Finally worked this out.
System restore was just not solving the issue even though going back to a week before I had the channel 7 going no signal and guide issue.
I have no hair left but I have a fix.
I went back to a July 2007 Acronis image backup and what do you know but everything is working except one tuner, what! and there had been no hardware changes since then. All tuners showed correctly in the device manager.
After a short time I found I lost channel 7 again.
I did an Acronis true image restore and same results after about 10 minutes the channel was gone and I was still having problems with no signal from the third tuner.
Part 1
I realised the Opportunistic Scanning patch had not been applied back in July image so I applied that and you can read about that here
Vista MCE Losing Channel 7/SBS FIX NOW AVAILABLE
To get it to work though I had to pull the network cable and just after restoring Vista I plugged in a USB stick and applied these two Microsoft Patches and registry entries. This opportunistic and guide issue does not give you much time to apply once you boot from a fresh image. This must have caused a lot of lost time and I can’t believe Microsoft have not fixed it yet but hopefully SP1 will have them rolled in.
KB935685
KB938927
I had these patches in and working on Vista Ultimate for about 5 months and the computer is dedicated Media Center so for the life of me I cannot work out why it suddenly had this problem.
Part 2
I still had the issue of one tuner not working. I removed uninstalled drivers and deleted the registry entries and added the tuners back in first the Duel card which worked then the USB one and ran the MCE Tuner Extender application. You type the tuner name in and hit configure Not SAVE! But even then I was back where I started.
I decided to do the registry settings by hand and solved the problem. The MCE Tuner Extender while working in the past was choking on the same computer and same tuners.
I used the guide here
http://blogs.msdn.com/peterrosser/ar...echTalk_1.aspx
I specifically used this part as it makes the most sense, print it out and thing about it step by step and it will work out. Possibly should make a table up showing settings for 3, 4, 5 tuners when I recover from all the MCE issues, I need a break.
This is not written by me but will save you searching.
N Tuners in MCE, Method 1 (only registry editing):
1. Stop the Media Center Receiver Service (net stop ehrecvr)
2. Open Registry Editor (regedit.exe) and open this key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Media Center\Service\Video\Tuners\{GUID}
where {GUID} is either {71985F48-1CA1-11D3-9CC8-00C04F7971E0} for Digital (ATSC or DVB-T) or {A799A800-A46D-11D0-A18C-00A02401DCD4} for Analog (NTSC or PAL).
3. Under the {GUID} key, there will be one key per tuner device.
4. Select the first tuner's key.
5. Select the UserSettings key.
6. Set these DWORD values as follows (case sensitive, all values in hexadecimal), creating them if they do not exist:
EnabledForMCE = 0xffffffff
UseSTB = 0
7. Create a REG_SZ value named UserDefName and set its value to "Tuner X", where X is the tuner number (1 for the first tuner, 2 for the 2nd, etc.)
8. If this is the FIRST tuner:
RecordOrder = 0
RecordPrefered = 0xffffffff
WatchOrder = number of tuners - 1, e.g. for 4 tuners set this to 3
WatchPrefered = 0
If this is the LAST tuner:
RecordOrder = number of tuners - 1, e.g. for 4 tuners set this to 3
RecordPrefered = 0
WatchOrder = 0
WatchPrefered = 0xffffffff
If this is a tuner somewhere in the middle:
RecordOrder = whatever you put for the last tuner + 1
RecordPrefered = 0
WatchOrder = whatever you put for the last tuner - 1
WatchPrefered = 0
The idea here is that you increment the RecordOrder by 1 for each tuner, and decrement the WatchOrder by 1. RecordOrder starts at 0 on the first tuner and goes up to #Tuners - 1; WatchOrder starts at #Tuners - 1 and ends at 0 on the last tuner. RecordPrefered is true (0xffffffff) on the first tuner, false (0x00000000) everywhere else; WatchPrefered is true on the last tuner, false everywhere else.
9. Repeat steps 7 - 10 for each tuner, adjusting the values of RecordOrder, RecordPrefered, WatchOrder and WatchPrefered as appropriate.
10. Close Registry Editor.
11. Start Media Center. Voila!
Yes, "Prefered" is misspelled. We caught that after we shipped, and it's a little late to change now...
N Tuners in MCE Method 2 (a little registry stuff, no manual editing though):
1. Start the Media Center shell (Green Button)
2. Go to Settings-->TV-->Set Up TV Signal
3. Choose the 2 tuners from the list of tuners that you will configure this time (first time through, just the first 2)
4. Close the Media Center shell.
5. Stop the Media Center Receiver service (net stop ehrecvr or stop the service from Control Panel-->Administrative Tools-->Services)
6. Open Registry Editor (regedit.exe) and open this key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Media Center\Service\Video\Tuners\{GUID}
where {GUID} is either {71985F48-1CA1-11D3-9CC8-00C04F7971E0} for Digital (ATSC or DVB-T) or {A799A800-A46D-11D0-A18C-00A02401DCD4} for Analog (NTSC or PAL).
7. Under the {GUID} key, there will be one key per tuner device.
8. Find the 2 keys that were just configured by Media Center. You can tell which ones they are by looking for the "EnabledForMCE" value under the UserSettings key. If it is set to 0xffffffff, it was configured--otherwise it will be 0x00000000 (0).
9. Export the 2 keys to .reg files on your hard disk. (right-click on the {GUID} key and choose Export [selected branch only]). Make a note of where you save those files... you're going to need them! Name each one differently (e.g. Tuner1.reg, Tuner2.reg).
10. Repeat steps 1 - 8 for each set of 2 tuners (if you have 3, then just then 3rd, etc.), selecting different tuners each time.
11. Repeat steps 4 and 5.
12. Double-click on each of the .reg files you created in step 9 to import them into the registry.
13. Close Registry Editor.
14. Start Media Center. Voila!
The END (I hope)
