Guide Data Outage - Spring/Summer 2016 Edition

Global guide related discussion. All Windows versions.
adam1991

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#21

Post by adam1991 » Tue May 31, 2016 10:29 pm

I call it holiday related, and note that the US Independence Day (aka the War of Colonial Aggression) holiday is right around the corner...

rickmktg

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#22

Post by rickmktg » Tue May 31, 2016 11:02 pm

Really abysmal support by Microsoft. Multiple times a year.
Moved to W10 and NPVR in December 2019. Bye.

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STC

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#23

Post by STC » Tue May 31, 2016 11:18 pm

Well TBH they aren't supporting WMC in any official manner. Mind you when they were it was still just as crap.
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kdurbin82

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#24

Post by kdurbin82 » Wed Jun 01, 2016 1:03 am

I am done investing time into this rig. Not gonna switch my EPG, won't troubleshoot or re-run setup. I am going to watch and wait. As much as I'd hate to pay a subscription to Tivo, I know it's going to happen eventually. MS will stop supporting WMC soon enough and we're all screwed, so why bother?
RIP WMC

webminster

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#25

Post by webminster » Wed Jun 01, 2016 3:02 am

Someone from DC just posted on Answers that their guide updated tonight to 13 days. I haven't confirmed myself.
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kdurbin82

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#26

Post by kdurbin82 » Wed Jun 01, 2016 3:17 am

Mine is updating as well, but the guide data is very incomplete. We will see if it gets any better. I have a couple extra days of data now. More will probably come in later.
RIP WMC

SugarFree

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#27

Post by SugarFree » Wed Jun 01, 2016 3:22 am

webminster wrote:Someone from DC just posted on Answers that their guide updated tonight to 13 days. I haven't confirmed myself.
Yep. Mine just updated to June 12. Someone must've been on vacation.

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#28

Post by Space » Wed Jun 01, 2016 5:32 am

Mine has now updated through 6/13 @ 8pm ET. This is the second time in a row that there has been a guide download issue and it has been fixed relatively quickly. Hopefully this means that they now have automated proactive monitoring (although it still appears to need manual intervention to fix, but at least someone is proactively notified of the issue).

adam1991

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#29

Post by adam1991 » Wed Jun 01, 2016 9:33 am

yes, updated through 6/14 here now.

rickmktg

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#30

Post by rickmktg » Wed Jun 01, 2016 9:09 pm

Mine was not updated this morning. Download Now seems to have no effect. Just did it again, says it is currently in progress. Says it is through 6/6 but last shows are 6/5 evening.
Moved to W10 and NPVR in December 2019. Bye.

rickmktg

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#31

Post by rickmktg » Wed Jun 01, 2016 11:10 pm

Still not. Attempts to update run and 90 min later are still running. I don't think they fixed anything.
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STC

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#32

Post by STC » Thu Jun 02, 2016 12:23 am

^Unless you have a unique issue give it a day or two. There is usually a cascade effect.
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#33

Post by dkrom » Thu Jun 02, 2016 1:44 am

Mine did the "normal" update of no OTA data after an outage. A quick run of the ObjectStoreRecovery task and I'm back to a full guide until 6/14

rickmktg

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#34

Post by rickmktg » Fri Jun 03, 2016 11:57 am

It's interesting that on previous guide outages there is a thread many pages long with many users posting issues, but on this one it's very small.

With no update as of this morning, I decided to check another PC that I don't use. It's guide is also through 6/6 at 6AM with shows showing through the night of 6/5. It's clear that MS hasn't fixed anything and that it's not a pc-specific problem. I wonder why the outcry isn't larger?
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#35

Post by bob_p » Fri Jun 03, 2016 12:13 pm

Just checked my WMC system - and the guide is updated with Rovi data through June 15, so the update appears to be working, at least for me.

If we get down to a few days left of program guide data, then I'll switch to EPG123 (which I may do earlier, because of the poor quality Rovi data).

