Scheduled Recording Mysteriously Vanished

[TuckerTFT]

It's a cold snowy morning here and I just sat down with the family in front of the fireplace and figured we would get in the spirit and watch one of the two Hallmark channel Christmas movies that were scheduled to record last night.

After turning on my MVP I couldn't find them in the Ready list and upon further investigation I found that all of the 10 or so movies I had scheduled for recording from yesterday onward were all completely vanished from my Pending list.

I know that I saw the two that were scheduled for last night in the "Recording Soon" banner on the top menu of gbpvr as recently as Thursday night. Somehow between Thursday and Friday night something wiped this list clean.

I can tell you that I did reboot my computer late Thursday night after a Windows Update (security patches). And, I had also made a minor gbpvr config change to set my MVP servers to be started to "0" (I prefer to put it the server launch routine in the Startup group as I find that I get more consistency in log file generation if I manually start and stop the MVP server when there are issues).

BTW, the two season programs that I have scheduled are showing up in the "Recurring" list and the episodes for the next two weeks for these shows are showing up in th e"Pending" list (although they shouldn't be as they are "repeats" and I have the config set to skip repeats ... something that has never worked for me).

I am on v95.16 (upgraded last week). The other thing that changed in my environment last week is that I put a second capture card in my box, BUT I had configured that properly in gbpvr and tested out a few simultaneous recordings and all was well. I scheduled all of the now "vanished" shows after the successful tests.

I never had the disappearing schedule recording problem before, but I've only been a gbpvr user for about a month now.

Any help here would be appreciated.

Here is my recording log, but clearly I don't think it is of any help in exposing the mysterious disappearance.

CDK Priority Recording Scheduler.
Version 1.0.1
Smallville is being recorded from 12/25/2005 2:00:00 AM to 12/25/2005 3:00:00 AM on capture source 1
Smallville is being recorded from 12/24/2005 7:00:00 PM to 12/24/2005 8:00:00 PM on capture source 1
Smallville is being recorded from 12/22/2005 7:00:00 PM to 12/22/2005 8:00:00 PM on capture source 1
Lost is being recorded from 12/21/2005 9:00:00 PM to 12/21/2005 10:00:00 PM on capture source 1
Lost is being recorded from 12/21/2005 8:00:00 PM to 12/21/2005 9:00:00 PM on capture source 1

I'm also including a prior RecordingService log from 12-Dec in which there was a LiveTV error. Perhaps this will be of help, although, again, I still saw Friday night's scheduled recordings in the Main Menu display (showing as "Recording Soon") as recently as Thursday night (15-Dec).

12/12/2005 7:18:55 AM.703 ERROR [35] Found expired lease. Stopping recording.
12/12/2005 7:04:48 PM.656 ERROR [140] StopRecordingLiveTV() encountered an error: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
12/12/2005 9:48:01 PM.140 ERROR [140] StopRecordingLiveTV() encountered an error: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

[sub]

Can you provide the GBPVR Recording Service logs that cover the time of the recording, and the last EPG update? I'd also need to know the show name and the time you expected it to record.

although they shouldn't be as they are "repeats" and I have the config set to skip repeats ... something that has never worked for me

With this option, it'll only 'not record' a show if you already have the same show currently scheduled to record, or if you have a 'ready' recording of this show...but all this will only work if zap2it provide episode information for the show in question - often then just provide a generic season identifier, so I have to treat every show as unique.

[TuckerTFT]

Here is the most recent RecordingService log from 15-Dec (the time that the recording service was last restarted:

12/15/2005 6:32:48 PM.015 INFO [4] GB-PVR Recording Service starting
12/15/2005 6:32:48 PM.031 VERBOSE [4] installDirectory is C:\Program Files\devnz\gbpvr\
12/15/2005 6:32:48 PM.046 VERBOSE [4] configurationFile is C:\Program Files\devnz\gbpvr\config.xml
12/15/2005 6:32:48 PM.078 VERBOSE [4] getValue() loading new key/value into cache: /settings/DatabaseConnectionString
12/15/2005 6:32:48 PM.078 VERBOSE [4] getValue: /settings/DatabaseConnectionString : Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=".\gbpvr.mdb";User Id=admin;Password=
12/15/2005 6:32:48 PM.078 VERBOSE [4] databaseConnectionString is Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source="C:\Program Files\devnz\gbpvr\\gbpvr.mdb";User Id=admin;Password=
12/15/2005 6:32:48 PM.078 VERBOSE [4] getValue() loading new key/value into cache: /settings/DontAntiAlias
12/15/2005 6:32:48 PM.078 VERBOSE [4] getValue: /settings/DontAntiAlias : false
12/15/2005 6:32:48 PM.078 VERBOSE [4] getValue() loading new key/value into cache: /settings/LoggingLevel
12/15/2005 6:32:48 PM.078 VERBOSE [4] getValue: /settings/LoggingLevel : Error

The name of the shows that were scheduled for last night were: (1) "A Carol Christmas" (HALMRK at 8 PM); and, (2) "On the 2nd Day of Christmas" (LIFE at 8 PM).

