Sometimes (randomly) shows don't record properly

[wmcuzr]

Sometime, randomly, when I click on a recording it doesn't play. I can generally tell that the show wasn't recorded properly because there is no thumbnail for the recording. The recording file is also very small (512b or 0b). Since it happens only sometimes, I'm not sure exactly what is wrong. I have an Intel NUC with ssd running Win7 home. The storage for WMC is set to an external 2TB hard disk connected over USB. I am not sure if the external hard drive is an issue. The Win7 computer is set to sleep when idle, so I was wondering if that could be causing an issue. Maybe it takes time for the harddisk to come back online after the computer wakes up to start recording.

Does anyone know what's going on or are there any error logs that I can look at?

[webminster]

A couple of debugging items: Can you disable sleep for awhile, to remove that variable? Is there anything interesting in the Windows Event logs? (poke thru Event Viewer, Applications and Services / Media Center; perhaps others). Maybe look at Recorded TV / View Scheduled / History in the WMC UI, see if any of the partial recordings there have any information (should be a duplicate of whatever you'd find in the Windows events).

[Sammy2]

Does the USB drive wake when the HTPC does? Maybe it isn't available for recording in time? Can you go eSATA or better yet SATA right off the MoBo? Not letting the PC sleep is not such a bad idea, IMHO.

[Space]

You should definitely look at the "Recorded TV -> View Scheduled -> History" option to see if it indicates why it didn't record.

I wouldn't think that sleep would be a problem because the PC wakes 5 minutes before a recording is due to start, but if you have USB driver issues, it is possible that they don't handle sleep/awake properly, so you may want to make sure you have the latest USB drivers installed.

An external drive can also go to sleep separately from your PC, and if it is not awake when WMC wants to record it may take too long to awaken causing WMC to determine that the drive is not available.

If the drive is sleeping, then you should check with the manufacturer to see if there is any way to disable it.

Another option is to use something like https://nosleephd.codeplex.com/ to keep the drive awake.

[wmcuzr]

Thank you very much for all the replies. I disabled sleep as suggested to remove that variable. That didn't help. I also don't think the external hard drive may be the specific issue. When looking at the history as suggested, I didn't see any issues. In fact the show that wasn't correctly recorded, appeared as having been recorded just fine. That's when I noticed that another show was recorded at the exact same time and it was recorded just fine. That basically removes the sleep issue or the external disk issue by itself somewhat from consideration. I did notice that the show that was recorded fine was recorded on a different tuner device than the show that didn't record fine. So, I think the issue may have been with the tuner itself (maybe caused by sleep, I don't know). I have two hdhomerun devices. An older one HDHR3-US and a newer HDHR4-US. The tuner with the issue is the older one (HDHR3-US, HDHomerun Dual). I have had it for years now and never had any problem. I was able to confirm the issue by trying to simultaneously record four different shows. the first two recorded just fine, because they were being recorded by the newer tuner (HDHR4-US). I couldn't even tune to another channel after that, because that was coming from the older tuner now.

I disabled the tuner from the HDHomerun setup application. After that all four were able to record fine. I am not sure what disabled means, but it doesn't disable the tuner in WMC. It did bounce the driver I am guessing, which fixed the issue. It's fine for now. I don't know what caused the issue.

Thanks again for the helpful tips.

[webminster]

You might consider verifying the firmware versions on the two, and see if you might want to make sure the firmware is up to date to SD's stable if it's behind the newer one. Also, if it happens again, you might want to set diagnostics mode in the HDHR Config tool... if th problem recurs within about 10 days after setting diagnostic mode, you could open a ticket with SD to see if there's some hardware problem with the older tuner.

[mskenny]

Sometime, randomly, when I click on a recording it doesn't play. I can generally tell that the show wasn't recorded properly because there is no thumbnail for the recording. The recording file is also very small (512b or 0b). Since it happens only sometimes, I'm not sure exactly what is wrong. I have an Intel NUC with ssd running Win7 home. The storage for WMC is set to an external 2TB hard disk connected over USB. I am not sure if the external hard drive is an issue. The Win7 computer is set to sleep when idle, so I was wondering if that could be causing an issue. Maybe it takes time for the harddisk to come back online after the computer wakes up to start recording.

Does anyone know what's going on or are there any error logs that I can look at?

I've had this problem in the past and it was due to the scheduled task that kicks off the recording becoming corrupt. You can find a fix at http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... 11#p102911. One time I fixed it this way it took deleting the task and then restoring it from the Recycle Bin in order to get Windows to see it as corrupt. The final time it happened I couldn't fix it this way and wound up finally getting a new machine to run WMC on (replacing 10 year old hardware so it was about time.)

Melissa

[wmcuzr]

You might consider verifying the firmware versions on the two, and see if you might want to make sure the firmware is up to date to SD's stable if it's behind the newer one. Also, if it happens again, you might want to set diagnostics mode in the HDHR Config tool... if th problem recurs within about 10 days after setting diagnostic mode, you could open a ticket with SD to see if there's some hardware problem with the older tuner.

I tried to find the firmware version on HDHomeRun website. I could only find the executable that shows a date that was the same as what I have. Is the HDHR config tool installed by default or do I need to download it from their website? Thank you.

[webminster]

It's installed with the driver pack, you should have it on your Start menu under "HDHomeRun". "C:\Program Files\Silicondust\HDHomeRun\hdhomerun_config_gui.exe"

You can see all the tuners and info from your Web browser at URL: http://my.hdhomerun.com/instructions/index.html. Current stable firmware I believe is 20150826 for the Primes.

[wmcuzr]

It's installed with the driver pack, you should have it on your Start menu under "HDHomeRun". "C:\Program Files\Silicondust\HDHomeRun\hdhomerun_config_gui.exe"

You can see all the tuners and info from your Web browser at URL: http://my.hdhomerun.com/instructions/index.html. Current stable firmware I believe is 20150826 for the Primes.

Thank you. I found the setting and enabled the diagnostics from in there. I do have the latest stable firmware.