My Vista Media Center has gone mad! I got home from work last night and Media Center had tried to record the same program 6 times, and reported a conflict in the event log that the TV program was causing a conflict with it’s self, and the program had been split in to 5 small chunks.

When I checked the Event viewer it was complaining that the Belgium Grand Prix could not be recorded due:

F1: Belgian Grand Prix Qualifying Highlights was not recorded because the program was pre-empted by the broadcaster. According to the Program Guide F1: Belgian Grand Prix Qualifying aired instead at 09/15/2007 12:30:00 on channel 28

Now the Belgian GP is on next week and this error is in the EPG every minute since yesterday and now all recording fail and in Media Center it reports a Critical Error.

So I headed over to TheGreenButton and found I was not alone with this problem and it looks like it has been happening for a couple of weeks to various people. The best way to fix it seemed to be:

 

posed by HT Slider

1.  Right click on "Computer" and select "Manage".

2.  Open up the services and get ready to temporarily shut down the "Windows Media Center Scheduler Service" and "Windows Media Center Receiver Service".

3.  Open up the following directory "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\eHome\Recording".

4.  Shut down both of the Media Center services in #2 above and quickly rename (or delete) the "Recording.xml" and "Recording.xml.bak" (the Media Center Services restart for some reason and you can’t properly delete the recording schedule data without having them shut down).

5.  Start the service "Windows Media Center Service Launcher" (this will start both of the other services correctly).

This seems to have worked for me but of it has wiped all my scheduled recordings, so I am going to try using my backup copy, thanks to mceBackup 2.0 and I will report back later

Update: I have decided to re-schedule my recording as I have never really cleaned it up

13 thoughts on “Major Recording Problems in my Media Center”
  1. >> I have decided to re-schedule my recording as I have never really cleaned it up
    Hi Ian,
    This is a good point, my Vista Media Center PC’s are full of scheduled recordings – when you click ‘Record Series’, that schedule is never deleted. As a result, when the series comes around again – in a years time or whatever – it records again, yet it is really painful to manually delete each schedule entry with the remote. I’d like to know where this info is stored so that I could delete the entries in an XML with notepad or something. I’m convinced that the system is getting more and more slugging yet I’ve always got around 10 series on the go so cant just do a reinstall.
    Brian

  2. it’s stored in recodings.xml but i am not sure of the structure. Media Center is about 10x faster now! more on a post later

  3. Hey Ian,

    I think i’m having the same problem as you with my media center. but I’m just trying to follow your instructions and I dont seem to have the “C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\eHome\Recording” directory or any files called “Recording.xml” and “Recording.xml.bak”.

    Any ideas?

    Thanks
    John

  4. thankyou so much. i was about to reinstall windows, but you have saved the day for me. much appreciated!!

    Marcus

  5. Thanks Ian! I thought i was going to have to take computer back to shop to get fixed. Got critical notice telling me to contact manufacturer etc. took me two minutes to solve problem and seems to be running just as good as when i first got pc. Thanks again. Alan.

  6. I have been google-ing around this eHome problem. And it seems that it started for many people on 8/jul/2008. So i think the source of the problem is BILL GATES with one of his automatic vista updates.
    Anyway, I have renamed the 2 files (I extended them with ” .old ” ) and now everything seems to be working again.

    Also IE7 stopped working on the same day? On that day Firefox updated to 2,0,0,15.
    Maybe, this firefox update is causing this IE7 conflict (error in XML compiler???)
    But I can live with the fact the IE7 does not work anymore, since I use Firefox to browse the net. 🙂

    Anyway, thanks for your solution on mediacenter recording error.
    This saved me a lot of money (and time), since I was about to buy an external HD to backup all my files before formating my C drive and doing a completed re-setup of Vista.

  7. Thanks, I missed a few of my favourite programs because the recording service was broken. Your solution did the trick for me!

  8. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!!

    So much for Gateway support, who told me I would have to reinstall Vista to get Media Center working again.

    I made one last Google attempt and found this post, and I’m happy to say that I’m up and running again.

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