Restore on new windows installation

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Kick4U

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Restore on new windows installation

#1

Post by Kick4U » Mon Dec 31, 2018 1:53 am

I'm encountering the same problem as described on this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=8203&p=83308&hilit= ... a0b#p83308

It seems GuideTool 1.2.5 doesn't allow me to restore without donating, but the donation feature doesn't work since the website is down. Also noticed a GuideTool 1.4 was released, but can't find a download for it.

Is there a "best practice" to creating a backup and restoring on a different OS install?

Old OS was Windows 7 x86 Ultimate
New OS is Windows 7 x64 Ultimate

Same computer:
AMD Athlon II 170u2.00GHz
4GB Ram
ATI TV Wonder HD 650
MCE 6.0

Please let me know if I need to provide more information.

Thanks!

Edit: I have reinstalled a few times and found that setting up EPG123 as a new system is working fine. I just can't use a backup that had everything setup already (channel order and lineups).

Here's the crazy part: it seems the tuner is fine; when I navigate to Tasks->settings->TV->Guide->Edit Channels and have a channel disabled and saved. The 'Show Preview" works! The preview WON'T work with the channel enabled and this is causing me the frustration.

Kick4U

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#2

Post by Kick4U » Mon Dec 31, 2018 3:19 am

So I found where the problem is, but not a simple solution. After using Guide Editor 2.1.0.2 (viewtopic.php?f=44&t=97) I found that I had to "Clear All" from the 'Edit Channels' page and enable the channels manually using Guide Editor 2.1.0.2; even though it seemed like enabling them within MCE was doing the same thing.

I found that selecting all the channels in EPG123 and clicking one of the check boxes enables all the channels at once!

So... after a fresh installation of Windows, you can use the Restore feature in EPG123, than go into MCE settings and clear all the channels, than return to EPG123 and enable the channels. Not sure why this is the only way it works on my computer. Maybe it's because the ATI driver for my tuner is flaky and never officially supported for Windows 7?

Anyways, it seems to be working! Thanks!

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garyan2

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#3

Post by garyan2 » Mon Dec 31, 2018 4:36 am

Kick4U wrote: Mon Dec 31, 2018 3:19 am I found that selecting all the channels in EPG123 and clicking one of the check boxes enables all the channels at once!
Yes, multi-select works. The space bar would have worked as well to check and uncheck all the selected channels.

Not quite sure of what was going on before, but glad you got it working. The best thing to do now, once you have all your customizations done (channel number, names, groups, ...) is to click the [Backup] button in the client. That will create a zip file with all that information to be available whenever you need it.
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

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#4

Post by Kick4U » Mon Dec 31, 2018 4:52 pm

So I went ahead and reinstalled Windows x86 to see if it was an issue between backing up on x86 and restoring on x64. Unfortunately the same issue came up again.

It's crazy how I have to disable the channels in MCE and enable in EPG123 to make the channels work. Disable than enable within MCE won't work (even if I disable, restart computer, and enable in MCE) nor does disable and enable in EPG123.

I'm not sure how this can work within EPG123, but once I do this once the restore feature works without a problem.

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garyan2

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#5

Post by garyan2 » Mon Dec 31, 2018 5:07 pm

Kick4U wrote: Mon Dec 31, 2018 4:52 pm So I went ahead and reinstalled Windows x86 to see if it was an issue between backing up on x86 and restoring on x64. Unfortunately the same issue came up again.

It's crazy how I have to disable the channels in MCE and enable in EPG123 to make the channels work. Disable than enable within MCE won't work (even if I disable, restart computer, and enable in MCE) nor does disable and enable in EPG123.

I'm not sure how this can work within EPG123, but once I do this once the restore feature works without a problem.
I'm actually surprised you can get it to work at all between the x86 and the x64 installs... not because 1 is 32-bit and the other is 64-bit, but because they are completely different installs and your tuner drivers may assign a different GUID. If the GUID is different between, then the restore will probably not work because WMC will be looking for a tuner that is not there. Since you get some level of success, then I figure it is due to your tuner being an internal card.

EPG123 does some level of repair to the merged channels in the database if it sees an issue. Is there anything in the trace.log file describing those repairs?
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

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#6

Post by Kick4U » Mon Dec 31, 2018 5:49 pm

It's a USB tuner! The GUID is different, which I had originally assumed as the problem and figured there was no way to make it work... but it does work, just need to do a few presses of the mouse within MCE to disable the channels and enable afterwards in EPG123 and voila!

trace.log only shows that importMcfFile was successful, ReindexSearchRoot was successful, and RunWmcTask was successful. Nothing strange at all.

Happy New Year!!!

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#7

Post by Kick4U » Wed Jan 02, 2019 3:32 am

Excited too soon. It seems the recording feature has been broken. I can't record live shows or create upcoming recordings. I guess I'll reinstall Win7 to see if recording didn't break from sometime else that I've done in the last few days. Will report back in a few days...

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garyan2

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#8

Post by garyan2 » Wed Jan 02, 2019 3:40 am

I've seen this a couple times and have no idea why it happens, but take a look at the sources for your channels (settings->TV->Guide->Edit Channels and select a channel and then click 'Edit Sources'). You will probably find that your recording sources are disabled... hence nothing is scheduled to record. This is probably a side effect of how you were trying to restore your previous setup.

