I get a lot of people asking for help on how to install and configure QuickGuide for MCE 2005. QuickGuide enables you to use the MCE 2005 Electronic Programme Guide in unsupported countries, where there is no native EPG support.The guide you see below is assembled from a host of sources on the internet. Most of what you see below comes straight out of the installation guide that comes with QuickGuide. I have just simplified it slightly and added some more explanations.

First things first. Obviously you will need a fully operational MCE PC.  If you are performing this on a freshly installed MCE machine then please start MCE and run through the setup wizard. Make sure you get a TV signal. This will initialize the Media Center application and prepare it for what we are about to do. 

All your settings will be deleted when you follow the installation instructions below, so don't spend too much time customizing the setup.

1. Download the QuickGuide for MCE 2005 zip file here in the files section of this site and extract the zip file somewhere.  The download contains QuickGuide and a number of other files and utilities that are required to get all of this working.
2. Download the latest copy of your ZAXMLTV file from the file gallery or wherever your preferred XMLTV is.
3. From the download, copy the contents of the QuickGuide directory into the C:\WINDOWS\eHome directory.
4. Copy the XMLTV directory from the download onto the root of your C:\
5. Copy your XMLTV.xml file into the C:\XMLTV folder.
6. Run the C:\WINDOWS\eHome\MCE2005_EPG_Enable.reg to merge its contents in the registry. This fools Media Center into thinking that you accepted the terms of service for the guide and enables it to be used.
7. There are 2 options to this step.  Either use one of the South African ChannelInfo.xml files available in the download or create your own.  The download has ChannelInfo.xml files for both the DSTV set of channels and the SABC, MNET and E-TV channels.  Just copy the relevant file from the download into the C:\WINDOWS\eHome\ folder. The DSTV file is in the DSTV Files folder and the other one is in the MNET Files folder.  If you want to create your own ChannelInfo.xml file run C:\WINDOWS\eHome\Dumper.exe. This program will dump a sample DerivedChannelInfo.xml file based on your current channels defined in MCE, assuming you have your channels all setup within MCE at all.  The file will be created in the directory that you run Dumper.exe from.  Rename the channelID, virtualchannel and name fields in this file to those in your XMLTV file.  Rename DerivedChannelInfo.xml to ChannelInfo.xml and copy it to the C:\WINDOWS\eHome folder.
8. Run C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\CasPol.exe -s off in a command prompt window.
9. Kill all eh* processes using Task Manager.  Another way of doing this is running taskkill /im eh* /f in a command window.
10. Delete everything under C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\eHome\ (including all the subfolders). Warning: This will delete anything configured in MCE including Scheduled Recordings, Channels Setup etc.
11. Open using regedit.exe and navigate your way to the  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Tuning Spaces\# where # is number of the TV setup you use. "1″ is for local analogue cable, "2″ is for local analogue antenna.  Change the value of the MinChannel key to 1. This will make channel 1 available as preset channel.
12. Open regedit and delete all the registry keys under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\TV System Services\TVAutoTune. This will clear all existing channels and only use the ones which will be configured after using QuickGuide. We will not use the data found in the MCE 2005 service scan.  Do not delete all the keys if you have already added your own frequency data here for South Africa.  If you need more information regarding  finding out how to create this registry key, read the Finding analogue TV broadcast frequencies for MCE 2005 article on this site. 
13. Open the C:\WINDOWS\eHome\QuickGuide.exe.config file using notepad.
14. On line 5, make sure the XMLTVFile value points to your XMLTV file. If you are using the scripts and directory settings from the QuickGuide download available on this site, the value should be set to C:\XMLTV\xmltv.xml and you should not have to change anything.
15. Go through the rest of the C:\WINDOWS\eHome\QuickGuide.exe.config file and set any other settings that you need to set.  The default values should work fine in most cases.
16. Save and close the config file.
17. If you have DSTV or a set top box TV source in any other country then you don't need to run the next few steps as it only applies to analogue antenna TV sources.  You can move onto step 21.  We need to make some changes to our XMLTV file to work with the ChannelInfo.xml file and so that the channels are numbered as 1,2,3,4 and 5 and not 3, 46, 47, 48 and 49.  To do this run Alter XMLTV File.Bat from the download. You will find it in the MNET sub folder. This will use a cool little utility written by Rob Flor to find and replace the relevant data within the XMLTV file. The Alter XMLTV File.bat contains the following commands. 
    
