Error in Channel Setup

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Hope your holiday was great !

Yes thanks - it was an awesome holiday.

[Rich A]

Still no fix .. Same error. I shut down all NPVR stuff, deleted the TVGuide.xml file and re-installed NPVR. Everything came back normal and nothing has changed error-wise. TV Guide still not working. TV Listing plugin does work okay.

Just for kicks I renamed the newly created TVGuide.xml and did another re-install. So I ended up with the original old file and a newly created one co-existing. No difference there .. (something back in the deep recesses of my brain from the old DOS days was thinking about having a file being re-written to a common problem spot on the disc or something like that was causing a problem) No joy there either.

I guess I'll try deleting the entire associated TV Guide folder and re-install. After that I guess all I can do is a "full fresh install" from scratch and go through the entire initial setup process. That will have to be a last resort.

The "original" problem all started with my trying to work in the channel mapping area (where I get the same error if I try to view or change any "channel details" in the setup app.) I was originally trying to add a missing channel. I'm afraid a full fresh install might end up with me not being able to setup the channels.

Gonna image the existing drive and try a full install and hope I don't have to revert back to the old image. Unless you have any other ideas ?

Oh I've attached a snippet text file of a section of the most recent log with what looks like the isolated error concerning the broken TV Guide. Both the "TV Guide" error and the "channel details" error part of the setup app. seem to have some commonality ? ?

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It kind of looks like a normally-present windows font file might be missing or something. It's having some issue loading a font of a specific size.

[Rich A]

Spent a couple days on this problem with no joy yet. It might be some kind of font problem but I can't localize where the problem is. I've tried reverting my Windows System (7 pro 32-bit) back to it's original font set and then doing another in-place install of NPVR. Before the re-install of NPVR I tried deleting the folder <TV Guide> entirely hoping the reinstall would replace it with original setup data. I confirmed the new <TV Guide> folder was created and still no joy. Everything works "except" the "TV Guide" and any attempt to show or edit "Channel Details" in the Channels area of Setup.

I can live without the stock "TV Guide" as the "TV Listings" is working fine ... but not being able to edit or even view the Channel Details in the Settings area is still of concern. If this is indeed a font problem then it seems to only be affecting ONLY two areas in the whole NPVR environment .. ( TV Guide ) and (Settings - Channels - Details).

Yup I've gone through every aspect and area of the entire NPVR environment (I think) and am pretty sure those are the only two areas that exhibit the same error. I'm now looking to find any reference to font parameters that might be common to both the TV Guide and Settings .. Any idea where to look?

I think I've found all the "config" and other xml files associated (with font references) regarding the TV Guide but don't know where to find anything in the "settings" area ?? Blowing away the whole <TV Guide> folder and replacing it with the newly installed version doesn't help so it's got to be some font parameter / size problem in a shared common area that I haven't found yet.

I'm still looking ... I could just un-install the entire NextPvr program and install a new virgin setup entirely and spend some time re-setting up everything. But I'd miss the opportunity to ever find out what caused this in the first place !

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Googling "Visual Styles-related operation resulted in an error because no visual style is currently active" seemed to find a few hits related to running the Windows Classic theme. Are you using this? If not you're not sure, can you supply screenshot of your desktop, with windows explorer running? (so I can see some of the styling of the windows and frames)

[Rich A]

Googling "Visual Styles-related operation resulted in an error because no visual style is currently active" seemed to find a few hits related to running the Windows Classic theme. Are you using this? If not you're not sure, can you supply screenshot of your desktop, with windows explorer running? (so I can see some of the styling of the windows and frames)

Attached is a screen cap of my full screen desktop. Note: (some history) I've always run my HTPC with a custom theme where most things are optimized to work with video and audio streaming, recording etc. The whole environment is pretty much "tuned" to work with a very low powered CPU with a tuned balance between performance and low impact to the CPU. This three year old HTPC is actually an experiment that replaced a much more power hungry one that previously ran 24/7 for 12 years ..

This small low powered thing has no Aero crap, or screen savers etc. It has been fine (albeit a little under powered CPU-wise) since being built 3 years ago. It's only an Intel 2-core Celeron running at a very low speed and was mostly an experiment to see how much I could get out of a very low powered system and still get decent multimedia and PVR capabilities. But you've given me an idea .. I'm going to try reverting back to a "normal" Windows theme to see if that makes a difference. Over the past couple months I HAVE allowed some over-due Windows updates to be done. Normally I don't allow any "non-windows" driver updates to be allowed and only use windows update to handle Windows security and system specific things. Things like graphics drivers etc. I do separately and from the manufacturer's web sites. But maybe some windows update I've done got it's hooks into my windows theme area ?? I'll try reverting back to a stock windows simple theme and report back.

The "new" HTPC currently on the work bench (which should be finished in a few weeks) will be a new AMD Ryzen 6-core thing running windows 10. (note on my desktop screen I keep track of the local time in "Wellington") Heh heh ...

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Attached is a screen cap of my full screen desktop. Note: (some history) I've always run my HTPC with a custom theme where most things are optimized to work with video and audio streaming, recording etc. The whole environment is pretty much "tuned" to work with a very low powered CPU with a tuned balance between performance and low impact to the CPU. This three year old HTPC is actually an experiment that replaced a much more power hungry one that previously ran 24/7 for 12 years ..

This small low powered thing has no Aero crap, or screen savers etc. It has been fine (albeit a little under powered CPU-wise) since being built 3 years ago. It's only an Intel 2-core Celeron running at a very low speed and was mostly an experiment to see how much I could get out of a very low powered system and still get decent multimedia and PVR capabilities. But you've given me an idea .. I'm going to try reverting back to a "normal" Windows theme to see if that makes a difference. Over the past couple months I HAVE allowed some over-due Windows updates to be done. Normally I don't allow any "non-windows" driver updates to be allowed and only use windows update to handle Windows security and system specific things. Things like graphics drivers etc. I do separately and from the manufacturer's web sites. But maybe some windows update I've done got it's hooks into my windows theme area ?? I'll try reverting back to a stock windows simple theme and report back.

Ah, right so looking like Windows Classic is part of problem. Unfortunately like one of the Windows components I'm using (a dropdown list where I can use different colors for each item) is not compatible with Windows Classic. Probably worth temporarily reenabling the normal Windows theme to see if it starts working - even if it's just why you do that channel setup.

The "new" HTPC currently on the work bench (which should be finished in a few weeks) will be a new AMD Ryzen 6-core thing running windows 10.

Ultimately I'm guessing this is going to fix your problem

(note on my desktop screen I keep track of the local time in "Wellington") Heh heh ...

It's embarrassing how early I get up

[Rich A]

Changed the theme to Win7 basic .. That fixed the error in the setting-channel-detail area. Still not working with my custom theme or classic. But as you suggest, since I can switch themes if needed when I need to work in the settings / channel area.

My customized normal theme does work with the TV Listings plug-in and I've just saved both themes ( HTPC 1 and HTPC 2 ) so I can switch when needed. Thanks for the help .. All is cool again ..

On to the new HTPC build. FWIW I've always been impressed with how intuitive and well thought out NextPVR is. Can't wait to get on with version 5, which I'm hoping maybe the public beta release will arrive when I finish building the new PC.