WMC not responsive for 10-20 minutes

[DavidinCT]

Maybe we should try to figure out what systems that are experiencing this problem have in common.

For instance, my system is still set up for zap2it for the terrestrial lineup (I use the cable lineup which converted to Rovi automatically). It never actually downloads anything for this lineup. I don't know if others experiencing this have the same thing. You can supposedly fix this by going through setup again, but I never did since things seemed to be working fine.

Guide is downloaded to the local machine, if they did a guide update, It should be all on the local machine (it does not try to download it every time you bring up the guide), getting a connection to ROVI or Zap2It would have no affect here.

From someone who has seen a case like this in the past (WMC freezing for a few min at a time, or never recovering), it was always failing hardware. The question I have for people when this "freezing" is happening, can you minimize WMC and does Windows run perfectly or is it frozen like WMC ?

If you have the whole OS frozen, it's not a WMC thing, it's a Widows or hardware issue.

Running setup again would be a good start here....

[Space]

I would normally agree with you on the hardware/HD issue except for the following:

• I have had it occur on two separate hard drives.
• I have seen reports where people had the issue and then they moved to EPG123 and the problem was gone.
• The problem only started happening after the migration to Rovi, no one has reported this problem prior to the move.

The two hard drives were the same model, so I suppose that could be the problem if everyone having the issue is using the same model HD (Seagate 3 TB).

I believe it is only WMC that becomes unresponsive when it is occurring, I am able to run ProcessHacker to see that it is reading from the WMC database during this time.

[gary94080]

I have 3 HP Pavilions

2 with CORE i3 and one CORE i5.

also, I should have stated that the dead time was more on the order of the minute or so that Space has mentioned.

although there have been times that I didn't want to wait and I shut down and restarted the Xbox or I used the Task Manager to shut down WMC and restart the program so I don't know for sure.

if a program locks up for more than a couple of minutes I'm going to shut it down, I'm not patient enough to wait 10 or 20 minutes.

[DavidinCT]

I would normally agree with you on the hardware/HD issue except for the following:

• I have had it occur on two separate hard drives.
• I have seen reports where people had the issue and then they moved to EPG123 and the problem was gone.
• The problem only started happening after the migration to Rovi, no one has reported this problem prior to the move.

The two hard drives were the same model, so I suppose that could be the problem if everyone having the issue is using the same model HD (Seagate 3 TB).

I believe it is only WMC that becomes unresponsive when it is occurring, I am able to run ProcessHacker to see that it is reading from the WMC database during this time.

When it happens, does anything show in the event viewer ? Under Application or system ? If you hit CTL+ALT+DEL when this is happening, what happens ?

Hardware it could be a controller/motherboard issue.

It's really hard for me to believe it's the guide. I would go into settings and update guide, wait till the pop up comes "guide update successful". After that point, the guide is fully indexed in the DB, then bring up the guide. Does it happen ?

Also another thing, Do you have Anti-Virus installed ? Uninstall it for a test (as long as you can re-install it later), Some anti-virus/Anti-spyware software is really agressive and does a scan every time you access a file, and it could hold it for a while if it's a large file and if it's in use (the DB can grow large after a long time). If this helps, You could always exclude c:\programdata\Microsoft\ehome (doing this off the top of my head) after you reinstall.

I have seen slugishness with Anti-virus installed, In fact on my HTPC (ONLY FOR MEDIA) I have NO anti-virus or spyware software installed due to past problems.

[Space]

I have seen no events posted in Event Viewer regarding this issue. I will have to try CTL-ALT-DEL next time it hapens.

Immediately after updating the guide, sometimes it happens, sometimes not. I am not sure if indexing is completed before I try it, but I know that it may not happen for a while after updating, but sometimes it does happen, there doesn't seem to be a clear pattern.

I have Microsoft Security Essentials installed with that eHome folder excluded from scans. If others experiencing this problem also have MSE installed, then I may try uninstalling it, but if not, then I would rather not go through the hassle. I've had it installed since day 1 (couple years) and this problem only started a few months after the Rovi cutover. I am not saying it couldn't be the problem, just that I would like a little more confirmation that others with the problem have this in common.

[Space]

OK, so it just happened again and I typed CTL-ALT-DEL and the normal Win7 CTL-ALT-DEL screen came up. The disk activity continued until completion (about 1 minute total).

Like I indicated before, the rest of the system seems fine when this is happening. It is just that WMC itself becomes very slow/unresponsive and sometimes it even causes playback (if I was playing a show before entering the guide) to pause on it's own, and when the disk activity is done, the playback starts again, but it is all screwed up (like it is trying to catch up to where it should be, but it never does) and I have to stop and start it again to get it to play correctly.

Note that due to the guide download issue that has been going on for the past 8 days, I have had no new guide data loaded in to the database for over a week (and garbage collection just ran yesterday), yet this issue persists, so it does not appear to be related to indexing new data or anything like that.

[Crash2009]

OK, so it just happened again and I typed CTL-ALT-DEL and the normal Win7 CTL-ALT-DEL screen came up. The disk activity continued until completion (about 1 minute total).

