TheGreenButton - Windows Media Center Forums

Ooops! There it is! This is that very infrequent message in WMC that wreaks havoc with everything.

It was discussed in this post (viewtopic.php?f=99&t=10989) but I don't think there was ever a resolution.

I went ahead and let it do whatever it does and here's my guide listing after 4 hours.



And here are my scheduled recordings.



This is a new system that has never had anything but EPG123 on it. It's never even touched a Microsoft guide listing since installation. Does anyone know how to restore whatever got lost?

One other thing... It completely reset my entire custom menu.

StinkyImp wrote:I went ahead and let it do whatever it does and here's my guide listing after 4 hours.



And here are my scheduled recordings.



This is a new system that has never had anything but EPG123 on it. It's never even touched a Microsoft guide listing since installation. Does anyone know how to restore whatever got lost?

One other thing... It completely reset my entire custom menu.

Yup, sure do. Can you wait a few hours so I don't have to try to explain on the phone?

garyan2 wrote:Yup, sure do. Can you wait a few hours so I don't have to try to explain on the phone?

STOP whatever you're doing. It's fixed but I wish there was a simple backup/restore option for whenever this happens.

Here's my fix:

1. Installed EPG123 v 1.1.17
2. Cleared cache
3. Save & Exit in EPG123
4. Add missing channels in WMC
5. Use EPG123Transfer to fix scheduled recordings (I was at least smart enough to start backing up the mpegx-x directory every night).
6. Fix my menus...

Really a pain without some type of backup I could do nightly and just restore when this message pops up.

Is there something I can disable to keep WMC from doing this?

EDIT: Gary, I just want to thank you for all the work you put into EPG123. I absolutely love the program and appreciate you. I know this issue isn't caused by your program, it's something WMC is doing. Your program certainly fixes the problems WMC creates!

No worries.

Could you check your event viewer \Applications and Service Logs\Media Center? Find the most recent MCUpdate entry that says "Starting Client Maintenance" and another that says "Client Maintenance has completed."

Do those times coincide with when EPG123 is performing an update? Now that I've got code in place to delay importing the mxf file while there is a recording in progress, I can easily do the same for when mcupdate is running to avoid possible conflicts. I would like to see if my theory holds any water, here.

Could you check your event viewer \Applications and Service Logs\Media Center? Find the most recent MCUpdate entry that says "Starting Client Maintenance" and another that says "Client Maintenance has completed."

Let me start out by saying that I watched the news earlier in the day and closed WMC around 9AM. I opened it back up around 2PM and that's when I received my "Oops! There it is!" warning. So the anomaly occurred sometime in there.

Here are the most recent Event Viewer entries that include MCUpdate. This time period also seems to coincide to when this anomaly occurred.

"Starting Client Maintenance" are the entries at 9/21/2017 3:24:33 AM and 9/21/2017 4:06:10 PM

"Client Maintenance has completed" are the entries at 9/21/2017 3:33:48 AM and 9/21/2017 4:06:29 PM

The EPG123 Warnings are "epg123 is not up to date. Latest version is 1.1.17 and can be..."



Here's the warning for "mcstore" which is closest to the time I received the error.



NOTE: There are no errors in the trace.log, only warnings for the version update. I can PM it to you if you'd like?

I have experience this error several times.

It usually happens when I start WMC. Normally I run it all the time - dedicated PC. But occasionally I'll do some maintenance or something else and close WMC. (Sometimes I close it because of the h.264 hanging playback).

I've noticed that when this happens usually the green button is in the tray (doing WMC maintenance?).

My current "fix" is to log off before restarting WMC so that the maintenance process ends. Of course I can't to that if it is recording.

DaveInPa wrote:It usually happens when I start WMC. Normally I run it all the time - dedicated PC. But occasionally I'll do some maintenance or something else and close WMC.

Ditto. The two times it happened to me were when after I closed Media Center, did some none Media Center stuff and then re-launched Media Center. It think maybe some Media Center process doesn't close down properly/cleanly and then locks the database files.

IT Troll wrote:

DaveInPa wrote:It usually happens when I start WMC. Normally I run it all the time - dedicated PC. But occasionally I'll do some maintenance or something else and close WMC.

Ditto. The two times it happened to me were when after I closed Media Center, did some none Media Center stuff and then re-launched Media Center. It think maybe some Media Center process doesn't close down properly/cleanly and then locks the database files.

