Can't create New Task

[Mugsy]

Argh!

I've just finished setting up EPG123 for the first time (using the latest... Feb 2019... version.) It took a bit of work to figure out (the manual is TERRIBLE, assumes everything goes smoothly and leaves out too much), but it appears I now have everything working... EXCEPT that it refuses to create a "New Task" to automatically update the Guide data.

I could do it manually if I knew what to enter.

The setup was miserable. I may write new instructions for myself someday in case I ever need to go through that headache again, but for now, all I need is the Command Line for a New Task to update my EPG123 guide data.

TIA

[garyan2]

Interesting... feel free to create your own guide and share with the group.

To create a task, the executable needs to be run with elevated privileges. Right-click the program/short-cut and select 'Run as administrator', then create the task.

[garyan2]

I see the problem with creating the task for the first time. I'll get this fixed in next release.

[Mugsy]

Interesting... feel free to create your own guide and share with the group.

To create a task, the executable needs to be run with elevated privileges. Right-click the program/short-cut and select 'Run as administrator', then create the task.

Thx for the reply.

Unfortunately, I was already running the app in Admin mode. (And when not in Admin mode, the New Task button has a shield on it to relaunch in Admin mode anyway.

I've checked my "Scheduled Tasks", but nothing gets added.

On setting up EPG123, when you install the software, it puts a shortcut to "EPG123" on the desktop but not "EPG123 Client" (which is where the documentation tells you to start), so I started out by running the wrong app and wondering why the instructions were referring to things I wasn't seeing. Eventually I figured out there's another app.

Then, after running Setup, on the Configuration page, the instructions say to click "Save & Execute", but I kept getting "No scheduled task. Are you sure you want to exit?" Eventually, I just said Yes expecting to lose my settings, but didn't. The manual makes no mention of what to do if you get this message.

The "Transfer Recording" Tool came up empty even though I had many scheduled recordings. I assumed they were lost in the setup only to discover once this was all over that my selected scheduled recordings are still set in the Guide. Thank goodness.) Why the app's "Scheduled Recordings" list was empty, I have no idea. (Perhaps the same "Task Manager" issue?)

So then I'm taken to the "Guide Tool". My selected guide channels appeared on the left while the right side was completely empty (including the "Lineup" drop-down.) Eventually, I stumbled into clicking "Restore" and the right pane was then populated with my "Schedules Direct" channels. But then what? Drag channels from left to right? No. The instructions don't say. Right-clicking gave me a popup with "Subscribe" grayed out. I eventually figured out I had to select one channel on each side then right-click and click "Subscribe" one at a time. But the GUI doesn't change or indicate if you did anything at all. And once I was done, then what? The documentation doesn't say.

So, just to check, I launched WMC Live TV and checked the guide. It was updated with the new format & information. And as a test, it's finally recording newly scheduled shows once again! Great! Apparently I was done...

...all except that there's no scheduled task to update my Guide (and an old issue I've never been able to resolve but was hoping EPG123 would fix: WMC doesn't record unless it's open/running.)

Oh well. Baby steps.

[garyan2]

I had never thought of creating a short-cut to the client on the desktop as well... I'll go ahead and make that addition to the setup script.

If you are running in admin mode, then I don't know why you are unable to create the task. The task created should be in the root tasks named epg123_update. There are 2 actions:
epg123.exe -update
epg123Client.exe -i [path to epg123.mxf]
The command line arguments are on page 14 of the guide.

The "No scheduled task... " prompt was added last release due to a number of users forgetting to create the task and not getting updated. My error was I didn't suppress that prompt when restarting the GUI with elevated privileges.

The "Transfer Recording" tool, when called from the [Client Setup] routine, calls up the latest backup zip file which was created in the first step (Step 1: Clean Start). If it was empty, then there were no scheduled recordings in the last backup. You may have performed a Step 1 a second time before you were had completed the initial setup. You can use the button in the Transfer Tool to manually open a backup file to retrieve them.

Your descriptions of the Guide Tool are a little concerning, or I may not be understanding completely. It may be the same thing I have observed from time-to-time when performing a client setup in that neither the left side nor the right side are populated. Closing and reopening the GUI will always work and sometimes the "Refresh" button to the right of the lineup pull-down will work. I haven't found the trick to make that client setup work 100% of the time to refresh both panels yet. The [Restore] button restores a previous configuration, so the question is, did you restore a successful setup of EPG123, or Rovi? Could you take a snapshot of the client GUI and post to make sure you are set up correctly?

