No history in WMC

[squidboy]

I just built a new htpc and a clean windows install. Setup wmc. Set shows to record. Checked this morning to see when recorded and for errors and when I went to history, there is nothing there even though shows recorded. Any idea why there is no history

[Crash2009]

Maybe the cat pressed the Clear History button.

[stuartm]

I just built a new HTPC and a clean windows install. Setup WMC. Set shows to record. Checked this morning to see when recorded and for errors and when I went to history, there is nothing there even though shows recorded. Any idea why there is no history

Hmm, maybe history file somehow was corrupted. Try clearing history to see if that resets it.

[CyberSimian]

when I went to history, there is nothing there even though shows recorded. Any idea why there is no history

WMC builds the "History" panel by scanning the event log for WMC events. This is why it gradually takes longer and longer for the "History" panel to appear, as the event log file gets bigger and bigger.

If you have disabled the relevant event log file, there will be nothing for WMC to scan and the "History" panel will be empty. However, I don't know whether it is possible to disable the event log file. Also, I note that you said that you did a clean install of Windows, and I would have expected the event log files to be enabled by default. Nevertheless, check the relevant log file to see if (a) it is enabled and exists, and (b) it contains some events from WMC.

There is an obscure bug in Vista WMC that causes missing entries in the "History" panel, and it is possible that this bug is present in Win7 WMC too. The bug relates to what happens when the event log file becomes full. These files do not grow indefinitely. Instead, when the log file reaches a user-specifiable maximum size, either:

(a) The log wraps around to the beginning of the file and continues logging (so the oldest events are overwritten), or

(b) The log file is archived, and a new log file is started.

I think that (a) is the default, but this is the one that has the bug. After the log has wrapped around, WMC gets out of step with the entries in the log file, with the result that the most recent few entries in the log file are missing from the "History" panel. These missing entries become visible when a few more entries have been added (but those newer entries are in turn missing).

To avoid this, I chose to use "archiving" instead of "wrapping" for my WMC event log file. However, on a new install, the event log files should not be wrapping yet, so this is almost certainly not the origin of your current problem.

-- from CyberSimian in the UK