Like I indicated before, the rest of the system seems fine when this is happening. It is just that WMC itself becomes very slow/unresponsive and sometimes it even causes playback (if I was playing a show before entering the guide) to pause on it's own, and when the disk activity is done, the playback starts again, but it is all screwed up (like it is trying to catch up to where it should be, but it never does) and I have to stop and start it again to get it to play correctly.

Note that due to the guide download issue that has been going on for the past 8 days, I have had no new guide data loaded in to the database for over a week (and garbage collection just ran yesterday), yet this issue persists, so it does not appear to be related to indexing new data or anything like that.

May not apply to you, but.....This morning I had to boot my test network switch. The switch was all jammed up and everything on the switch was unresponsive. Might just be a co-incidence. Sure is unusual to happen at the same time as the EPG problem.

[atomasze]

I have a system doing a similar thing just not as long. It can take several minutes before system can take further action once i select guide. I have two other systems working just fine. All win7 systems, but different update levels. I just manually updated problem system to the latest patches to see if it would be correct, but no change. No H/W faults showing.

The description of problem i see, Bring up WMC, start some activity, like watch live TV, or even just select guide. System disk activity lite goes solid and WMC will not take any further commands until disk lite starts to flicker, usually takes at least a one to three minutes. Once WMC has caught up selecting guide again within a short time period provides quicker display, then if you wait 1/2 hr or so selecting guide again can take longer to display.

Other 2 systems are snappy and respond quickly, and they are also lesser computing power then the system responding slowly. The problem systems only significant difference is a Hauppauge <sp?> internal 2 tuner card. Then this unit and the rest also attach to SiliconDust HD tuners.

Not exactly the same as the OP, but similar and just figured i would add another data point.

[stuartm]

My observations on this problem:

1.) Never noticed it before the Rovi switchover.

2.) For me it was a couple of minutes of heavy disk access/non-responsive WMC on the first access to the guide after a bootup.

3.) Once that is done things are usually pretty fast when accessing the guide. Even across sleep/wakeup or exit/restart of WMC.

4.) Staying fast may be because things get cached in memory. I have 16 Gig and dedicate 9 Gig to a ramdisk holding my live TV buffer.

5.) Recently upgraded my System disk to SSD from spinning rust and now even initial guide access is acceptably fast.

[Rainey]

I have read some reports about this, and it seems that the EPG database gets large about 400 meg and may cause this slow down. But a clean or new database is only about 20 to 50 meg that is the normal size (delete and rebuild). It seems that ever since the rovi switch over the database seems to fragment in some cases and this can cause the slow access/edits.

[Crash2009]

I have read some reports about this, and it seems that the EPG database gets large about 400 meg and may cause this slow down. But a clean or new database is only about 20 to 50 meg that is the normal size (delete and rebuild). It seems that ever since the rovi switch over the database seems to fragment in some cases and this can cause the slow access/edits.

What is the name of the file to delete?

[gary94080]

I didn't think of this until now but this is probably related to the times I call up the scheduled recording list and WMC goes into spin cycle for a minute or so.

[Space]

OK, so there is now speculation that it is related to the size of the database, so is there anyone who has this problem but has a small database? Is there anyone who has a large database and doesn't have this problem?

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\eHome\mcepg#-#
There may be several of these databases with different numbers (replacing the "#"'s), just look at the one with the most current date (most likely the one with the highest #).

[frostillicus]

Might just be coincidence, when I had what sounds like a very similar problem, I was using a Seagate 3TB 7200rpm internal sata drive. I only mention it because it was stated previously as a possible common theme. The model of my drive that eventually failed completely was st3000dm001

[Crash2009]

Might just be coincidence, when I had what sounds like a very similar problem, I was using a Seagate 3TB 7200rpm internal sata drive. I only mention it because it was stated previously as a possible common theme. The model of my drive that eventually failed completely was st3000dm001

Have you read this one?

http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... 68#p101268

[frostillicus]

I wasn't aware of the lawsuit. Luckily for me, I didn't have any critical data on the drive. Just WMC recordings that I back up to another once a week. They did provide a replacement at no cost which is working fine, so I do give Seagate some credit for that. It is a refurb, however, so I don't have high hopes that it will last longer than the 2 years I got out of the one it replaced. Still annoying enough that I'll stick with WD drives next time I'm paying for a spinning drive.

[gary94080]

when doing a search for a program, I noticed an alert that said that the list may be incomplete because the WMC was indexing the guide data.

I called up the guide and noticed that it was slow to respond, but only maybe 20 seconds or so.

so maybe the slow guide issue is related to the indexing process.

[Crash2009]

I wasn't aware of the lawsuit. Luckily for me, I didn't have any critical data on the drive. Just WMC recordings that I back up to another once a week. They did provide a replacement at no cost which is working fine, so I do give Seagate some credit for that. It is a refurb, however, so I don't have high hopes that it will last longer than the 2 years I got out of the one it replaced. Still annoying enough that I'll stick with WD drives next time I'm paying for a spinning drive.

The refurbs are part of the lawsuit too. Not trying to talk you into it, just letting you know.