One day, a few months ago, the ITV channels, Channel 4 and a few others on the Freeview set all went a bit funny. Everything had been working splendidly for quite some time, and then overnight it seemed someone had turned down the strength of those channels. My Freeview TVs in the house were all fine, so it had to be something to do with the Media Center.
While my family complained bitterly about missing the Simpsons and having to watch Desperate Housewives with all the adverts (personally, given the choice, I'd prefer the adverts - but my wife doesn't see it that way) I trawled the world wide web for a solution. Some suggestions were software related - first just a retune, then a station scan by changing the postcode, then really hitting it hard by changing the country. Then there were the registry hacks coupled with frequencies dug up from the web. There was the hard core solution of pulling the tuner card, re-seating it and have Windows identify it to force a whole new set-up.
Nothing worked. Even though it seemed ridiculous, I resigned myself to buying a new tuner card and probably reinstalling Vista.
And then I cracked it. I took a look in the Media Center settings (Edit Channel Order, I think) and found there were now duplicated channels and most importantly, the duplicated disabled channels were on the correct frequency. I duly disabled the channels that were on the wrong frequency, enabled the channels that looked to be in the right place, re-ordered the channels so they matched the freeview guide and suddenly everything worked.
The wife acceptance factor is once again high. Unfortunately, I now need to buy a new hard drive to hold all the new TV!
The very on topic (!!) reply from Tifany_123 asside, thanks for this tip. I just did it and although I didn't find any lost channels (I've oddly lost Channel 5 in the UK but I think it's an Arial thing) I did find a replacement for a channel that was a bit juddery from time to time.
Thanks
Si