NS_E_CANNOTDESTROYTITLE (0xC00D0007) fix for Windows Media Center

You opened Windows Media Center and got "Unable to destroy the title" — annoying, but fixable in two minutes.

The error code 0xC00D0007 (NS_E_CANNOTDESTROYTITLE) almost always means a cached metadata file for a recorded TV show or DVD is stuck in a locked state. Windows Media Center can't delete the old entry, so it throws this error instead of loading your library.

The quick fix: kill the process, delete the cache

1. Close Windows Media Center completely. Make sure it's not running in the background — check Task Manager for ehshell.exe and ehrecvr.exe. Kill both if they're there.
2. Open File Explorer and navigate to:
   %ProgramData%\Microsoft\eHome\
3. Delete everything inside the eHome folder. Don't delete the folder itself — just its contents. You'll see files like mcepgx.x, mcepgx.x.x, and ehrec.log. They'll be rebuilt when Media Center restarts.
4. Restart Windows Media Center. It'll rebuild the database from scratch. You'll lose your series recordings schedule (it regenerates from the Guide), but your recorded shows and libary data will reappear within a minute.

That's it. If the error is gone, you're done.

Why this works

What's actually happening here is that Windows Media Center stores metadata about each title (show name, episode number, description) in a set of lightweight database files inside %ProgramData%\Microsoft\eHome\. When you delete a recording or the Guide updates an entry, Media Center tries to remove the old metadata. If that metadata file is still open — because another process (like a DVR background task or a stuck ehrecvr.exe) has it locked — the destroy operation fails with 0xC00D0007.

The reason step 3 works is that you're removing the entire working set of cached metadata files. When Media Center restarts, it re-reads the raw recording files from your Recorded TV folder (%UserProfile%\Videos\Recorded TV\ or wherever you configured it) and regenerates the database fresh. No stale locks, no partial records.

The registry variation (less common)

In about 10% of cases, a corrupt registry key under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\ can cause the same error. Specifically, check HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\ProgramGuide\ for any entries with garbled values or zero-byte binary data.

If the cache deletion didn't help:

1. Open regedit.exe as Administrator.
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\ProgramGuide\.
3. Export that key as a backup (right-click → Export).
4. Delete the entire ProgramGuide subkey.
5. Restart Media Center. It'll rebuild the Guide data from scratch.

This variant shows up most often on Windows 7 systems that had Media Center TV Pack installed and then uninstalled — the uninstaller leaves orphaned registry entries.

Prevention

The root cause is almost always an unclean shutdown of Media Center or the DVR background service (ehrecvr.exe). To prevent it:

• Always exit Media Center from the menu — don't kill it with Task Manager or shut down Windows while it's running.
• Keep your Media Center Guide data small. If you have hundreds of recorded shows, the cache files grow large and become more prone to corruption. Delete old recordings you don't need.
• Run the Media Center database repair tool every few months: open an admin command prompt and run mcupdate.exe -DatabaseResetOnly. This defrags and repairs the internal database without deleting your recordings.

One more thing: if you're still running Windows Vista with Media Center, this error hits more often because the cache handling there was buggy. The fix is identical though — just delete the eHome cache contents.