Manually matching channels and listings is covered on page 11 of the guide. All the fields for the channels matched should immediately be populated with information. If that is not the case, ??

[garyan2]

Also, have you watched the video of the website? May clear up a few things or see what was supposed to happen but didn't. http://epg123.garyan2.net/?page_id=503

[Mugsy]

Thanks for the quick followup.

I went ahead and manually added two scheduled tasks to the Task Manager, the first executing the update as you describes, and the second executing the Client (with switches) 5 minutes later. We'll see if it works tomorrow morning.

IIRC, what I did to get the right pane of the Guide Tool to populate was to click "Restore" opening a load dialog. There were four files in there: 2 "backups_*.zip" and 2 "config_*.zip". One "backup" was only 3k while the other was nearly 600k. I loaded the larger one and the Lineup appeared. I don't know what I did right to create the larger backup. I was going through clicking all the buttons trying to figure out what the next step was, so who knows if I clicked something I shouldn't have, but since the list wasn't there to begin with, the problem was there before I started clicking things.

Fortunately, I happened to take a screen shot of "Guide Tool" that captured the windows before & after it populated. I'm not sure if it helps:



PS: Thanks for your great work.

[garyan2]

Okay...

You had nothing on the right side because you did not import the generated MXF file. In the scheduled task panel of the configuration GUI, you need to enable the 'Automatically import ..." option. When you did the [Restore], you restored your original WMC/Rovi guide. You currently are not using EPG123 in your guide so the scheduled tasks you created will not do anything for you.

To go back to EPG123, you may just be able to restore the 3k version of the backup to get back to where you were. (If this doesn't get you back to that point, then you will have to start over)
1) You can manually import the MXF file from C:\ProgramData\GaRyan2\epg123\output\epg123.mxf
2) Click the Match by: [# Number] button to populate the guide.
3) Click the [Transfer Tool] to open the tool and click the [Open recordings backup file] button and select the 600k backup file. Refer to the Guide on how to proceed from there.

So how epg123 works...

(Server side)
EPG123 (epg123.exe) will download the necessary files to create the MXF file which is deposited into C:\ProgramData\GaRyan2\epg123\output\epg123.mxf

(Client side)
The EPG123 Client Guide Tool (epg123Client.exe) imports the MXF file into the WMC database. Depending on your configuration, it may run an automatch routine to automatically map lineup stations to your channels.

In your case, the MXF file was never imported... you never ran the "client" side of the operation.

[Mugsy]

Okay...

You had nothing on the right side because you did not import the generated MXF file.

Thanks for the reply.

I tried to import the MXF file when the documentation instructed me to but at that time it was empty (around 3K.) This time around (as per your instructions), the MXF file is over 15MB.

In the scheduled task panel of the configuration GUI, you need to enable the 'Automatically import ..." option. When you did the [Restore], you restored your original WMC/Rovi guide. You currently are not using EPG123 in your guide so the scheduled tasks you created will not do anything for you.

This too was changed just before the screenshot. You can see (partially hidden) in the screenshot one of the checkboxes is highlighted because I had just unchecked them trying to figure out what was wrong.

[...]

In your case, the MXF file was never imported... you never ran the "client" side of the operation.

When I opened the Transfer Tool this time around (and opened my Recordings data), this is what I got:



Two identical lists. I transferred the checked items to the right (as per the instructions) and it combined the two lists. I had expected the green items to overwrite the duplicates. Instead, I just deleted all of the pink dupes manually after the fact.

I closed the Tool and was warned once again that I had no task scheduled. The "Lineup" on the Client tool now reads "EPG123 Local Over the Air Broadcast" instead of "Houston OTA Antenna". Does that means I am now using EPG123? I'm seeing no difference.

TIA.

[garyan2]

If the 'Subscribed Lineup' column for all you channels on the left side also says 'EPG123 Local Over the Air Broadcast", then yes you are now using EPG123. I suspect not since you still have all the Rovi recording request (pink entries). Did you click the [Restore] button and select the 3k file?

Why are there so many duplicate recording requests? I didn't think that was possible.