    C:\XMLTV\alter.exe c:\XMLTV\xmltv.xml "49.dstv.com" "5"
C:\XMLTV\alter.exe c:\XMLTV\xmltv.xml "48.dstv.com" "3"
C:\XMLTV\alter.exe c:\XMLTV\xmltv.xml "47.dstv.com" "2"
C:\XMLTV\alter.exe c:\XMLTV\xmltv.xml "46.dstv.com" "1"
C:\XMLTV\alter.exe c:\XMLTV\xmltv.xml "3.dstv.com" "4"

If you live outside South Africa and need to do the same, you can just adapt the code above.
18. Edit C:\XMLTV\Update EPG using QuickGuide.bat and remove the rem commands from lines 8 - 12 so that it looks like the above block of code.
19. If you need more information regarding this step or need help in finding out how to create this registry key, read the Finding analogue TV broadcast frequencies for MCE 2005 article on this site.  Open regedit.exe and navigate to the  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\TV System Services\TVAutoTune key. Within this registry key, you will see that there are a number of sub keys with the following format:  TSXX-0 or TSXX-1.  TS stands for Tuning Space.  XX is the country code based on the international dialling code prefix.  0 or 1 indicates the signal type, 0 is for analogue antenna and 1 cable or satellite. Find the relevant sub key that applies to your country. Simply export this key by right clicking the TS27-0 key or the relevant key for your country, choosing Export and save the file as frequencies.reg in the C:\XMLTV folder.  In the end, you should have something that looks along the lines of this:
    
    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\TV System Services\TVAutoTune\TS27-0]
"1"=dword:0aec2c50
"2"=dword:0c5a6250
"3"=dword:2fa39650
"4"=dword:21557a50
"5"=dword:2dbb4e50
    
20. Edit C:\XMLTV\Update EPG using QuickGuide.bat and remove the rem command from line 21 so that it says regedit /s C:\XMLTV\frequencies.reg.
21. Either run C:\WINDOWS\eHome\QuickGuide.exe or run the C:\XMLTV\Update EPG using QuickGuide.bat file. Note: Always execute QuickGuide.exe when your command prompt is in the C:\WINDOWS\eHome directory as it does not work properly if you run it from another location.  If there is an error, you'll get a stack trace, and this is likely to point to the problem.
22. Start MCE and confirm that you can watch TV and have Guide data and all the right channels in the right order (the same order as in WebGuide2).
23. QuickGuide supports adding the data from the categories tag in the XMLTV files into the Media Center 2005 EPG. QuickGuide does this by using a file called categories.txt file to map these categories from your XMLTV file into categories that MCE 2005 can understand.  The download contains a categories.txt file with all the categories that are within the ZAXMLTV files.  Please be aware that some TV programs do not have a category assigned to it by DSTV so they will not have category data in the XMLTV files or the MCE 2005 EPG.  To use this updated categories.txt file save the file and copy it to the C:\Windows\Ehome\EPGXMLWriterParts folder. Next time you do a guide update, QuickGuide will use this file to create and map the programs to categories in the EPG.
24. Optionally, open the C:\XMLTV\Update EPG using QuickGuide.bat file and edit lines 25 and 26.  To automatically reboot the machine after the guide update remove the rem command from line 25 so that it says shutdown -r -t 5 -f and add a rem command on line 26 so that it says rem start C:\WINDOWS\eHome\ehshell.exe. 

From now on it is only necessary to run C:\XMLTV\Update EPG using QuickGuide.bat after you have copied a new XMLTV file to C:\XMLTV to update the guide.C:\XMLTV\Update EPG using QuickGuide.bat simply does the following:

1. Kills all the MCE processes.
2. Makes a backup of your XMLTV file.
3. Alters the file using alter.exe (depending on your configuration.)
4. Turns .Net security off.
5. Runs QuickGuide to update the EPG
6. Imports the frequencies.reg file (depending on your configuration.)
7. Turns .Net security on again.
8. Starts MCE or reboots the machine (depending on your configuration.)

I have done this many, many times and have never really struggled to get it to work.  If something does go wrong and the guide has no data, reboot your machine and repeat each step above to check what the problem could be.

If for some reason you have no luck with QuickGuide, you could always try using SmartGuide to get data into the MCE EPG.

If you need help with any of this, drop us a note on the forums.

Good luck!