I’m trying to connect my Xbox 360 and computer using Windows Media Connect. I want to listen to my music collection on my PC through the Xbox 360. My computer says Windows Media Connect started properly, but I found an error that says Service WMConnectCDS failed to start correctly, due to InitializeNetworkMonitoring returning error 0x80029c4a. How do I fix this?

Microsoft offers two convenient ways to connect your Xbox 360 and your PC. The best way to connect is to have a Media Center Edition PC, because you get all the functionality of Media Center through your television and Xbox 360. Windows Media Connect is the second method, which simply requires a PC with XP and Windows Media Player 10. While the Media Center connection appears to work almost flawlessly, the Windows Media Connect option appears to have a random connection glitch caused by some a fouled up permission in Windows.

The error you are seeing is caused by a required file, stdole2.tlb, not having appropriate permissions. To repair the problem, you need to be logged in as a user with administrative rights. The repair is done from the command line. Open a Run dialog box from Start > Run. In the Run dialog type in CACLS C:\WINDOWS\system32\stdole2.tlb /E /G NetworkService:F.

CACLS is the tool used by Windows to edit the Access Control Layer, which is what tells the Windows which users have access to which resources in Windows. The /E designation indicates you want to edit the Access Control Layer. /G grants rights to a specific user, in this case NetworkService, which is a system level user. In assigning rights, you have the choice of granting one of the following:

R Read
W Write
C Change (read/write)
F Full control

In this particular instance, NetworkService needs Full Control to make Windows Media Connect work properly.