Can not cancel recording a series

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DWC121

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Can not cancel recording a series

#1

Post by DWC121 » Thu May 23, 2019 4:22 am

Greetings,

Several days ago I inadvertently clicked on "Record Series" (Don't remember on which screen, but it WAS in WMC). Now I can not stop WMC from recording the series. I've gone into "Settings > Recorder > Clear Recording Schedule" but the next day it shows more episodes of the series have been recorded. If I go into "TV > Recorded TV > view scheduled > Series", it shows "No series recordings have been scheduled". How can I get WMC to stop recording a series?

David

Space

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#2

Post by Space » Thu May 23, 2019 6:50 am

If you select one of the recordings and hit the right arrow to go to the "actions" screen, does it have an option for "Cancel Series"?

It doesn't make sense that if you have a Series that it would not be listed in "TV > Recorded TV > view scheduled > Series".

unclebun

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#3

Post by unclebun » Fri May 24, 2019 12:38 am

Or go into the guide and find one of the episodes scheduled to record and press the record button to turn off the series record.

DWC121

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#4

Post by DWC121 » Fri May 24, 2019 3:50 am

Space - When I click on one of the recordings, the "actions" screen shows four options: delete, play, Keep Until, and Burn a CD/DVD.

Unclebun - I went into the guide and found one of the episodes on a later date. It did NOT have a red dot. I decided to select "Record Series". It is a 30 minute program and there are three 30 minutes episodes one after the other. After clicking "Record Series" all 3 had a red dot. I then clicked on cancel series and the red dots disappeared. Maybe by selecting then de-selecting the series will be cancelled.

Space

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#5

Post by Space » Fri May 24, 2019 4:51 am

I don't have the "Burn to CD/DVD" option, but the other options are what I see when I record a movie (not a TV episode that is part of a series). Is the recording of a TV series episode or of a movie?

If I record a one-time episode of a series, I see: "record series", "delete", "play", and under additional commands, "Keep Until".

I don't know if this is your issue, but I have always wondered about how WMC keeps track of one-off recordings that don't get recorded.

For instance, let's say you set a movie or a particular episode to record (single-dot, not a Series record). Then, something happens (a power failure, a recording conflict, a cable outage, etc.) and that show does not get recorded. WMC will "remember" that you want to record that episode/movie, and the next time it airs it will try to record it.

I always wondered how long WMC retains this information about you wanting to record this episode/movie. What if it never airs again? Does WMC keep it forever, clogging up the database? Is there no way to remove it?

If the episode/movie does appear in the guide, and it is successfully recorded, it will be removed from the "want to record" list. Also, if it appears in the guide (and has the red dot) and you tell it "do not record" it will also be removed from the "want to record list". But I know of no way of removing it if it is not in the guide.

Also, if you have a flaky signal when WMC attempts to record the episode/movie, it may keep it marked as "want to record", because it thinks that the bad signal gave you a bad recording (even if the recording looks fine), so it want's to try again to get a good recording. This is one scenario where it may keep recording the same episode/movie over and over again. Although this should not record different episodes of the same series (it should record the same episode every time).

Since your recording appears to look like a movie to WMC (or actually, not an episode of a series) due to it not having the "cancel series" nor the "record series" options, this MAY be what is happening here.

DWC121

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#6

Post by DWC121 » Tue May 28, 2019 11:56 pm

Space,

The recordings I could not cancel were old reruns on one of the cable channels. I wouldn't really call them "series" but since all the reruns had the same title, I think WMC classified them as "series".

You posed some very interesting questions, like, what happens when WMC is told to record a program but it doesn't get recorded. How long does WMC remember? It would seem logical if "Cancel recording" is selected, it would be removed from the WMC database. But in my case all the cancel options I could find did not work for me.

I did a bit of sleuthing and found a WMC repair utility on the www.thewindowsclub.com website. The specific page was at: www.thewindowsclub.com/repair-windows-m ... mp-utility . PLEASE NOTE - The page has a lot of clickable links. Don't click around on the page willy-nilly. About half way down the page there is a sentence that says "Our FixWin Utility also has some specific fixes for Windows Media Player & Windows Media Center. You may also want to check it out!". Below that sentence is a screen shot of the FixWin Utility. In the screen shot, the next to the last entry says "Flush and rebuild Windows Media Center database". On the web page, the FixWin Utility wording is a clickable link that starts the download of the executable file. I strongly believe the FixWin Utility link is for Windows 7. There are other links on the page that mention Windows 10.

At first I was hesitant to run the executable file. I saved a restore point and decided to give it a try. It will want to check your system first to see if there are any other problems... which made me feel REAL queasy. After 30 minutes or so it said I had no problems. At that point I could select the "Flush and rebuild Windows Media Center database".

I've been checking every few days and have NOT found a newly recorded WMC file!

David

DWC121

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#7

Post by DWC121 » Thu May 30, 2019 3:28 am

Hmmm. For some reason the URL of this forum was appended to the beginning of the intended URL in my recent post. I'll try it again without using the link icon.

I did a bit of sleuthing and found a WMC repair utility on thewindowsclub website: www.thewindowsclub.com .
The specific page was at: www.thewindowsclub.com/repair-windows-m ... mp-utility .

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