OS Upgrade on machine which files/directories to backup?

[bwsaloum]

Yes, I know, rather noobesque question but in the past two nights my main PVR systems, which is monopolized by my wife (key element to story) has decided to flip out and not record and kick up errors. However, I have a “franken-PVR” that I use, in my bat cave, that is more or less comprised of the same hardware, that runs fine. The only key differences is the OS.

I've found through reading the forums and personal experience that NPVR works so much better under Windows 7, that I've bitten the bullet and bought another copy of 7 and am planning a ground up rebuild of her machine.

She has several dozen items programmed for future recording and a rather large library of already recorded programs. So, several questions:

1) Is there a thread out there that already addresses this? I've already searched on just about every criteria I've been able to think of and don't find anything germane to what I'm trying to do.
2) If not, what program files, directories and/or registry entries do I need to backup, so I can overlay everything back down, after converting the PC to Windows 7?

Any assistance would be hugely appreciated as I have two choices: Either give her my PVR, which I really do not want to do, or learn to sleep with one eye open (did that once when I accidentally burn a hole completely through an upstairs bathroom floor, while trying to remove a pesky stuck bolt, off the back of a toilet). Still haven't lived that one down and she takes her TV much more seriously than home improvement/repairs.

Help, please?

[bwsaloum]

I think I've found some partial answers.. Aside from the really obvious, being the directory where the recordings are stored, the bare minimum are the log files, config.xml and npvr.db3.

[martint123]

Off the top of my head. To keep things simple.
Keep the recordings directory on the same drive letter and directory chain.
make sure this one is false in config <AutoRemoveMissingRecordings>false</AutoRemoveMissingRecordings> or ensure the recordings are there before npvr starts up on the new box (or they will be deleted from the database)

The default location of the data bits changes from XP to W7 i.e.

"C:\Users\Public\NPVR" on Windows 6 variants (Vista, 7, 2008)
"C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\NPVR" on Windows 5.x variants (XP, 2003).

AFAIK these are only pointed to by the registry rather than config files.

What I did was a new install on my new box and dump down the needed bits from the data directory (I think I dumped it all down, but probably you are best with just config.xml and npvr.db3

[Reddwarf]

You'll also need to take care of the RecordingBackup.xml and RecurringBackup.xml files (In npvr's data directory) in case the database is damaged in some way, so you can import both ready and scheduled recordings if you have to start with a fresh database.

[ACTCMS]

Why not just back-up the entire data directory?

[bwsaloum]

Thanks everybody!

[pme]

What if you would like to do a multi-day transition from XP to Win7.

I only have a short time every evening for this kind of stuff and need to do the upgrade from XP to Win7 as well.

My setup consist of a single disk for XP and a single disk for all the recordings and my plan is to install a third disk with Win7 that can run NPVR from the same db and files as the XP installation.

In GBPVR there was no problem doing this since the db were place inside the app dir and that could easily be installed on the data disk. Now I need to tinker with the registry to get all my db and xml files on the data disk, right?


So, what needs to be changed to have a dual OS setup working?

[pme]

Answering my own question here... the solution was to be found in the forum:
http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...post408185