Have you tried installing gnome-lirc-properties and configuring your remote it in that?
Ok installed that as well and still I cant get it to be recognised.
Whats the make and model of the remote?
In a terminal type:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure lirc
The first screen will be for remotes, choose:
“Windows Media Center Transceivers/Remotes (all)”
For Receivers choose:
“Microsoft Windows Media Center V2 (usb) : Direct TV Receiver”
You might need to reboot here, or in a terminal
sudo /etc/init.d/lirc restart
If you enter:
irw
in a terminal, then press a button on the remote… is anything returned in the terminal?
If you still have no luck, can you post the output of:
lsusb
and
lsmod | grep lirc*
you might want to take a look at this:
matthew@matthew-desktop:~$ lsusb
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 0471:0815 Philips eHome Infrared Receiver
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 058f:9360 Alcor Micro Corp. 8-in-1 Media Card Reader
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 050d:7051 Belkin Components F5D7051 54g USB Network Adapter
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
matthew@matthew-desktop:~$ lsmod | grep lirc*
lirc_mceusb 12402 1
lirc_dev 8884 3 lirc_mceusb
Just a little something to add.
After going through your steps before and posting the above I thought I’d do a whole restart to see if that helped at all.
When I’ve turned my pc back on the speakers are now not working. Any idea what would cause this?
If you enter:
irw
in a terminal, then press a button on the remote… is anything returned in the terminal?
the only time anything would have changed on your system would have been when you entered
sudo dpkg-reconfigure lirc
so run it again and see if it will let you undo the changes… meanwhile I will look into the sound problem.
I dont get anything at all after entering irw.
The speakers came back on when I turned it on this evening, without me changing any settings, strange.
you should get an output, are you sure the remote is working?
http://www.hackourlives.com/setup-windows-media-center-remote-for-mythtv-and-xbmc/
Ok, did a complete removal through synaptic and reinstalled.
Now it is recognised after irw.
When it comes to those zip files, I am unsure in where exactly to put them.
Where it says ~/.lirc does that mean etc/lirc or the usr/share/lirc or something else?
For the usr/share and the etc/, it does not allow me to change the permissions so that I can add files.
matthew@matthew-desktop:/etc$ chmod g+w lirc
chmod: changing permissions of `lirc’: Operation not permitted
With the other script files, I just have no clue where the scripts folder for lirc is or would be.
Tried a file search and it came back with nothing.
Ok… whenever you see the tilde (~) symbol as part of a path, it means your (current user) “home” directory, and whenever a directory name starts with a full stop (.) it means the directory is hidden so you will have to enable “Show hidden files” to be able to see it in the file manager (eg. nautilus).
None of the fies contained in the zips need to go anywhere other than your home directory, so you don’t need to be changing any permissions or even have root privileges at all.
what it wants you to do is extract the 2 files from lirc_files.zip and place them in ~/.lirc (a hidden directory called .lirc in your home directory)
extract the 4 files from scripts.zip and place them in ~/scripts (a directory called scripts in your home directory… you may have to create this directory)
once you have the files in place, it wants you to make the 4 files you just put in the scripts directory executable… to do this, open a terminal and type:
cd ~/scripts
chmod +x *.sh
(hitting enter after each line, and remembering that Linux commands ARE case sensitive)
next it wants you to edit the startIRexec.sh file… easiest way, open a terminal and enter:
gedit ~/scripts/startIRexec.sh
gedit will open the file, now look for the 2 lines that contain user_name and change both instances to your username, if you’re not sure of your username, open a terminal and you username is displayed before the @ symbol at the prompt… once you have edited the file, don’t forget to save it before exiting.
next it wants you to edit the ~/.lircrc file, so open a terminal and enter:
gedit ~/.lircrc
add the lines
include ~/.lirc/irexec include ~/.lirc/irxeventsave and exit.
now you may need to follow the instructions at:
http://www.hackourlives.com/control-rhythmbox-using-ir-remote-lirc-support-rhythmbox/
again to set up Rhythmbox to work with the remote again (we covered this earlier in the thread)
Perfect, its now finally working with rhythmbox.
Would I have to do much more to get it to work with vlc?
Try this…
Start VLC… click Tools>Preferences… put a tick in “all” under “show settings”… then on the left navigate to Interface>Control Interfaces>Infrared and in the “Change the lirc configuration file” box enter ~/.lircrc then click Save.
( if that doesn’t work try changing it to ~/.lirc/vlc )
also you “might” need to navigate to Interface>Main Interfaces and put a tick in “Remote control interface” and save.
restart VLC and see if your remote works with it.
you might want to check the ~/.lircrc file for the line
include ~/.lirc/vlc
so:
gedit ~/.lircrc
and check that line exists
also:
nautilus ~/.lirc
and check there is a file called vlc
and let please me know how you get on.
If all you want is a video player and you cant get VLC to work… try mplayer
to configure mplayer for the MCE remote…
open mplayer, and navigate to Edit>Plugins and put a tick in the “Infrared remote control” box.
Once again perfect 
Had to change a few buttons but luckily that was something I could actually do without bothering you.
Just been reading your blog about enabling the remote to wake up your pc from sleep mode.
Will be giving that a go tomorrow. Should the power button on the mce already put the pc to sleep?
Mine currently doesn’t. What would I need to change for that to work?
Whatever you’re looking at, it’s not “my” blog… which blog are you looking at?.. and does your MCE remote “Power” button do anything at the moment?
Opps, ok its Mark Brewster’s blog I was looking at.
At the moment the power button does nothing.
Open gedit
gedit ~/scripts/suspend.sh
when gedit opens, add this (ignoring the quote line)
# ! /bin/bashThis script is used to suspend the computer
when the user selects the “Power” button
on the MCE remote control
Suspend
sudo /etc/acpi/sleep.sh
exit
save and quit.
next make the script executable
chmod +x ~/scripts/suspend.sh
next add permission to the sudoers file
sudo gedit /etc/sudoers
when gedit opens add this line at the end (ignoring the quote line, and changing username for YOUR username)
%[i]username[/i] ALL= NOPASSWD: /etc/acpi/*[b]save and quit[/b].
now make sure the irexec daemon starts at bootup
sudo gedit /etc/rc.local
when gedit opens add this line (ignoring the quote line)
/usr/bin/irexec -d ~/.lircrc[b]save and quit[/b].
next, add the power button to the .lircrc file
gedit ~/.ircrc
when gedit opens
add the following lines (ignoring the quote line)
begin prog = irexec button = Power (or wahetver the PC button is named on your lirc hardware config) config = ~/scripts/suspend.sh end[b]save and quit[/b].
now, restart lirc
sudo /etc/init.d/lirc restart
(or reboot)
and check if the “Power” button on the MCE remote puts your PC into Suspend