There's nothing special about the remote, it works fine in Windows and Windows Media Center with no TV capability. Does the LED in the Touchsmart light up when you press buttons on the remote (whoops, saw you say it did) if not you may need new batteries.

Start with simple things like lowering the volume and muting, those work across all aspects of Windows.

The volume and mute functions of the remote do not need ANY applications open, they will work with just Windows, that's why I have you starting there.

You're trying to set up the TV section of WMC, you don't need to do that if you have no TV inputs, just do the express setup if offered that does not do TV setup, or even just cancel the setup.

Pressing mute on the remote will mute and unmute Windows itself and you will see everything working by the speaker in the system tray.

If these are not working you need to stop and do not pass GO, you need to go back in to Device Manager and make sure you have a Microsoft eHome Infrared Transceiver in the HID and Input section.

At only a week old I would also strongly urge you to make a Recovery DVD set and consider a full system recovery. At 1 week there is also the possibility of some type of hardware failure, but I'd start with a full recovery with nothing else installed as a test first.

falnangl4u said: OUCH! It's taken me this week to get this thing up to my preferences! I did the recovery discs, also the repair disc. But again start over from scratch? Again OUCH! I will try that though tomorrow, (late here) and thanks for the advice. If it doesn't work I'll be back! Thank You

If it's bad hardware then you really want to know now as opposed to later, remote issues are not common since the remote/ir receiver isn't very complicated. You said it worked once, is it possible it never did? that would point us back at a hardware issue.

FWIW you haven't said what you've done and what results have been, so it makes it tough to offer other suggestions, i.e. no ehome devices in Device Manager, etc is a different problem than devices appear in Device Manager.

There are no other big screen LCD TV's in the room are there? their auto-brightness function can cause weird remote issues.