Windows Media Center issues again

author Richard Fennell calendar Jun 8, 2015 · 2 min read · Uncategorised  ·
Share on: linkedin copy

Today was my day for semi annual Media Center (MCE) problems. As usual they seemed to start with an unexpected power issue, a local power cut, maybe the answer is a UPS for the TV setup? Once the PC was rebooted it had forgotten it had any tuners. If I tried to view live TV or re-setup the TV signal it just hung with a spinning ‘toilet bowl of death’ cursor. Corrupt TV data DB I suspect, I have seen it before

I tried clearing the DB content in C:programdatawindowsehome, but no luck. In the end I did the dirty fix of

  • Going into Window features
  • Remove media center
  • Reboot
  • Re-add media center
  • Re-run MCE setup – this took over an hour, it is slow to find Freeview channels

Downside of this is that it has the issue it resets all the series settings, media locations etc. but it does tend to work.

My MCE seems to have been getting slower and generally needed more reboots for a while, strange is it has been on the same dedicated hardware for a few years.  Given Windows 10 is on the horizon and it has no MCE I guess it  is time to revisit an MCE replacement (or leave my MCE box on Windows 8). Last time I looked the issue was PVR support for Freeview and general ‘wife friendly operations’. It does seem that fewer and fewer people are prioritising terrestrial broadcast as media source, it all seems to be about streaming. Just don’t think I am there yet, I like my PVR. But there is no harm is a trawl of the other current offerings, I might be surprised

Updated 9pm  when the setup wizard actually finished – turns out my media library settings were not lost, just series recording settings