Windows Media Centre often hangs on my HP Media Center m7299a. When I am browsing My Videos I can usually start and play a video without problem, but when it finishes and I start browsing again Media Centre hangs. I can still move the mouse cursor around the screen, but none of the mouse buttons, keyboard, or remote control buttons work. Also, the “wavy” background in Media Centre (rather like silk curtains) is still visibly moving, but only at the rate of one change in position every 10-20 seconds. I have tried installing the latest drivers for various devices on the computer but without resolve. My ‘My Documents’ folder is stored on an external hard drive and I have about 100 GB of movies, pictures, and music on that drive.

As you are using an external hard drive for storing all your My Documents data, including your My Videos, this is most likely the problem. I assume that your external hard drive is a USB drive. Even though USB drives do read relatively quickly (the USB 2.0 standard specifies that data can be theoretically read at 480 Mbps) this is nothing compared with the transfer rate for internal hard drives on connectors such as SATA, which can transfer at around 3 Gbps (i.e. 3072 Mbps). If Windows is attempting to create previews of the videos on the external hard drive while you are browsing the My Videos folder, the slow transfer rate between the computer and the external hard drive could be causing Windows Media Centre to appear like it is hanging, whereas it is actually just trying to transfer data (albeit very slowly) from the external hard drive to the computer.

In case the creation of previews for the videos within the My Videos folder is the problem try disabling the creation of thumbnails for videos to see whether this resolves the problem. Go to the “Start” menu > “Run” and type the following command:
regsvr32 /u shmedia.dll
This will disable the automatic preview for all videos, movies, and other media files (such as audio files). After you have executed this command check whether the problem persists. If this fixes the problem, you will need to leave this disabled as it seems that the creation of previews, combined with the slow transfer rate of the USB hard drive, was causing the problem. In the future, if you wish to re-enable the preview function (for example, should you transfer the video back onto an internal hard drive) then issue the following command:
regsvr32 shmedia.dll