Good remote control solution?

[dwell]

I have a PC connected to my TV and would like to use my Harmony 1000 to control apps. There's plenty of programs out there to maps remote codes to apps (EventGhost, Intelliremote, etc).

Where I am really getting hung up is finding an IR receiver that works with XP. I have found a lot of MCE remotes but they are all Vista Certified and do not work at all with XP. It's really hard finding an old MCE 2005 receiver and the only ones I am finding are really expensive because you're mostly paying for the remote (which I don't need).

Any good IR solutions for Windows XP? Sounds like it should be an easy thing but I am finding it incredibly frustrating.

 

[Modelworks]

There are plenty of ways to solve this, some of them free.
A good place to start is : http://www.lirc.org/
It is a linux site but there is a port for windows called winlirc.
http://winlirc.sourceforge.net/

 

[dwell]

I ended up hacking the Vista remote to work under XP and used EventGhost to map the MCE commands to the programs I am using (XBMC, Zoom Player, iTunes, etc).