I would suggest simply biting the bullet and starting from scratch with WMC and EPG123.
- Gary
Keeping WMC alive beyond January 2020. https://garyan2.github.io

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#9

Post by Kick4U » Wed Jan 02, 2019 8:28 pm

You got me thinking and I found 'guid' and 'recorderId' within lineup.mxf needed to be changed.

After the LiveTV setup is completed a file is created under 'C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\ehome\mcepg2-0\backup\lineup'. The newest file needs to be scanned for the parameters 'guid' and 'recorderId' around line 55. All that needs to be done is to use these two parameters in place of the old ones within the backup.zip file.

Tried a few times it is working great.

Original backup 'lineup.mxf' line 55:

Code: Select all

      <Device id="004CE" guid="323f4728f89b409091b38e02b54a45d4" countryCode="US" name="ATI AVStream Analog Tuner" recorderId="61dfd177-4731-4238-8f70-1a03b0b60622" preferredOrder="11050" isChannelTuningInfoSupported="false" isDVBTuningInfoSupported="false" isStringTuningInfoSupported="false">
New lineup file found under 'C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\ehome\mcepg2-0\backup\lineup' line 54:

Code: Select all

      <Device id="003F5" guid="8f534298324743fdb771f9fdfdcb0ee8" countryCode="US" name="ATI AVStream Analog Tuner" recorderId="66fcddf8-e31b-4208-8f7a-f6de8417c061" preferredOrder="12050" isChannelTuningInfoSupported="false" isDVBTuningInfoSupported="false" isStringTuningInfoSupported="false">
New edits of backup 'lineup.mxf' line 55:

Code: Select all

      <Device id="004CE" guid="8f534298324743fdb771f9fdfdcb0ee8" countryCode="US" name="ATI AVStream Analog Tuner" recorderId="66fcddf8-e31b-4208-8f7a-f6de8417c061" preferredOrder="11050" isChannelTuningInfoSupported="false" isDVBTuningInfoSupported="false" isStringTuningInfoSupported="false">

Notice, the reason the lines don't match up is that the EPG123 backup file had '<Type name="CodedApplicationBinding" />' on line 20 which the mcepg2 file did not.

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garyan2

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#10

Post by garyan2 » Wed Jan 02, 2019 8:39 pm

That is awesome... I'll work on this and I may include a WMC transfer ability. Don't know how it will look, but the ability will be there!

Great work! :thumbup:
- Gary
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#11

Post by Kick4U » Wed Jan 02, 2019 10:39 pm

That would be awesome! I'm glad I found it.

I'm getting a second tuner in about a week and will poke around at the xml to see what issues will arise when two are present and if there is a way to easily distinguish between them.

Thanks for the help

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#12

Post by technodevotee » Wed May 26, 2021 7:00 am

Just wondering if there is any progress on this topic.

It would be very useful.

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#13

Post by garyan2 » Wed May 26, 2021 9:35 pm

No, I haven't done anything with this. I just haven't sat down and mapped out what would be needed not only to "transfer" tuner setups between machines, but ensure the tuners are of the same type and fun stuff like that.
- Gary
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#14

Post by technodevotee » Thu May 27, 2021 2:50 pm

Is there anything I can do to help?

I read through the information that Kick4U wrote but I'm not sure it is that simple in my case.

I've got two dual DVB-S2 cards that I'm going to upgrade to a later version and I'm really keen to avoid having to retune everything because it takes me two days to gat it back as it was every time.

Partly my fault for have a multi-satellite set up and partly Microsoft's fault for not keeping the setup data up to date.

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#15

Post by garyan2 » Thu May 27, 2021 7:42 pm

I'm going to have to research a bit. It's been a couple years since I looked to see what it would take to cross-link tuners setups between old and new tuners.
- Gary
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#16

Post by technodevotee » Fri May 28, 2021 5:10 am

Thanks.

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#17

Post by garyan2 » Sat Jul 31, 2021 7:15 pm

I know it is not entirely what you would have hoped, but next (pre-)release will add capability to the database restore function. The restore will work for any machine and/or any new OS install as long as the tuners in the backup file are the same tuners that are present for WMC.

If there are no tuners present for WMC, it will abort.
If there are no tuners in the backup file, it will abort.
If not all of the tuners in the backup file are present for WMC, it will abort.
If you have more tuners for WMC than are in the backup file, it will present that information but let you proceed.
If the tuners present for WMC are the same as the tuners in the backup file, it will change some attributes in the backup file so that it will work for the new machine/OS.

I'm going to test it out a bit more and hopefully release soon.
- Gary
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#18

Post by garyan2 » Sun Aug 01, 2021 8:22 pm

This has gotten a little crazy. The above is all successful if the WMC you are restoring to already has its' tuners and recorders setup. In order to restore a clean WMC, I would need to backup and restore some registry settings as well like is done with Win10 WMC. I don't think the entire Media Center tree is needed, but a good chunk of it is.

More work ahead...
- Gary
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#19

Post by garyan2 » Mon Aug 02, 2021 4:15 pm

Okay, next release will enhance the backup/restore feature to include necessary registry entries in order to restore onto any machine/OS installation.
- Gary
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#20

Post by technodevotee » Mon Aug 02, 2021 6:19 pm

That sounds great!

I think it will be really useful to me.

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