Recording History slow to appear

[Gripweed]

I started having this problem a few months ago. The History log is always several hours behind. If I record something at, say, 1pm, it will not show up in the display of the History log until sometime in the evening. Something recorded in the evening, 8, 9, 10 o'clock, I will not see listed until the next morning. I checked Windows Events log for MC which is the source for the History log and they have all the information immediately as it occurs. Something is slowing down the info transfer from Events to History. Is there a scheduled task that sends it over or some type of setting in the registry?
I think I've read every message in this forum that has the word History in it and none have mentioned this problem. Any ideas, anyone?

[CyberSimian]

If I record something at, say, 1pm, it will not show up in the display of the History log until sometime in the evening. Something recorded in the evening, 8, 9, 10 o'clock, I will not see listed until the next morning.

I encountered this problem with Vista WMC. I believe that there is a problem with Windows event log files that wrap.

If you use wrapping event log files, when the log file reaches the maximum size that you specified, new entries are added at the start of the physical file, overwriting the oldest entries. But it appears that WMC does not correctly track this wrapping, with the result that it misses the most recent entries. They are not permanently missing; they will appear when more entries are added (but then those newer entries will be missing until even more entries are added).

The solution? Choose a different setting for the management of event log files. I don't use WMC any more, but I think that I chose the setting that starts a new event log file whenever the current log file becomes full. This means that the event log files will occupy more and more space on the disk, so you have to remember to delete the oldest files from time to time.

Also, when WMC is generating the "History", it scans only the current log file, so when Windows starts a new log file, you won't see the history contained in the previous log file.

Finally, the time that WMC takes to create the history is directly proportional to the size of the event log file. If you specify a very large size for the log file, WMC will take a long time to generate the history when the log file is nearing maximum size. I chose 8GB as the size.

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

[Gripweed]

Thank you so much for your quick reply and your possible fix. This is what I found when I looked at the Properties for my MC event log...
Log file size - 3.07MB
Max. log file size - 8192KB
Setting - Archive the log when full, do not overwrite the events

So, I believe it is already set up the way that you said to do it (minus the typo of 8GB rather than 8MB. I realize that you were working from memory.)

What I decided to do was to Clear the MC event log and change the setting to "Do not overwrite the events (Clear logs manually)" and hope for the best.
I'll know later on today when I do some afternoon recording. I'll keep you informed.

Thanks again for your reply.

[CyberSimian]

minus the typo of 8GB rather than 8MB

Oops! You are right of course -- it should have been 8MB (not 8GB).

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

[Gripweed]

Success! The recorded shows immediately appear in the History log again. I'm thinking that clearing the MC Event log did the trick. Having seen that there were already 3 archived event logs for MC dating back many years I'm wondering if it might just have been a case of the present log (prior to clearing it) having gotten corrupt or something. With that in mind and knowing that I'll never remember to manually clear the event log again, I switched the setting back to "Archive the log when full, do not overwrite the events." I did make less the maximum size of the log from 8MB to 2MB. Fingers crossed, touch wood and etc.
Again, thank you so much for pointing me in the direction of the MC Event log. I really appreciate your help.