How to Restore Missing Windows Media Center AutoPlay Entries in Windows 7

© Ramesh Srinivasan | Windows 7 | 24th October 2009

After installing or upgrading to Windows 7, you may notice that the AutoPlay dialog does not list Windows Media Center as one of the options.

This is the case when you open Change AutoPlay settings applet in Control Panel.

Windows 7 does not seem to include the Windows Media Center AutoPlay registry entries by default. However, you can add the necessary entries manually or export the keys from a Windows Vista PC (which is what I did). The AutoPlay entries are populated from this registry branch:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ explorer \ AutoplayHandlers

Tip: Keys and Values starting with the word "EHome" (EHomeDVDDropTarget, EHomeMusicDropTarget, EHomePhotosHandler, EHomeSVCDDropTarget, EHomeVCDDropTarget,  EHomeVideosHandler) are the ones we need.

I’ve made available a REG file which adds all of the Windows Media Center AutoPlay handler entries to the registry.

Registry Fix

Download w7-ehome-autoplay.zip, and save to Desktop. Unzip and run the enclosed REG file.

Windows Media Center is now added to the AutoPlay dialog!

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8 Comments

  1. Mark
    said this on Tuesday, January 3rd 2012 5:42 am

    Worked perfectly… thank you so much :)

  2. Jesse Rodgers
    said this on Thursday, November 24th 2011 2:48 am

    Hey, thanks a bunch. I never would have figured that out. I switched from Vista to 7 so I knew it could be set as default but it was driving me crazy trying to figure out how.

  3. Frank
    said this on Sunday, September 4th 2011 10:53 pm

    Many thanks!!!

    I am so grateful for gifted people like yourself.

  4. Rick
    said this on Saturday, March 26th 2011 6:33 am

    What about Blu-ray movies ? Do you have a reg fix for that ?

  5. Tech Support 24 Hours » Add Windows Media Center to AutoPlay options
    said this on Saturday, March 12th 2011 7:13 am

    [...] so it’s probably easier to download the .REG file from him. Take a look at Srinivasan’s Winhelponline to find out [...]

  6. Jason
    said this on Sunday, November 28th 2010 3:48 am

    You are the best and the only person who seems to have this solution on the web.

  7. SAm
    said this on Tuesday, November 23rd 2010 4:02 am

    Thanks so much. Had to call support and still they couldn’t restore windows media center as my default. Great job. Now all I need is for someone to tell me how to get my audio files to play inwindows media center

  8. JL
    said this on Tuesday, July 27th 2010 3:45 pm

    You have won my ‘You are Da Man!” award for today with this easy-to-follow, yet time consumming solutions for newbies and not-so newbies. Thanks!!!

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