Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 Installation Disc/Download

What the ****?  I did not have a chance to write his email address down before you deleted it.  He said he would ftp it to me.  I needed to set up space for him to do so.  You say "it is not a solution in the sense that it will be useful to the next visitor to EE."  What about to the person who asked the question?  Help me out here!  

Netminder,

Point taken and it makes sense, I apologise. This is not something I can host for all users.

David

I'm glad you have the site and the ability to share knowledge that can be used not only today but for future visitors.  I'm just trying to figure out how to get this computer back up and running.  It was a purchase maybe 4 or 5 years ago that was on the showroom floor.  Their geek squad reloaded all the software but I only received a disc with drivers and sample programs; the disc I have does not seem to have the OS.  The OS recovery is on the D: partition.  I did have up and going after Christmas when I did the recovery reloaded everything.  It worked fine until the last Microsoft update that it received and then started it's problem.

Here's the problem and maybe you can help.  It just shuts down all of a sudden, sometimes with blue screen and sometimes not.  I approached the problem as if it was a thermal issue, added fans, taken the side off of the case, etc. and this does not help.  After the first recovery, it was stable for about a month, nonstop, never turning the computer off.  After the subsequent update, it will shutdown (sometimes restarts, sometimes hangs) after an hour or two or sometimes less.  I've tried to system restore to the date prior to the update but the shutdown continues.

I was going to try a clean install on a newly formated hard drive but now I hear that even if I get my hands on the OS install disc, the key that I have will probably not work since that key is not assigned to that disc.  

Any suggestions?  Thank you very much.  I know a few things about computers but this is way out of my expertise.

Hey,

I'd suggest you start with a RAM tester to find out if you have faulty memory.
then I'd do a processor test.

If it only lasts a month before it starts crashing educated guess says its a hardware issue. try rule out as much as you can before you reformat the OS.

How do I test the ram and the processor?

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

Out of curiousity, have you contacted Microsoft or one of their solutions providers (or even Gateway) about getting the discs? My experience is that Microsoft is actually pretty good about getting them to you if you explain what happened.

ep

I did contact Gateway when the shutting down problem started and they told me since it was out of warranty, there would be a charge for tech support.  I contacted Microsoft s well since it seemed to start very shortly after one of their weekly XP updates.  They walked me through a bunch of steps (a system restore, I believe) and then suggested that I run the recovery.  I will contact them about the OS and see what they can do.  I do have the license key.

rfreeeman779,

That's great news. Since nobody suggested that as a possibility, you should click the Accept As Solution button. That starts an automatic process that will close this question and refund your points, and will save it as a solution for the next person who comes looking for an answer.

Thanks for letting us know what happened.

ep

Would really love to know HOW to get the Media Center installation disks.  Microsoft no longer even talks to you when you call to activate.  System has no serious options for a unique install.  Had to format a clients computer. She had no install disks, so installed XP Pro, but now the computer refuses to activate due to the lack of the Media Centre component.