Guide Download Issues Thread - Sept 2014

[jfreiman]

Is anyone having this issue? None of my 3 computers running Windows 8.1 Media Center are able to connect to the external server/service and download the latest epp guide.

I've experienced this 3 days counting.....

Windows 8.1 x64 Pro w/Media Center
Comcast
San Francisco, CA
Digital
Ceton InfiniTV

[Moderator note: topic merged; please search before posting]

[JohnW248]

Yes there are a lot of people having trouble. You should vote up the problem on Microsoft connect

https://connect.microsoft.com/site1145/ ... iew/970453

You'll need to sign in with your Windows Live Account

[mech259]

Yes there are a lot of people having trouble. You should vote up the problem on Microsoft connect

https://connect.microsoft.com/site1145/ ... iew/970453

You'll need to sign in with your Windows Live Account

"page not found" error on your link, (SURPRISED)??

[erkotz]

Can someone who tried Google DNS without success give me their zip code and lineup? I've been unable to repro this.

[Daltekkie]

I just updated my DNS to 8.8.8.8 preferred and 8.8.4.4 alternate. I flushed my dns and rebooted on top of that and I still get guide download errors.

I am not ok with this. Every room in my house is running an HTPC (4 in total) so now all of my scheduled recordings are hosed because I can't get any guide downloads on any of them. One thing that I found odd is that I have win8.1 on my laptop and it ran through the setup and guide download just fine, and I didn't even have to update the dns on it.

Any chance this is a sly push by MS to encourage folks to upgrade to win8.1 Pro?

Oh, I'm in zip code 75209 (Dallas, TX)

[oakley516]

One thing that I found odd is that I have win8.1 on my laptop and it ran through the setup and guide download just fine, and I didn't even have to update the dns on it.

Any chance this is a sly push by MS to encourage folks to upgrade to win8.1 Pro?

Don't you already have to have Win 8.1 Pro on your laptop to use WMC anyway?

Are you saying you had the issue on your Win 7 PCs, but not on your Win 8.1 PCs?

[UCBearcat]

So, I haven't had any issues with my EPG listings as others here have discussed, but I do see an uptick in errors in the Media Center event log for NetTV, Broadband, SportsSchedule, and SportsV2.
I realize that many of these services within Media Center were disabled/removed, however there have never been errors in the logs indicating remote server connection failure for these until recently. Are these the type of errors everyone else is seeing for the EPG Listings??

Time Warner Southwest Ohio
EPG listings go out until 9/29

[webguyz]

Picked this weekend to rebuild my Windows 7 server from scratch. Would not download the guide. Reloaded the OS and still no luck. Looked around and found this forum. At least I can quit reloading my os Only 30 users went to MS Connect and complained so far. Wish more folks would do it. How the hell can we live without our Media Center guide Guess I can practice my reading until this gets fixed.

Time Warner Cable
Dallas Tx 75043

[Daltekkie]

One thing that I found odd is that I have win8.1 on my laptop and it ran through the setup and guide download just fine, and I didn't even have to update the dns on it.

Any chance this is a sly push by MS to encourage folks to upgrade to win8.1 Pro?

Don't you already have to have Win 8.1 Pro on your laptop to use WMC anyway?

Are you saying you had the issue on your Win 7 PCs, but not on your Win 8.1 PCs?

Yes, sorry if I was vague. I run Win7 on my towers (4 of them) and 8.1 pro on my laptop. The towers are the only one that had the problem. However, when I re-ran the setup on my laptop (win8.1) I got the message that it could not download the setup data so it used the existing data. And the guide loaded just fine.

Also, another detail I neglected to include was my lineup. I'm on Time Warner Digital. This coincidentally started happening when Time Warner changed their lineup so now I have 3 Time Warner to choose from in the setup; Digital, Upgrade, and Digital/Upgrade. I've tried them all. The difference is that Upgrade has a handful of channels in its lineup while the other two have the full lineup.

It also seems like several posters here are from the Dallas area, where they are rebuilding the lineup. Is it coincidence or related?

[Daltekkie]

Something else I found interesting when looking through the event viewer for Media Center is that during the nightly maintenance I get:
3:49:40 AM - Testing internet connection.
3:49:45 AM - Connection established.
3:49:45 AM - Processing of MCEClientMaintenance is complete.
3:49:48 AM - Update successful.
3:49:48 AM - Next update at 9/21/2014 3:27:49 AM.

Then
3:50:51 AM - Starting Client Maintenance.

Then
4:14:34 AM - Client Maintenance has completed.
**Note that it took almost 25 minutes to process Client Maintenance

However when I run the guide download from tasks inside the media center application I get a lot more events (such as Directory, ClientUpdate, SportsV2, MCEClientUX, Broadband, and EpgListing) and everything fails. But there's no event for Client Maintenance. Curious if ClientMaintenance is processing something differently than when processing the individual tasks.

I'm going to try the VPN to the Netherlands suggestion and rerun the setup and will post my results.

