Lost Recordings.. HELP!

[RedR]

Howdy,

Ok here's the story..
I installed a new video card (Gainward 5700 from a GF4 MX440). While everything seemed fine, when I started SageTV (2.2.6 RC) the display for Sage was corrupted (deep red, with lots of strange diagonal lines in the background). Well I figured I just need to install new nVidia drivers (66.93). Nope, that didn't work, so I tried their beta drivers (67.66), that didn't fix it. Uninstalled SageTV then installed 2.2.6 RC again, still didn’t fix it. Finally found the 3D Acceleration in the Advanced settings of Detailed Setup. I turn it off and SageTV looks great again.
Now for my problem.. All my existing recordings are gone. When I reinstalled SageTV, it completely lost everything, including my capture cards (PVR-250 and PVR-150), everything was gone from within Sage. My recordings still exist on the drives, they are just not listed in Sage.
I've read a bit about stopping Sage, renaming them, restarting Sage, stopping it again, and then renaming em back. Will this work? Is their an easier way? HELP!

Thank you,
RedR

[Opus4]

When you uninstalled, did you delete everything, including the wiz.bin file? That is where recording info is stored.

If you created a backup copy of wiz.bin before installing the new version, close SageTV, copy the old wiz.bin back to the SageTV dir & restart.

- Andy

[turak]

I don't suppose you made a backup copy of your wiz.bin file before reinstalling? If so you should be able to shutdown sagetv, copy the backup wiz.bin to your sage directory and restart sage. This won't help with tuner setup, but it will make it so your old recordings and favorites show up in sage again. It will also restore your viewing history and dislikes.

[RedR]

Thanks for the quick replies guys.
No I didn't delete everything, or anything manually. Normally when I update SageTV for whatever reason, I just uninstall then install the new version. Tho in this case, the uninstall and install were the same version (2.2.6 RC).
I do have backups of the properties and wiz.bin/bak, tho restored, restarted the new install didn't make a difference, the recordings still dont show. Been top to bottom in the setup, everythings the way it was before (recordings directories and such) this started.
I've also restored my properties and wiz files, restarted Sage, they are still not listed even tho the files exist. Recan/refresh media libs dont fix it either.
This is the second this has happened, originally it was on 2.0.x, then I just gave up on the recordings and used that as an excuse to move onto 2.2 versions.
I spose I could move em out and watch em through an external player or via the imported directory, its just not the same. I'll try renaming em and see if that works if nothing else.

Thanks again,
RedR

[korben_dallas]

I have successfully restored my wiz.bin about 5 times. How you ask? Because I completely uninstall SageTV everytime there is a new beta.

1. Shut down the SageTV UI and service.
2. If you have more than one backup of your wiz.bin, get the one that you are certain was saved while SageTV still worked and was shut down properly.
3. Make a note of where all of your video files are right now, and compare that to where they were when that good wiz.bin existed. If they are in a video folder(s) that did not exist for that wiz.bin, then you need to move them to a valid folder for that wiz.bin.
4. Uninstall SageTV from Control Panel.
5. Reboot.
6. Delete all Frey and SageTV directories. If this will cause video folders with video files to be deleted, then temporarily move the subfolders to a safe place, then do the delete, then restore the video folders and files.
7. Install SageTV. Don't be in a hurry. Let the EPG download. Configure your renderers and options as normal. Once SageTV is working and you can watch LiveTV, then re-add your video folder(s).
8. Shut down SageTV UI & service gracefully. Now rename the current wiz.bin to something else and restore the good one.
9. Start up SageTV, and your video files should be there now.

[Opus4]

korben_dallas: So is that why you have problems with the EPG for every beta update? (That was you, right?) You shouldn't have to do all those steps & reconfigure everything for each install.

Installing a new version really should be quite simple w/o a need to reconfigure anything. All I do is:

1) Shut down SageTV, and the service if it is in use on that PC.
2) Make a backup copy of the complete Frey Tech dir, just in case the new version has a killer bug. This is overkill, but at least it doesn't miss any files like channel logos.
3) Install the update over the top of the old version. (It uninstalls the old version as part of the new install.)
4) Restart SageTV and continue.

