Moving existing PVR to a new PC - How dumb is this idea?

[Jeckler]

Right now I have 98.13 set up on my wife's PC. I just got a PC from work that I want to use in the living room, instead of using the wife's in the bedroom. She doesn't like hearing it all night, and it's running very poorly right now anyway, so an FFR is in order. GBPVR is installed on the C drive, and all the mpg's are on the F: drive.
Ok, here's "The Plan". Install my PVR150 in the new PC. Install 98.13 as well as .net. Then simply copy the entire devnz folder to the F: drive, remove and install it in the new machine, then overwrite the base install with my current setup.

"What can possibly go wrong?"
Am I looking at any issues? Video? Audio? .net 2.0, right?

[pastro]

Right now I have 98.13 set up on my wife's PC. I just got a PC from work that I want to use in the living room, instead of using the wife's in the bedroom. She doesn't like hearing it all night, and it's running very poorly right now anyway, so an FFR is in order. GBPVR is installed on the C drive, and all the mpg's are on the F: drive.
Ok, here's "The Plan". Install my PVR150 in the new PC. Install 98.13 as well as .net. Then simply copy the entire devnz folder to the F: drive, remove and install it in the new machine, then overwrite the base install with my current setup.

"What can possibly go wrong?"
Am I looking at any issues? Video? Audio? .net 2.0, right?

Once you get it all working on the new machine, why not export the recordings and import on the new machine?

[crossnet]

I did this last year, without any issues. Make sure you clean up any problems before you do the transfer and BACKUP all critical files. BTW, it took several hours to copy the videos.

[ram4x4nut]

Also make sure your recordings are on the F: drive and that you set that drive up to be F: in wondows. If it defaults to D: or something else you'll need to rename it F: before you copy the saved GBPVR installation and start it up. That way your recordings will still be in the menus. If that messes up you can always do the "import recordings" thing in the config app.

Another thing to think about is after doing the base install, go into task manager and kill ALL GBPVR processes before you try to copy over your backed up install. If you are running with MVP server enabled you must kill those and the recording service. Make sure they are dead and that they stay dead. I don't remember which, but if you kill them in the wrong order they will get restarted.

Other than that you should be good to go.

[agidius]

I did it a while back with NO problems.
I have a dedicated recordings drive.
I just installed GBPVR, moved the physical drive to the new PC (forcing it to use the same drive letter) and copied over the critical files.

[Jeckler]

Thanks guys. That's the plan, the F drive is dedicated, so it'll get moved to the new machine. Thanks for telling me about the services though. I'll make sure they're stopped.

[HtV]

Just to be extra sure: change this setting in config.xml to false:

Code:

<AutoRemoveMissingRecordings>true</AutoRemoveMissingRecordings>

If something goes wrong in the path-name or whatever, the recordings won't be deleted from the database. When everything is settled change it back to the default "true".

[Ted the Penguin]

also make sure you export your recordings before trying this.

[pastro]

Sub mentioned in a different thread that the recordings are exported each time you do an epg update. Useful to keep in mind.

[Jeckler]

All done. No real problems. When I was ready, I rebooted the old machine into safe mode, and copied the entire GBPVR folder over to the F drive, then shut it down. I removed the card and drive and put both into the new machine. Booted it up, forgot to turn the 2nd HDD on in the BIOS, so wasted 5 minutes checking jumpers, and got the card installed. I had to go into Disk Management and change the drive letter to F to match the old. Once I uninstalled WinTV2000 and their Titan TV Guide, I installed .net and GBPVR. Rebooted into safe mode, unplugged the MediaMVP, and copied the old folder into the new. Once I rebooted I spent another 5 minutes wondering why I couldn't get the MediaMVP to connect until I checked and added GBPVR to Windows Firewall. I then installed TightVNC so that I could have just the box, a big honkin' Dell GX260 Tower, sitting on its side up on top of the entertainment center, and if needed, can get into it through the laptop (with another foray into firewall land, but at least I was prepared). A scheduled task to defrag every Monday morning at 4AM and I'm all set. Nothing has changed on the front end.

Once I booted the old machine back up, I just turned off the MVP server for now.
Now I need to figure out how to setup client/server so my wife can still watch stuff in the bedroom.