[Daltekkie]

Sorry to be such a heavy poster being so new to the forum, but I had success with the VPN solution. I tried the Netherlands, but it stalled. I set up another VPN to London and everything process successfully except for Broadband. I confirmed the guide was updated successfully by checking About Guide Listings and the Guide End Date changed from 9/26 to 9/30.

I've confirmed this worked on all of my machines.

Is it appropriate for me to provide the 6 different VPN addresses and logins for the 6 vpn locations that run through FreeVPN? Just thought that might be handy for some users.

[choliscott]

I'm wondering if this has to do with particular ISP's having issues with the connection. For instance my connection is showing successful guide updates from beginning to end, but on my friends connection, it shows it connecting fine, but had a problem a few times around the sports schedule

[Daltekkie]

One thing I noticed I had to do on all of my machines is it seemed to fail when i walked through the first time. So I hit cancel, BUT DID NOT CLOSE MEDIA CENTER. I ran tunersalad (b/c it kept resetting the # of tuners) while media center was still open. I walked back through TV Signal setup and it downloaded the setup info and processed the guide without a problem. But, I noticed if I closed media center and then reopened and reran the setup, it would fail. It seemed like it only worked when I canceled out of the setup, ran tunersalad (while MC was open) then reran setup. If I canceled out of the setup and did not close media center, but did NOT run tunersalad, then it would fail again. Curious if tunersalad is modifying some other of the reg keys that is allowing this to process.

Another thing I noticed is that one of my machines I accidentally disconnected from UK VPN while the guide was still at 50% processing and confirmed that I was back on my US ISP and the guide continued to download.

I also tried various VPN connections, 2 in the UK and one in the Netherlands and I had the same problem on all 3 (having to cancel and start over).

[jfreiman]

Yes there are a lot of people having trouble. You should vote up the problem on Microsoft connect

https://connect.microsoft.com/site1145/ ... iew/970453

You'll need to sign in with your Windows Live Account

I just added my vote/me too to the list. :/

[mech259]

Added my vote and comment. I just wonder if Micro$oft even cares about WMC anymore. If they don't, why not tell us. So angry, I could bite a nail into.

[jaimeknapp]

Can someone who tried Google DNS without success give me their zip code and lineup? I've been unable to repro this.

San Antonio, TX 78217 (also tried 78201) lineups for both OTA ATSC, TWC Digital Cable and TWC Cable (analog / clear QAM) fails on three different machines. ISP is Earthlink provisioned over TWC cable.
DNS = 8.8.8.8/8.8.4.4 set in PCs and router fails:

8:44:05 AM - Failed to retrieve MCEClientUX (Error: Unable to connect to the remote server)
8:44:08 AM - Failed to retrieve Broadband (Error: Unable to connect to the remote server)
8:43:47 AM - Failed to retrieve SportsSchedule (Error: Unable to connect to the remote server)
8:43:53 AM - Failed to retrieve ClientUpdate (Error: Unable to connect to the remote server)
8:43:50 AM - Failed to retrieve SportsV2 (Error: Unable to connect to the remote server)
8:44:04 AM - Failed to retrieve MCESpotlight (Error: Unable to connect to the remote server)
8:52:00 AM - Failed to retrieve EpgListings (Error: Unable to connect to the remote server)

About Guide shows a Guide End Date of 9/29/2014 12:00 AM on two PCs.
The third machine got barfed when I tried re-running tuner setup and now gives me: Failed to retrieve EpgListings (Error: Invalid security token.) BUT it now shows a Guide End Date: 9/29/2014 10:00 PM.

[dmagerl]

I set up a new WMC machine the other day and had troubles downloading Playready: couldnt establish a connection to the server.

This was for OTA and after hitting "ok" to dismiss the failure notification, the setup continued on as if nothing happened. Everything works but I obviously dont have Playready installed, not that it's needed with OTA.

The guide downloaded OK but Playready failed multiple times.

[STC]

Would anyone with some time and inclination like to wireshark their failing update process?

[jasonl]

Appears to be a problem with one or more of the Akamai servers that host Microsoft's content. Exactly which server you get pointed at depends on your DNS server, which is why switching it sometimes works. But, since Google DNS is anycasted, using 8.8.8.8 will point to different physical servers depending on where you are in the world, and that may point you at different Akamai servers, including possibly pointing you right back at an inaccessible one.. Forcing WMC to use known-good servers by bypassing the DNS lookup appears to allow updates to complete, or at least did on both of my PCs that were having trouble. Open an elevated command prompt (search for cmd, right click, Run as Administrator) and run:

Code: Select all

notepad c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Add the following lines at the bottom of the file:

Code: Select all

65.55.5.170 data.tvdownload.microsoft.com
2.16.216.176 cdn.epg.tvdownload.microsoft.com

*UPDATED SEPT 22*

Save the file, then at the command prompt run:

Code: Select all

ipconfig /flushdns

Then, force an update in WMC.

Once Microsoft and Akamai figure it out, you'll want to reopen the file using the same process, and remove those 2 lines and save the file. Otherwise, a future server update could break things for you again.

[STC]

Welcome Jason@Silicondust. Nice investigation and temp fix thank you.