I prefer these steps because the tuner, video dir, lib dir, etc., configs are all the same and all the old recordings are intact. The EPG has no need for a completely new download, so there is no long wait for the LiveTV Guide to get populated. All my old settings are retained so there is no need to remember how things were configured.

Oh -- I forgot: The update installation resets the STV, so after making sure things are working, I switch back to my preferred STV. I also do the install when the EPG isn't about to do its daily update.

Fortunately for me, I have never had a problem when updating, so I am still using my original wiz.bin from around Oct 2003.

RedR: This means I'm not too sure why your install might have gotten screwed up, since I haven't experienced that problem. Do you use the service? Was it shut down when you restored the older wiz.bin & properties files? If SageTV was completely shut down, restoring a working pair of wiz.bin + SageTV.properties should have allowed the old recordings to be seen again. (Just wiz.bin should have been fine.) If the old wiz.bin was somehow correupted to begin with, that might explain it. Do you have a slightly older backup version to try? I may be forgetting something, but I can't think of a 'normal' reason for v2.2.6 to lose all recordings if the wiz.bin is valid.

Is anything stored on a network & network permissions got reset somehow? Using the service w/UNC paths? Your firewall allows the new exe through? I'm just grasping at things here.

- Andy

[RedR]

Again thanks guys for the help.
Nope, not running Sage as a service, nor UNC path issues or sort. Possibly an update was being written out, at the time, dunno. That is about the only thing that makes sense. The process seems to make good sense the problem is my backup of the wiz.bin and properties file isn't that current (a couple weeks old tho nothings changed in the properties) and I am sure I've cycled through the recordings since then easy. Thus explains why they are not seen.
Thus I assume the solution to future problems of this sort is make backups of these files often. Gonna try some poke'n around with this and some other things today and tomorrow. I think this is going to come down to an enhancement request of scanning the directories you point to for recordings? Seems to me the info is there, or can be gotten to restore the recordings even if their info isn't in the wiz.bin file?
Anyway, thanks again guys! Thanks to yall I found a determined fresh start at this problem.

RedR

[teedublu]

Do yourself a favor and get a decent drive imaging program. Acronis TrueImage seems to be the best right now. I still run good ol DriveImage5.

Before installing any new software or drivers, make an image of the system partition. Before upgrading Sage, you ALSO copy the wiz and sage.prop files to a safe place.

At a minimum, you should have an automatic daily backup scheduled to make a backup of those files! Don't overwrite the previous backup (for obvious reasons!). I suggest a min of a one week rotation.

Also, I strongly recommend setting Sage to Not Automatically start with Windows BEFORE installing ANY upgrades. You don't want Sage to start while the system is finishing install/setup -- too much contention for resources. I take it one step further and start sage with a batch file that has a 30sec delay, which I can cancel during the delay (this way I don't have to remember to disable start-with-windows).

TW

[turak]

Originally Posted by RedR

Again thanks guys for the help.
Nope, not running Sage as a service, nor UNC path issues or sort. Possibly an update was being written out, at the time, dunno. That is about the only thing that makes sense. The process seems to make good sense the problem is my backup of the wiz.bin and properties file isn't that current (a couple weeks old tho nothings changed in the properties) and I am sure I've cycled through the recordings since then easy. Thus explains why they are not seen.
Thus I assume the solution to future problems of this sort is make backups of these files often. Gonna try some poke'n around with this and some other things today and tomorrow. I think this is going to come down to an enhancement request of scanning the directories you point to for recordings? Seems to me the info is there, or can be gotten to restore the recordings even if their info isn't in the wiz.bin file?
Anyway, thanks again guys! Thanks to yall I found a determined fresh start at this problem.

RedR

Did your favorites get restored? If so, then at least you will know that the backed up wiz.bin is being used. If you have room somewhere you could move the files to a different directory and tell sage to import that directory. You won't have the show info, but you'll be able to access them through sage.

[bones71]

are you sure the new install went into the same directory. One time when I had sage client on my machine it installed an updated beta into a new directory. lost everything like tuners. Otherwise a new istall should never require resetting up the tuners. It might mess up your properties file or wiz.bin but not both.