I don't remember the 8 or so other scheduled recording for today and beyond as I was just picking things that struck my interest when I set up the schedule for these two weeks (ending next week).

My EPG (zap2it) updates are schedule to run daily at 3 AM and configured to wake the machine and do a "complete" reload. I'm not sure where to find a record of the actual last update done (can you tell me), but in checking my Guide I can tell you that I have can see programs through 5 PM Thursday, 29-Dec.

Thanks for the help.

[sub]

12/15/2005 6:32:48 PM.078 VERBOSE [4] getValue: /settings/LoggingLevel : Error

Unfortunately that log is next to useless to me with the logging level set to 'Error'.

All I can suggest is set the logging level to 'debug' so that if it happens again we'll have some more information to go on.

[TuckerTFT]

OK ... I will change my config to set the logging level to Debug (will the logs grow huge quickly, though? ... just concerned that by the time I see this again I'll have a log file that might be too big to open).

Also, can you tell me what the error "Found expired lease. Stopping recording." means in the 12-Dec log I sent you? And, is there a way to determine the last EPG update and its results?

Finally, have you seen this issue before (mysterious lost scheduled recordings)? If so, other than the obvious, like someone installing anew instance of gbpvr (rather than updating the existing instance) or removing a capture device, can you relate to me what some of the root causes were or point me to the threads that discuss the issue?

Thanks again.

[yuss]

I've been trying to track down an error. The shows I thought were recording are all 0 MB big (the names are created but nothing recorded). I cannot watch live TV either. I did a fresh resinstal (of GBPVR not Windows XP). Looking at the GBPVRRecordingService.exe.log I can see an error message:
"12/18/2005 11:37:29 AM.401 VERBOSE [48] RecordingFactory.LoadNext24HourEvents()
12/18/2005 11:38:14 AM.448 ERROR [35] Found expired lease. Stopping recording.".

The TV guide works - I can see the listings, so it doesn't appear that my zap2it account is the issue.

Any ideas?

[sub]

The shows I thought were recording are all 0 MB big (the names are created but nothing recorded).

Next time you get one, zip and attach your GBPVRRecordingService.exe.log and GBPVRRecordingService.exe-native.log and a description of what show and time you expected it to record, and I'll take a look.

[keith_leitch]

I had a bit of trouble today that forced me to reset the time on my PC. After I'd set it back, all my pending recordings were gone. I updated the EPG, checked the time and the guide...still gone.

I can live with this, but the real problem is that I can't put them back. They do not show red in the guide, but the guide rejects my attempts to set a recording on them. When I look at the list of shows through "Search Guide", they still show as having been marked to record, but I cannot reset this or use the search guide list to record them "again." To make matters worse, two are season recordings, and I can't set any occurrence of them to record.

I've now noticed that those shows were all listed in the "What's New" list, even though they are on in the future. I must have accidentally set my date to a month from now at some stage. I have deleted all of these failed "recordings", restarted the recording service, stopped the tray, gone into config and saved. I have renamed the .db3 database, which may have sorted it, but at the expense of all my other data including tuner and streaming station settings (which surprised me). I put the db3 back. I have also done a full system reboot.

...no good. I can't set those shows to record.

[sub]

You should really have created a new thread rather than adding to some old 2005 thread that would be unrelated.

The recording service when it does its regular checks of the pending recordings, will mark any recordings as failed that have a start/end datetime in the past.

Delete those failed recordings then try running 'pvrx2.exe -removehistory'.

[keith_leitch]

You should really have created a new thread rather than adding to some old 2005 thread that would be unrelated.

The recording service when it does its regular checks of the pending recordings, will mark any recordings as failed that have a start/end datetime in the past.

Delete those failed recordings then try running 'pvrx2.exe -removehistory'.

Thanks. That helped. Seems like a good switch to use as regular maintenance.

I've been starting a lot of new threads lately, and I thought it would be more respectful to look for similar topics. Wrong again!