, so the next attempt of the Media Center Guide Update fails because BITS is not STARTED. Should the Media Guide Update cause BITS to START, or is there something else I need to do so I do not have to start BITS manually everytime before Media Center Guide Update runs? Thank you for your help.

  • Anonymous
    February 20, 2007
    Hi Williechew - As long as the BITS service is set to automatic, Windows Media Center should be able to start it on-demand when it wants to perform a guide download.  It should not be set to the started state all the time in order to conserve system resources. If you are having trouble getting Media Center guide updates, and the suggestions in this post didn't help, I'd suggest also looking at the other blog posts I've written about guide download errors.  You can find links to them in the "Guide download errors" section of the blog article at http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/articles/487537.aspx. If none of those suggestions help, you might want to post a question on the Microsoft.Public.Windows.MediaCenter newsgroup to see if someone there can help advise further.

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2007
    I fixed my problem by running Windows Support Tools:  bitsadmin /util /repairservice

  • Anonymous
    April 27, 2009
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    May 12, 2009
    Hi Samantha I - Typically, the information that appears in the event log will be useful to determine if the root cause is a BITS issue or not.  There is a more detailed list of Media Center Scheduler error codes and possible resolutions at http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/articles/490466.aspx that may be useful here too.