[Space]

Sounds like you still have some work to do with setting up EPG123 properly, but I think I can help with this one...

...
(and an old issue I've never been able to resolve but was hoping EPG123 would fix: WMC doesn't record unless it's open/running.)
...

This issue has historically been caused by a corrupted task manager entry ("StartRecording").

This is the task that is supposed to wake up your PC (if it is in standby) and start recording when there is a scheduled program that is supposed to be recorded.

If the WMC GUI is running at the time a program is supposed to be recorded, it will still record, however if the task is corrupt and the WMC GUI is not running, then the recording will not be initiated.

You can see a previous post regarding how to delete the corrupt task in task manager here: viewtopic.php?p=102911#p102911

But here is the summary of how to delete the task:

1) Exit Windows Media Center.
2) Navigate to C:\Windows\System32\Tasks\Microsoft\Windows\Media Center
3) Delete the file associated with the task that is corrupted (StartRecording) (send it to the trashcan just in case you need to restore it).
4) Restart Windows Media Center.

Once you delete the corrupt task, WMC should automatically create a non-corrupted StartRecording task once the WMC GUI is started.

[Space]

...
Why are there so many duplicate recording requests? I didn't think that was possible.

This can happen if the seriesID changes for a given series in the guide data (which can happen with TiVo/Rovi data, because they suck) and you set up another Series record based on that new seriesID. I've done this in the past, but once the seriesID has settled, I remove the non-valid Series, but if you don't do this, over time, you may end up with many Series for the same series that have different seriesIDs.

Another way this may happen is if you set up a Series record that only records at a specific time of the day (Airtime parameter). It is possible to have multiple Series for the same series (same seriesID), each one only recording episodes that air during certain times of the day. Normally, if you view the list of Series in WMC, these will display the Series name along with the time next to it in parenthesis, but maybe your GUI does not show those times if those options are set in the Series, so they all look the same when listed in the EPG123 transfer tool.

Example of how these look in view scheduled->Series:

Dish Nation (8:30 AM)
Dish Nation (6:00 PM)

So I have 2 Series for "Dish Nation", one that only records episodes that air around 8:30AM and one for episodes that air around 6PM.


One other way is if you create "Keyword recordings" that have the same name (I don't recall if your tool deals with keyword recordings).

Example of how these look in view scheduled->Series:

Bladesgiving (Any time)
Bladesgiving (Any time)

I have two keyword recordings for "bladesgiving", one has the parameter set to "Will keyword record: Only once", and the other has "Will keyword record: Every time shown". To be honest, I don't know why I have both of these, as the second one makes the first one redundant, but I was probably fooling around and didn't clean up.

[garyan2]

I'll have to take a look to see if I should add that level of detail in the list. I'm concerned it will get too busy.

@Mugsy : You should have a XML file C:\ProgramData\GaRyan2\epg123\epg123Task.xml from when you tried to create the tasks. If not, I've attached one that you can copy there. You can then create the task manually by using the command line:

Code: Select all

schtasks.exe /create /xml C:\ProgramData\GaRyan2\epg123\epg123Task.xml /tn epg123_update

As far as any reason you can't create the task, is there anything in the trace.log file (click the [View Log] button and search for [ERROR] entries)?

[adam1991]

I had never thought of creating a short-cut to the client on the desktop as well...

????? then where did the shortcut on MY desktop come from?

The installs I've done put shortcuts for both the setup program and the client on the desktop...or am I imagining things?

[garyan2]

For server only or server/client installs, I would only put a shortcut to EPG123 on the desktop. For client only installs, I would place a shortcut to the EPG123 Client on the desktop. I never had it configured to put both on the desktop that I can remember.

[Mugsy]

If the 'Subscribed Lineup' column for all you channels on the left side also says 'EPG123 Local Over the Air Broadcast", then yes you are now using EPG123. I suspect not since you still have all the Rovi recording request (pink entries).

Good news then. All of my checked channels say 'EPG123 Local Over the Air Broadcast' (unchecked channels still say "Houston OTA"). So I guess I'm good.

Thanks for all the help.

PS: I'll have to respond to the other replies regarding WMC in the morning, but briefly, I've tried the "reinstall WMC" method once before and it didn't work. It refused to reinstall once removed.

