Recording service not starting (exception)

[40thFloor]

A while ago I put in a second video subsystem (as primary). No problems, and recorded/watch a few things since. Today, I thought I'd give Live TV (not timeshift) a second try. Config popped a msgbox saying it was restarting the recording service, and ... only the mouse cursor moved, and then very slowly. I wound up having to hard power off. No big deal (file system all okay), but now, no go with my mojo (and the recording service doesn't start, either).

Suggestions? Re-install 912 over 912, without uninstalling? Or is the event viewer message below good enough to determine the problem and I can just replace a fuse or something. Maybe a scrambled config file? This event message is right from boot.

When I try to start gbr it pops a do-you-want-to-debug JIT msgbox. Same msgbox when I try to start config.

- - - - -

Service cannot be started. System.Xml.XmlException: The root element is missing.
at System.Xml.XmlTextReader.Read()
at System.Xml.XmlValidatingReader.ReadWithCollectTextToken()
at System.Xml.XmlValidatingReader.Read()
at System.Xml.XmlLoader.Load(XmlDocument doc, XmlReader reader, Boolean preserveWhitespace)
at System.Xml.XmlDocument.Load(XmlReader reader)
at System.Xml.XmlDocument.Load(String filename)
at j..ctor()
at j.a()
at aw..ctor(Boolean serviceMode)
at aw.b()
at ap.a(String[] A_0)
at System.ServiceProcess.ServiceBase.ServiceQueuedMainCallback(Object state)

[40thFloor]

Config.xml, last-write about the time of the fubar (10:50), is 9187 bytes of all zeroes.

And, and mdb (a database of some sort I suppose), is

18,354,176 gbpvr.mdb

18 MB... does that sound about right. It has the same timestamp as the fubar'ed config.xml (10:50).

gbpvr.ldb is 320 bytes, and seems to repeat the user/machine name five times. Also at 10:50.

Delete config.xml, I suppose. Nothing to lose there.

[40thFloor]

Yup, deleting the config.xml did the trick. Lost of a few settings but easy enough. I backed it up just in case...

And that was the case. I did the same thing I did before -- change the config while watching live tv (time shifted, actually). This time, I only changed the Playback tab/display mode to overlay or whatever (last time, it was the live tv setting). Sure enough, when I hit [ OK ] the "Restarting recording service..." msgbox popped up, and the whole machine died, except for the mouse cursor, moving very jerkedly. Hard power off again. This time, the config.xml was okay, actually. At least it mostly compared the same as the saved on. I don't know what the first few bytes are, I suppose it's a utf-8 encoding for some character. In notepad.exe it's invisible.


So, don't change the config settings while watching something. Probably best to not mess with the config at all if gbpvr is running. Label it: WARNING because a hard power off can cause lots of nasties, especially if you have a FAT* volume. The only thing I noticed that complained was zapro's log file.

[dsfreak]

Hey 40th, I had exactly the same problem. I was glad to find your post. I couldn't delete/move config.xml - I suppose something was still using it. So I set the recording service to manual, restarted, then I was able to remove config.xml. After setting the recording service back to auto and restarting, it got past the initial error you described (the xml error stuff), but I still get the debugger problem when I try to run config or gbpvr itself. Any ideas?!??

[dsfreak]

Well I decided to uninstall it. Then I discovered that there was some stuff left over in the installation directory. So I deleted that, rebooted, reinstalled, and voila it works again. I learned from this that it is NOT a good idea to play with the config settings while the viewer is running.