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[DarkSpace]

For a short while now, MC has been behaving erratically for me:
For example, I'd tell it to play an Album, and, sometime between approximately 00:50 and 02:00 minutes, the Playing Now would change itself to playing 100 random tracks from my library (which it also would not play in full, but rather it would start playing the first track, then after a while it would switch to the second one, and so on. I'm positive that I did nothing to select the '100 random songs' smartlist, and also, the Preview Mode is set to play the entire song.
Another example is that I'd tell MC to play something, and it does that, but I then switch to another application, do things there, and suddenly MC enters Theater View and steals focus. When I then go back to doing what I was actually doing, this process will repeat as long as MC is open. In fact, that even happened while writing this post. I managed to capture a log of this, which I will attach.

I am fairly certain (read: I did not pay attention to this when it first happened, because I was tired) that this started occurring only after I updated to 21.0.19, but I think I remember (again, I was tired) that the playlist changing stuff kept occurring even after I had downgraded to 21.0.17. Because of that, I went back to .19.
From reading the log, it seems to me that MC thinks it's getting some hotkey event, but I'm uncertain as to which one, and where it's supposed to be getting it from. Just for fun, I tried the hotkey for Theater Mode (CTRL+4) while the browser had focus, and nothing happened (except that the browser switched to the fourth tab). On the other hand, twice now I've done nothing (not even typed something), and MC still entered Theater Mode by itself.
One thing to note for both of these examples is that the mouse pointer switched from its normal arrow symbol to the 'busy' sign whenever the issue occurred. Maybe it turns out to be irrelevant, but I don't know...

If you need more information, or if I can help in another way, please tell me.
Another crazy thought that just occurred to me: Is it possible that MC somehow recognizes my Bluetooth mouse as a remote? I mean, sure, it shouldn't, and I can also use the mouse fine inside MC, but could this be related? (Although, I've had this mouse for a few weeks already, without problems.)

Edit: So I was curious, and left a keylogger run in the background, and waited. Sadly, as I had expected, it caught no keyboard/mouse events at all before MC entered Theater Mode.

[BradATIMA]

It does look like Media Center is receiving commands from a remote. I'm not sure if remote commands would show up in a keystroke logger or not. Are you using some kind of USB IR receiver for a remote? Something like that could be picking up commands from other remotes or possibly lights sources. If you do have something like this, try disconnecting it.

[DarkSpace]

Interesting, although I don't have a remote connected, and neither do I use JRemote or similar.
I only have one combination of touchpad/keyboard which is built into the laptop (but which I don't use), one keyboard (connected via USB), and one mouse (connected via Bluetooth... and it's the only Bluetooth device) as far as input devices go. Aside from that, attached to my USB ports are 1 BD drive, one external HDD, and one USB-to-SPDIF converter. I don't see how either of those devices could be responsible, either. And I verified that the keylogger catches all input that comes from my touchpad, mouse, and either of my keyboards.
Can I check somewhere whether MC has somehow detected my webcam as a receiver and interprets its data as signals coming from a remote? (Wow, this sounds strange even to me...)

[BradATIMA]

I have a couple of things you could try, but this is a strange problem. You could try disconnecting the Bluetooth mouse for a while to see if that resolves the problem. Another option is to go into Tools -> Options -> Remote Control. Find "Devices & Options" on that screen and click it. Then click on the "Selected input devices" dropdown menu and uncheck "Microsoft MCE." From the Remote Control options screen, you could also click on 'Commands.' In the new screen, make sure that the Learned Trigger Codes just have a '?' otherwise they have somehow been mapped. Try these options one at a time.

If none of these fixes the problem, you might want to try disabling Media Network for a while (assuming you're using that feature), as a test, to see if it resolves the problem. It's possible the laptop has a built-in IR receiver, but it's not common. Hopefully, one of these will solve the problem or provide more information.

[DarkSpace]

Sorry about the late response. I was waiting for a chance to try these suggestions, but so far, MC has behaved properly, so I left it as-is. For what it's worth, I didn't change any settings in the meantime.
(I did reboot the laptop once, but I had also tried that once or twice and MC resumed behaving erratically, so it appears to be unrelated.)

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll try them (in order) the next time MC behaves erratically again. In the meantime, I looked into the Remote Control triggers, and they were all set to '?'. At the time at which I looked, MC also didn't list any remotes, if that helps (I still left Windows MCE checked though, so I wouldn't change settings).

I'll post again when (if) MC acts up again, so I hope I can let this thread die now...

[RoderickGI]

Scenario:
Some poor sucker, somewhere in the world, was trying to get his MC installation working with JRemote. But it just wouldn't work, no matter how many times he pressed the Theatre View button. It wouldn't even start playing music, even when he selected a standard Smartlist, the 100 random songs, or skipped through the songs in that list . . .

Because he had entered the wrong MC Access Code into JRemote. Your Access Code. So he was connecting to the wrong instance of MC, somewhere else in the world. At your place actually.


Could this actually happen? I don't know. It would require your Firewall to have port 52199 open, and forwarding packets to your the PC with your MC installation. Maybe it couldn't happen by accident, but it could by malicious intent?

[BradATIMA]

That scenario did cross my mind. Possibly by accident, or intent (friend/family/neighbor), someone entered the access key and is controlling Media Center over the internet. As Roderick mentioned, this requires having port 52199 open. To test, if this happens again, just turn off Media Network. If this does turn out to be the issue, you can click on "Access Key: ..." in the Media Network options and select Reset to generate a new key.

[DarkSpace]

Thanks for the suggestion. However, I just tested and verified that port 52199 closed.

Out of curiosity, I tried looking for the Media Network options, only to then find out that I already had it disabled, so that's not it either.
I guess I'll wait and see if it happens again, and hope that it doesn't. Maybe I'll notice something then that I haven't noticed yet...

(Interesting scenario, by the way... unpleasant, but interesting nonetheless...)

[gvanbrunt]

you could try unplugging network cable and see if it still acts erratically...