I had an email from a TDL reader with a problem that Windows Media Center would not record saying not enough disk space despite there being plenty available. I have had this before and I fixed it by resetting Media Center and I thought I would put it on the blog in case anybody else has the problem. There may be a better way of fixing it but this worked for me and the reader.

Problem:

I have windows 8 installed on my new computer. Every time I try to record a TV program I get a message that says there is not enough hard drive space on the computer even though this a new computer with more than 800gb of storage space. The C drive is selected. I’ve tried to record to each of 3 external hard drives that all have more than 300gb of space and get the same message every time. Any suggestions?

Solution:

  1. Close Media Center
  2. Load Task Scheduler (In Windows 7 click Start Run and type taskschd.msc and press enter. In Windows 8 right click in the bottom right corner of Windows and select Run, type taskschd.msc and press enter)
  3. In task manager expand the Task Scheduler Library.
  4. Expand the Microsoft tree
  5. Expand the Windows tree and click on Media Center. You should see a list of task in the right hand pane.
  6. Right Click on MediaCenterRecoveryTask and select Run.
  7. The status will change to Running, close Task Manager
  8. Load Windows Media Center and Media Center will display a prompt asking you to run the setup again
  9. Now you will have to re-setup your tuners and other Media Center configuration but it should fix the drive space problem.

Note: You will lose scheduled recordings, history etc. If you use my Media Center backup tool you should be ok to restore your recording schedules.

 

 

4 thoughts on “How to fix Windows Media Center reporting not enough disk space when there is plenty”
  1. This did not work for me, but maybe my problem isn’t what this is supposed to fix. I get the disk full error – clear recordings to make room, and like others I don’t have any recordings stored. BUT, I have a 250GB SSD and when I right click on the C: drive in Windows (7) Explorer, then click on Properties, it shows my C drive is almost completely full. But when I click on each of the subfolders within C:, none of them show anywhere near approaching 250GB total. The exception is the Windows folder, which shows about 50GB. Is there some other solution? Am I overlooking some hidden files, or what? Thanks in advance!

  2. I did this and it still didn’t work. I finally opened the security on the WMC recorded TV Disk (For me D:\). Recording worked again. So some Microsoft Update tightened down the security settings on my HDs and killed WMC recording function.

  3. Well after seeing where this probably wouldn’t work surprise it did. I had to redo all the setup but I had to get this working and now it does. Previously it had given some hd full errors and wouldn’t even play live tv! It would just record a small file that would not play in any way. I spent a bunch of time testing etc the hd (ext) and I thought I may have to do the temp file reset, but this took care of it. Don’t know why this got messed up but thanks for the help.

Leave a Reply