Control of Pre-Scheduled Recordings Question

[urabus99]

Hi, Are the pre-scheduled recordings controlled by the EPG123 or the WMC? My recordings are not starting automatically and I did reset my WMC TV signal again. I am wondering if I may need to remove my EPG123 and then re-install it, perhaps because when I recovered Windows and then installed EPG123, my PC may have messed up the installation? Thanks!

[garyan2]

WMC handles the recording schedules. There are a couple things to looks.

Is Windows Search / Indexing enabled? WMC will use that to run the database indexing as well as the PVR indexing.
Anything in the log file to indicate the indexing tasks are not being kicked off?
If you open the Transfer Tool, are all your recording requests on the right green? Light green/dark green?
Anything in the event viewer?

[Space]

Do you see everything scheduled to record (red dots, and listed in the "view scheduled" page), but it just doesn't start recording when the time occurs?

Is it logging any reason for not recording in History?

Do any recordings start automatically, or do all of them fail?

[urabus99]

The problems that I seem to be experiencing are that unless I actually open my WMC,

my pre-scheduled recordings won't start until that time. Some of the programs will

start automatically, but no regularity. I have gone into my Task Manager and made

certain that my Windows Media Center Scheduler Service was set on Automatic, but to

no avail. I also added my WMC to my Start menu, so that and my EPG123 are present.

I changed my CMOS battery and ran a repair on my hard drive. In addition I re-ran

the WMC tv set up, removed the EPG123 and then re-installed it. As I stated in an

earlier post, my problems started after I had to do a full Windows Recovery. The

event logs show no errors. The one thing I have not done is to run the WMC Set up

again. Do I need to purchase a new Win10 PC and get the WMC Hack, or is there

another solution? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Space]

If the recording starts automatically when you have WMC running, but not when it is not running then that is a common problem and there is an easy fix. Note that this is for Win7 machines, I don't know if this works on Win10. But in general, you need to have a working "StartRecording" task in Task Scheduler.

[urabus99]

I have Win8.1 and there is no task listed for the WMC, just the EPG123. Are you able to type what I need and the actions, descriptions etc, that I can copy and paste in my Task Scheduler? Thanks!

[Space]

The task scheduler entry can be downloaded from here and then imported in to Task Scheduler, but WMC should automatically create this for you, so you should not have to do this. You should first double check that you don't already have it (note that the epg123 Task Scheduler entry is at the root level, so if you are seeing that but not others, you may just not have gone to the correct folder in the hierarchy):

If you use "File Explorer" to go to "C:\Windows\System32\Tasks\Microsoft\Windows\Media Center" what files do you see there?

You can post the list here by clicking on one of the files in the right side "File Explorer" panel and then pressing ctrl-a to select them all, then hold down shift while right-clicking on one of the files and selecting "Copy as path".

Then paste that in a post here. You should use "code" tags if you know how to use them when posting that here:

Example:

[code]
<paste text here>
[/code]

[urabus99]

Thanks Space, but I got lost. I think I need to try to figure it out. Do you think if I were to run the WMC Set Up again, it may fix the problem automatically?

[Space]

I don't know if it would, but it seems like overkill for this issue when all you need to do is delete this file:

C:\Windows\System32\Tasks\Microsoft\Windows\Media Center\StartRecording

[urabus99]

I have searched every corner of my Windows 8.1 PC and this file doesn't exist. Is that likely or am I missing something in my searches? I did run the WMC Set Up again, but it didn't fix my problems. Thanks!

[Space]

If you don't have that file, then I can only assume you don't have that task in "Task Scheduler".

If that task does not exist, it should automatically be created when you start the WMC GUI.

If it is not automatically created, you can try creating it yourself by importing the task manually in to "Task Scheduler". See my previous post for a link to the task that you should import.