I noticed a few people complaining about corrupt recordings.xml files recently, I've been hurt by having this file corrupt on me before so I know the pain (in fact in my case both the recordings.xml and the .bak in the same folder both got crushed).
So backing it up is probably a good idea. There are many ways of doing this, but I wanted a nice simple way which my recordings.xml file would be zero intervention and would keep a backup of every single change to recordings.xml, I didn't care about the amount of files I would end up with and I wanted to delete them manually when I want to.
Anyway so I wrote a quick application to take care of this tonight and I thought I'd share it with you guys.
I also zipped up the source code so you can enhance or change it in anyway you want.
Basically the application monitors the recordings.xml file, if the file is changed it immediately takes a copy of it. The application's window has a display of all backups and you can click and open the backups folder or the recordings.xml folder. The application starts with windows and hides itself in the system tray behind a little backup icon. When ever a backup of recordings.xml is taken you'll see a little recording light on the icon for a second (and optionally a balloon tip can be turned on or off in the options).
Hopefully this will give some of you a nice automatic way to have some added security in knowing your recordings.xml is always backed up.
Here are a couple of screenshots:-
This is the main UI which is hidden automatically on startup
This is the tray icon right at the second the recordings.xml file has been updated by Media Center.
NOTE: This application is given away as is, if it does anything bad it's on your own head, and it is not affiliated with Microsoft in anyway.
You can grab an installer for it here : http://www.codegreat.net/mcerecord/RecordingXMLInstaller.zip
You can grab the source code here : http://www.codegreat.net/mcerecord/RecordingsXMLBackup.zip
Enjoy.
Steve
Posted
Jun 08 2008, 06:02 AM
by
SteveLindsay