8.1 WMC Series Recordings Won't Start in Background

[JohnJ9]

I don't know exactly what to call it, but I am having a problem where my scheduled recordings - and maybe one-off recordings? not sure yet - don't start recording unless WMC is up and running. In fact, if one gets missed, as soon as I start up WMC, the recording begins immediately.

I have a Dell machine that I've been using as my WMC server, and I really only use it to record. The machine came with a 1TB drive, which just wasn't enough disk space over time. I am recording from a Ceton InfiniTV 6, and things are finnicky there such that life becomes very iffy when recording to an external drive, so I instead decided to upgrade my system to a 2TB drive (one drive bay in the Dell machine, and the max drive the BIOS would support was a 2TB drive). I used Casper from Future Systems to clone the drive, and switching over was a breeze: I plugged the new drive in and it worked as the product advertises: there was no loss, no downtime. I have no idea if these two facts are or are not related: the drive clone was seemingly perfect, the new drive is every bit as fast as the original, etc. The only anomaly I can say existed was that my initial boot of the system seemed to end up with Win8.1 in some strange startup mode almost as though it were starting over again, but after one more reboot everything seemed as usual. I have the system set to autologon, and I have had no problem since that one initial boot attempt.

I don't know if there is such a thing or not, but it is almost as though there is some startup item that is not taking place, and I don't know what it is, and I don't know how one would go about correcting it. Is there something that gets run at startup that tells the system to watch the recording queue for something to do? I don't know how that could have gotten unhinged, but that one strange initial boot makes me wonder if some startup item is not there, and I don't know how to find it and / or get it back.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[choliscott]

Since you cloned the drive from the 1 TB to the 2 TB, has the recording worked fine since then & just recently started acting up, or did it start pretty much right after the conversion?

[JohnJ9]

My recollection is that it started immediately afterward. I would never have expected this, so I don't feel I know this as being 100% positive, but I was not having a problem at all before the conversion. One of those things where part of you wonders why you're waking a sleeping dog.

In playing around with a couple tests, I have a recording running that was a series recording and should have started on its own, but did not start until I brought WMC up. I went into the guide and scheduled a recording that was in the near future but would overlap, and also went in with my MC and scheduled a recording that was a bit further in the future and would still overlap. I visually confirmed both recordings showed as being scheduled in the guide in WMC. Neither program recorded.

[choliscott]

If you wanted to try resetting WMC, you can. The easiest way I've seen to do this is...

1) Boot into Safe mode
2) In Windows Explorer, have it show hidden folders & files
3) Open the C:\Program Data folder
4) Open the "Microsoft" Folder"
5) Open the "eHome" Folder
6) Delete the mcepg#-# files & the mcepg#-# folders. Leave the rest of the folders
7) Reboot the computer, back to regular mode
8) Go back into WMC & setup Live TV
9) Setup your recordings.

Now that being said, if your cable provider marks everything as "copy once", I'm not sure what this will do to existing recordings, as Comcast in my area, has all channels except for the paid channels marked as Copy Freely.

The instructions I listed came from this link: http://www.hack7mc.com/2009/09/clearing ... enter.html
where I found it easier to do everything in safe mode

[.Nico]

I'm not reading anything about 'Windows Media Center Receiver Service' in your post(s) or I've missed it...
Is that service running?

[JohnJ9]

As an update before answering Nico's question:

Before doing something drastic such as delete everything and set up from scratch, I did the following:

I installed the latest stable drivers for my Ceton InfiniTV ETH 6. It had been out for a while, and there was a part of me that was thinking WMC wasn't willing to use another tuner, but I wasn't sure. I set all my recordings up to start 5 minutes before and finish 10 minutes after, but I was seeing signs that made me think maybe it wouldn't start the next recording until the current one was finished. Wasn't sure, but that was my motivation. This didn't fix anything.

I decided to delete a couple series recording schedules and then went in directly in the guide and set them up again. I set them up to finish 10 minutes after, and then used MyMC to change the start time to start 5 minutes before (instead of when possible).

After setting things up, I let the two time slots go today, and no recordings took place. One of them should have started an hour and a half ago on a show that would run several hours. When I found no recording had run or was running, I brought up WMC. Still nothing happened. Then I opened the guide, and immediately the recording that should still have been going on started up.

I'm not reading anything about 'Windows Media Center Receiver Service' in your post(s) or I've missed it...
Is that service running?

To answer your question here: I don't know when the system is at rest. It is running now, but that's after doing the above, including opening the guide. I'm assuming I should see that running at all times, not just when a recording is taking place? I can wait a bit until something else finishes that's important and then reboot the machine and see if that process is running at rest.

[JohnJ9]

I did some reading on the receiver service, and found that both it and the scheduler service were set to Manual for some reason, and were set to run as the network service. I changed both back to start automatically at startup, set both to run as the local user, and while that makes sure the receiver service works, the scheduler service comes up briefly on reboot, then shuts itself down. This results in no scheduled recordings taking place. I haven't found anything yet that corrects this problem, so it seems the receiver service is a good hint, but I'm not quite all the way yet.

[.Nico]

The Windows Media Center Receiver Service will be started with Windows itself, the Windows Media Center Scheduler Service will be started as soon as there is a recording planned, even when Media Center is closed and the computer is in sleep-mode.

EDIT: just checked my W8.1 MC, the scheduler service stopped after closing Media Center! I will levae it this way and see if the recording is started... watch this space...

Maybe it will help to start a few tasks in the Task Planner. Look for:
Library -> Microsoft -> Windows -> Media Center ->
ReindexSearchRoot

There is a warning here for the following task:
ObjectStoreRecoveryTask

After running this you'll have to run the TV Wizard and plan all your TV recordings again...

[.Nico]

UPDATE: the scheduler service did start 5 minutes prior to the scheduled TV recording and stopped directly afterwards. So the service is only used to trigger the start and stop of the recording, hence the reason why it is stopped when you (re)boot your computer.

[JohnJ9]

Update: I do see the scheduler service come and go, but things do still seem amiss. Even though my installation shows there are six tuners out there, it seems to stay with the same one and start the next recording on the same channel with the same tuner, missing the first ten minutes of the succeeding show. I'm wondering if I do need to clear things out and set up again. As it is, I'm not getting what I need out of the system anyway! I'm trying to remember if there was a patch that had to be applied that maybe somehow got lost.

[.Nico]

After the second recording is scheduled, go to TV, recording and find the first one. Select Actions and choose recording settings. Here you can change the stop time to 10 minutes after instead of "10 minutes after if possible". That way the second tuner is forced to handle the recording.