Do you use Vista Media Center? If not, this post won’t make any sense. However, if you’re one of the lucky people to experience one of it’s many folder monitoring bugs then this post if for you. I have a Videos folder on my D: drive that I let my Media Center monitor for new content, and it works very well. But for some reason about a month ago it started monitoring the root of my D: drive as well, even though it wasn’t configured to do that. I thought it would go away on it’s own, but unfortunately it didn’t. After some extensive Googling I came up with this nifty solution. Just look for the Registry key below, and if the value is set to the offending folder then bingo - you’re in business. Just make the quick change as I’ve shown below.
Find this Registry key:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\AutoScan]
“_arSeenVideoDrives”=”D:\”Change it to this:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\AutoScan]
“_arSeenVideoDrives”=”<<NULL>>”
A word to the wise: backup your registry before you make a mess of it, and as usual I take no responsibility if you try this and mess up your computer. 
May 11th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
This also works in MCE XP version 2002.
Tested and confirmed, I have also been having this problem and this has fixed it, I think. Time will tell if the value will stay as NULL or go back to D:\
May 11th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
I have had it re-occur a few times after changing this setting. It tends to be OK for a few weeks each time… very frustrating.
July 4th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
It also works for Media Center 2005 on my XP Pro
July 16th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Thank you!!
I’ve been searching for this solution for a long time now.
Works like a charm (so far, fingers crossed).
Am going to post a link to this in the other forums where I’ve seen this problem mentioned with no good solution.
Kudos, buddy!
July 20th, 2008 at 6:01 am
I think Windows Media Player also plays a role in the mess. Somehow I think Media Center and Windows Media Player share a lot of common features and settings. I found my media center has all <> settings but still uses all sorts of images from all over the places. Then I checked Windows Media Player settings found there are some C:\ etc folders being monitors (Windows Media Player -> Tools -> Options -> Library -> Advanced Options). So I removed extra folders. I’ll report back if changes to the WMP works!
July 20th, 2008 at 6:25 am
Well, it just worked for no more than 1 minutes than all drivers appeared again. It looks like somewhere automatic detection is enabled. I was wondering how to prevent it from reindexing.
also found this:
http://www.krunk4ever.com/blog/2007/09/16/reindexing-media-center-library/
but not working for me yet… still trying…
July 29th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Is there a way to exclude/hide or similarly remove various (if not all) … the showcased items?
Nearly all but 2 are worthless to me and other than those two items I would Media Center.love to remove the ‘built-in’ adware’ trialware that is built into Windows
In my own case since I am a Vista 64 with the WMC added… I have found nearly half of the above trialware to not even be vista compatible and at least 6 of them to not be vista 64 capable.
Since I already get digital cable & regular cable (both) & other than that I never pay or do payforview or any other trialware and have gone thru the items there and found nothing worth paying for I would like to remove it.
Ive already figured out how to remove the games since I will never play them via WMC if ever.
July 29th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
@Paul: Sorry, I’m not sure how to do that.
August 5th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Somewhere today (another website I think) I saw that there was a way to remove the ‘tv&movies’ mostly by doing a registry edit.
It was a guy who wanted it soley for pics/local use… and no tv or internet.
IM researching this as its the same thing I want to do but on other items at that same level
I had hoped it would be XML or registry possibilities.