Windows Media Center

I have been having this problem ever since I reloaded the factory settings on my computer. I do this about twice a year in order to fully clean it of all crap and unnecessary items and have never encountered this problem before.

When I am playing Guild Wars online and I end the game and close out the window, Windows Media Center opens itself. When I try to navigate through it to get to settings it tends to lock up. When I try to use Task Manager to shut it down it tends to lock up. It also opens itself out of nowhere when I am navigating through the internet on different sites, like Facebook, etc. The only other thing I do is watch movies and shows online, and it occasionally opens itself then also.

I need to know how to disable it so that it does not open at all unless I specifically tell it to. I have disabled it in start-up as there was an .exe file in there for it but still have the problem. I keep having to manually shut down my computer and restart it because I get a black screen with a useless mouse pointer that moves around but does not do anything. My background is black on my desktop but the bottom bar and recycle bin do not show.

Any and all advice and help is appreciated!!

Vista Home Premium SP1
4GB RAM
Intel Dual Core Q6600@ 2.4GHz
500GB HD
Dual NVidia GT 9800 Graphics Cards

 

I did all everything mentioned by Halo and have narrowed it down to the instance that causes it to open, even though it is disabled in every way. When I play Guild Wars online and close out of the game WMC opens on it's own. I have tried to find a link between the two but cannot so I am at my wit's end trying to figure this one out. Any ideas?

 

Thats a new one for me....
if you disabled all start ups of media center and it only starts after guild wars (wow thats strange) you could try to rename media center
C:\Windows\ehome\ehshell.exe
and see if guild wars still starts it up some how.
NOTE: this should stop it from running completely but since I have never tried this not sure If it will make your system unstable

If this does not stop it from starting with every thing else you have tried i don't know what will and as far as why this is happening I am not really sure

 

I know this is a late reply, but its because your Guild Wars shortcut has the -mce argument in the "Target" box. Right click the shortcut, open up properties, and take that off and you will be fine.

I'm trying to figure out how to keep it from coming up while leaving the -mce tag, because I run multiple instances of GW.