If It's Been a While, I'd Reinstall!

[Pilot]

Well, forgive the vulgar expression, but ya just gotta flush the toilet every once in a while to keep things nice.

I've been running GB-PVR since v09211, and since I'm relatively new to GB-PVR, I've been trying just about every mod, plugin, skin, etc., that I can get my hands on. Well, I haven't been cleaning up after myself when done with my experimenting and all. As I've become more familiar with the contents of the \gbpvr folder I realized that I have a lot of orphans in there. My theater listings were still be downloaded, and I don't even use that plugin any more and I had some residue of the Check Email plugin, too, that was still running some things even though I don't use the plugin.

Anyway, I just reinstalled the lastest version from scratch and BAM! Everything is faster, my two MVPs seem more stable, even my computer-in-general is running faster (especially at boot-up). Admittedly, some of this may just be in my head (especially since I was expecting it to be faster), but I'm also actually seeing features of the newer GB-PVR versions that I didn't even know existed. I was easily able to transfer my gbpvr.mdb database over, and took the opportunity to reconfigure my tuning sources to use Zap2it instead of XMLTV. I also imported my scheduled recordings without a hitch as well. If nothing else, things sure do look a lot prettier in the \gbpvr folder now.

One thing I did have to manually do was copy my MVP screen settings over to the new config.xml, but that's quite understandable since I reinstalled rather than upgrading. I didn't copy over the old config.xml because it also had a lot of orphans in there from my experimenting.

Anyway, don't be afraid to just reinstall from scratch to clean up a well-used/experimented GB-PVR system. It's really not the horror story I've been fearing. I had everything back up and working in less than an hour, and that included discovering the missing MVP display settings and adding those in. It was even late at night/early in the morning, and I was on cold medicine. Wait, maybe that's why everything worked so well...

[Clanky]

Save yourself a lot of time & get Ghost or Acronis Trueimage. Image the drive at different stages, then restore an image instead of reinstalling.

It takes me 10 mins to restore my C: drive to a clean XP installation, plus the time to update it & reinstall GBPVR

[Pilot]

Save yourself a lot of time & get Ghost or Acronis Trueimage. Image the drive at different stages, then restore an image instead of reinstalling.

It takes me 10 mins to restore my C: drive to a clean XP installation, plus the time to update it & reinstall GBPVR

I have and use Ghost, but it won't really work with my situation because my GB-PVR PC is also my main general use PC.

When I said the reinstall took under an hour, I meant from start to finish -- backing up the GB-PVR directory, uninstalling, reinstalling, verifying both MVP's worked, importing schedules, minor tweaking, etc.

I'm currently trying to convince the wife that I need a new general use PC, and then I can move my current PC into the A/V cabinet under the big screen and dedicate it to being a HTPC. I've been a good boy this year -- I don't know why Santa Dell isn't cooperating!

[pcostanza]

I second the image file backup....I too use Acronis and it's saved me many times at the office too.
I have a image of a very fresh install with only the basics so when I have a problem or want to start clean, I image to that fresh copy then add what I want to it. It's easier to find where the problems are for me using this method.
I can say that many people would be surprised to know how much junk they accumulate quickly, especially spyware.