EPG123 runs its task daily at 2:00AM. Beyond that I normally don't do anything with it. I don't do any other "maintenance" on it.

When you say "Normally I run it all the time - dedicated PC." does that mean you leave the GUI on constantly? Mine's dedicated also, but I only open the GUI whenever I want to watch a program. When I'm done I close the GUI. Therefore, I only receive this error when I open the GUI and don't pay attention to whether the tray icon is active. I have it hidden anyway, so I wouldn't really notice if it was doing anything.

What I do know is that I've never initiated any "maintenance" or changes prior to receiving this message. Since the only option I have is to select "OK" - I just have to deal with the aftermath. That's what I need help with, either disable whatever causes this or have some way to backup/restore it so I don't have to go through a few hours of manually rebuilding.

I leave the GUI on constantly, except for the rare occasions when I want to do something else; e.g. BBC iPlayer. If it is not being used for media playback, I have the photo screensaver running.

Sometimes, after it has been running for several days, the clock in Media Center shows the wrong time. The actual system time is correct, it just displays the wrong time (another charming bug). The fix is to close and re-open the GUI.

My guess is that Media Center does a quick integrity check on launch. The actual problem could have happened some time before.

IT Troll wrote:My guess is that Media Center does a quick integrity check on launch. The actual problem could have happened some time before.

I'd have to agree. The primary reason I posted this topic is because this is either the 4th or 5th time this has happened to me and it appears that it happens to others. It's so sporadic (and the interval is in months) that I have a hard time remembering what I had to do to get it lined out.

Now I can come back here and have a rudimentary "guide" to assist when it happens the next time. Hopefully it will help someone else out too. Maybe someone will figure out what causes it?

NOTE (For me): On step 4. Add missing channels in WMC - Remember to "Add Listings" to these channels!

That's a nice background. What WMC theme are you using?

It's called "Mobius by PerfectHue" and is one of the themes that comes with Media Center Studio BETA (0.0.6.5).

StinkyImp wrote:

IT Troll wrote:

DaveInPa wrote:It usually happens when I start WMC. Normally I run it all the time - dedicated PC. But occasionally I'll do some maintenance or something else and close WMC.

Ditto. The two times it happened to me were when after I closed Media Center, did some none Media Center stuff and then re-launched Media Center. It think maybe some Media Center process doesn't close down properly/cleanly and then locks the database files.

EPG123 runs its task daily at 2:00AM. Beyond that I normally don't do anything with it. I don't do any other "maintenance" on it.

When you say "Normally I run it all the time - dedicated PC." does that mean you leave the GUI on constantly? Mine's dedicated also, but I only open the GUI whenever I want to watch a program. When I'm done I close the GUI. Therefore, I only receive this error when I open the GUI and don't pay attention to whether the tray icon is active. I have it hidden anyway, so I wouldn't really notice if it was doing anything.

What I do know is that I've never initiated any "maintenance" or changes prior to receiving this message. Since the only option I have is to select "OK" - I just have to deal with the aftermath. That's what I need help with, either disable whatever causes this or have some way to backup/restore it so I don't have to go through a few hours of manually rebuilding.

Yes. I leave the GUI on constantly. I will turn the TV off, but leave WMC in full screen. The "maintenance" I refer to is:
- Adding ripped movies
- Occasionally using a browser for something
- Updating EPG123
- Playing a video game
- etc.

These are not things that would change WMC in anyway. I believe that the background tasks associated with WMC are what is causing the error and erases the database when WMC is starting.

Just letting you know that this is affecting me too.

In my case it seems to coincide with problems with my EPG grabber (EPG Collector). Each time EPG Collector logs an error with the day's grab, the next time I launch WMC it presents this "problem with your recording data". error. It looks like WMC isn't very good at handling corrupt EPG data and falls back on setting everything up from scratch. This wouldn't be a problem if Microsoft still supported regional channel lineups and the EPG properly, but it takes me a whole day to get my channels listings back, manually tuning using info on KingOfSat, and then re-mapping EPG Collector.

The occurrences seem to be getting more frequent, to the point where I had two in a month and have now binned WMC and gone over to MP2.

I disabled the standard mcupdate task which completely fixed this for me.
viewtopic.php?f=99&t=10989&p=126492#p126346