SageTV randomly losing settings in Vista

[Kimper]

I have a fresh (2 weeks) install of the latest Sage running in Vista Ultimate on a newly built machine. Right after I set Sage up the next day after a reboot I start Sage and am greeted with the pick your language screen! It had lost all the settings and tuners.
I wrote that off to new system weirdness and set Sage back up. Several days go by ok. Then one morning oops the HDHomerun and all settings are missing. I reinstall it.. Few days later directories for media imports are all reset to default values. A few other smaller settings have disappeared here and there as well like custom commands and such..
It is Ghost in the Machine!

Anyone else had anything like this going on?
Are all the settings stored in sage.properties?
I guess I am just going to get it all set correctly and manually copy the properties file and overwrite when it loses my settings?

Man I miss the days when I set up Sage 2.0 in XP and it was rock solid for years.

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by Kimper

I have a fresh (2 weeks) install of the latest Sage running in Vista Ultimate on a newly built machine. Right after I set Sage up the next day after a reboot I start Sage and am greeted with the pick your language screen! It had lost all the settings and tuners.

It may be related to Vista Virtualization.

SageTV save its settings (all of them, *.properties, *.frq, wiz.bin etc...), in the Program Files directory. This directory is protected, only administrators can write to this directory. When a non priviledged user try to write to this directory Vista doesn't deny the request but instead create a copy of the file the use tries to write to in C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files. This virtualized copy is then used even for read access during the session of the program.

For instance, you start SageTV and SageTV needs to write to sage.properties. Vistal will virtualize this file. The virtualized sage.properties is then used during the whole SageTV session. You shut down SageTV, restart it, this time it tries to read sage.properties, this read access is not restricted and SageTV can access the non virtualized copy: that is the one without your settings.

You may have some success by settings permissions on the SageTV program files directory, then copy back all the virtualized settings to the SageTV directory (once the permissions are ok, I think that Vista stops any virtualization).

Regards,
Stéphane.

[reggie14]

I had this problem too (or, at least, a similar one). The first few times I restarted my computer I had to re-enter my registration key and set the setup options. It did it 3 or 4 times, but I haven't had problems since. I turned off UAC, so maybe that fixed it.

[Polypro]

Also, running in a mode you haven't used before (Sage as a Client or in Service Mode) will bring up the Setup Wizard. I love Vista for HTPC use, but I disabled UAC first thing.

P

[Kimper]

Thanks for the ideas. It very well may be related to UAC.. I turned it off right away, but noticed the other day that it was back on seemingly by itself. I can't recall if my problems correlated to that oddity or not.

Vista really is still Beta. I am wishing I had gone back to XP now, but I am probably too lazy to redo it all. My Wife Approval Factor has gone way down as of late. She is really annoyed that her MVP in the bathroom keeps crashing during her Soap Opera!

I will keep UAC off and monkey around with what Stephane suggested.. btw, thanks again Stephane, you and your software have been very helpful in my HTPC rebuild efforts

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by Kimper

I will keep UAC off and monkey around with what Stephane suggested.. btw, thanks again Stephane, you and your software have been very helpful in my HTPC rebuild efforts

Thanks. However, I would not disable UAC. It may be annoying but UAC is a good thing : it force third party developpers to think about security.

I don't know if the virtualization I talked about is really a part of UAC or not. But this thing is the only thing that MS did not right, it both a good or a bad idea. Good because pre-Vista software still works, and bad because the "Program Files" folder is like a "All Users" folder, and still files are virtualized into a user folder... So you never really know what files you have access to.

Even when you do know that virtualization takes place you can still have some nasty things going.

Regards,
Stéphane.