[Mugsy]

...
(and an old issue I've never been able to resolve but was hoping EPG123 would fix: WMC doesn't record unless it's open/running.)
...

This issue has historically been caused by a corrupted task manager entry ("StartRecording").

Thanks for the reply.

I checked the entry in my Task Scheduler entry for "Media Center". It does not say anything is corrupt, but instead says the last time it ran (after being set 5 minutes before a scheduled recording in 2015) was "Never". And despite running TS as Admin, when I try to delete the entry, it says I "don't have permission" (the most annoying Windows error message ever.)

[Mugsy]

@Mugsy : You should have a XML file C:\ProgramData\GaRyan2\epg123\epg123Task.xml from when you tried to create the tasks. If not, I've attached one that you can copy there. You can then create the task manually by using the command line:

Code: Select all

schtasks.exe /create /xml C:\ProgramData\GaRyan2\epg123\epg123Task.xml /tn epg123_update

As far as any reason you can't create the task, is there anything in the trace.log file (click the [View Log] button and search for [ERROR] entries)?

Thanks. I did not have that path, so I went ahead, created it, and put your XML file in it (with one minor change: I installed EPG123 to my D: drive instead of my tiny 120GB SSD C: drive, so I had to change the path.)

When I try to run it (from an elevated DOS prompt), I get the following error:

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"ERROR: No mapping between account names and security IDs was done.
(29,8):LoginType:

As for why the entries were not added to my TS, I don't know. Other programs (particularly nVidia) add new (unwanted) tasks all the time, very annoying.

Checking the trace.log, just about every error refers to the inability to create a scheduled task. The last error from this morning appears to have been created by the second Scheduled Task I created manually to run at 6:05 this morning:

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[3/3/2019 6:05:00 AM] [ERROR] File "D:\Program Files (x86)\epg123\output" does not exist.

The task I created was to run: "D:\Program Files (x86)\epg123\epg123Client.exe" with the optional arguments:

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-i "D:\Program Files (x86)\epg123\output"

...as you specified. "output" is a folder, not a file (error message says "File"). Inside output is an .MSF file. Should I append that to the argument path?

TIA

FOLLOW UP: I went ahead and added the msf file to the argument. That appears to work. Instead of an error, the log reports:

Code: Select all

[3/3/2019 6:42:38 AM] [ INFO] Beginning epg123 client execution. 2019-03-03 12:42:38Z
[3/3/2019 6:42:38 AM] [ INFO] Import: True , Match: False , NoLogo: False , Force: False , ShowProgress: False
[3/3/2019 6:42:38 AM] Entering importMxfFile() for file "d:\program files (x86)\epg123\output\epg123.mxf"

[garyan2]

Sorry, didn't catch that you had installed in the D: drive ... eyes aren't so good as they used to be. That is the reason you do not have a C:\ProgramData\GaRyan2\epg123 folder ... you have a "portable" install so your epg123Task.xml file will be located at "D:\Program Files (x86)\epg123\epg123Task.xml".

It appears there is something wrong with your user profile. This is probably the reason your scheduled recordings have failed in the past and I don't think epg123 will help with that. You need to fix your user account, create and use a new account, or wipe out your Windows install and start over. Security/User settings inside Windows is a bit outside my comfort zone so maybe someone else can chime in on ways to check/fix local user accounts.

If you have another user account on your machine, you can verify the above by running epg123 with that account and trying to create the task. That may work in creating the task, but I don't think it will resolve your WMC issues.

[Space]

...
I checked the entry in my Task Scheduler entry for "Media Center". It does not say anything is corrupt, but instead says the last time it ran (after being set 5 minutes before a scheduled recording in 2015) was "Never". And despite running TS as Admin, when I try to delete the entry, it says I "don't have permission" (the most annoying Windows error message ever.)

Did you try to delete the task by following the procedure I gave in my post (i.e.: Not using the GUI, but instead deleting the corresponding file)? It's possible that that file has permissions that need to be changed in order to delete it.

Send it to the recycle bin in case you need to restore it.

Even after you delete it, I'm not sure if WMC will be able to recreate it, because I am not sure what the problem with your system security settings are. Was/is this computer part of a domain? Because I read that you may have this type of problem if you are use a local Administrator account but your PC is controlled by a domain admin account.