If the extender software stops working, then we'll have to switch to something else - likely either a DIY DVR solution based on SD's DRM support (if/when they deliver it) or TiVo.

Because Microsoft's mainstream (consumer) support for Windows 8.1 runs through January 2018, it does seem likely Microsoft will continue to keep WMC working at least until then...

I've accepted the fact that Microsoft's support will end someday - and when it does end, there's a strong possibility it will happen without any prior announcement from Microsoft. And other than having contingency plans in place, there doesn't seem to be much else we can do...

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davidhp

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#36

Post by davidhp » Fri Jun 03, 2016 12:32 pm

WMC started updating again for two days then did not update last night again. I have been on June 14 end date for two days now so I don't know if this the start of a new bug yet but when it works it usually updates every day.

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#37

Post by Habanero64 » Fri Jun 03, 2016 1:21 pm

My Windows 7 WMC EPG hasn't updated in over a week and I'm down to just today's guide. As of tomorrow it's got nothing.

Attempts to manually update the guide didn't work.

Rebooting didn't fix anything.

Clearing and discovering my TV tuner in the Ceton Diagnostics Tool and then running TV Setup in WMC didn't work--it's stuck at the Downloading TV Setup Data page, with just one progress dot, something that's never happened before. I've tried this several times.

Something's broken, either on MS's end, Rovi's end, my end, or some combination.

The only thing I can think of on my end is that several weeks ago I made some changes to scheduled tasks regarding WMC, as it kept trying to update itself every morning and in doing so stopping a daily scheduled recording I had programmed at that time.

I can't recall what I'd specifically changed, but it did stop the daily morning updates--too well, apparently! But then why would that affect manual updates? The fact that others have recently been having problems with their EPG updates tells me that this isn't just on my end.

I've been using WMC for nearly 10 years and this is literally the first time I haven't had EPG updates. I can always manually program recordings, especially recurring ones whose channels and times I already know, and using TWC's online TV Schedule for my area. But that's a pain, especially the latter.

Any ideas/solutions?

Btw I'm pretty sure I had another account here that I haven't used in a while and couldn't remember my user name or pwd, and I've changed my email since then and can't access my old email account to recover them, so I created this new account. So, I'm semi-new here (but was never a very active member).

webminster

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#38

Post by webminster » Fri Jun 03, 2016 1:59 pm

If you changed some lower level stuff in WMC and can't quite remember what you did, you may be looking at a feature remove/reinstall for WMC to basically reinstall and set it up again. If you haven't already, you might look at Settings / General / Automatic Download Options and try changing and saving the options there, see if it resets something. You can search TGB here or Google for mcupdate, and perhaps try manually running the update command if only to see if that updates, or at least prints a useful error if something else is broken.
-Alan

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#39

Post by STC » Fri Jun 03, 2016 2:08 pm

rickmktg wrote:I wonder why the outcry isn't larger?
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#40

Post by Habanero64 » Fri Jun 03, 2016 2:11 pm

webminster wrote:If you changed some lower level stuff in WMC and can't quite remember what you did, you may be looking at a feature remove/reinstall for WMC to basically reinstall and set it up again. If you haven't already, you might look at Settings / General / Automatic Download Options and try changing and saving the options there, see if it resets something. You can search TGB here or Google for mcupdate, and perhaps try manually running the update command if only to see if that updates, or at least prints a useful error if something else is broken.
I fixed it, I think. I opened up Task Scheduler in Computer Management and re-enabled several tasks that I seem to have disabled in my attempt to prevent scheduled recordings from stopping mid-way through. Specifically:

mcupdate
mcupdate_scheduled
ReindexSearchRoot

I also manually ran several indexing and registry tasks that hadn't run in a while, just in case. One of the tasks failed and will attempt a future run, and it's still reindexing everything so things are running slow. But this seems to have solved this problem as I now have guide listings through 6/14.

I miss the old EPG. Never had a problem and he Guide came up instantly as opposed to the present 1-2 minutes.

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