SageTV 2.1 losing my settings

[korben_dallas]

Hi all,

I normally leave my PC on, but I had to reboot today, and I noticed that the SageTV interface had lost many of my settings in the Setup > Detailed Setup screen. So I changed everything again. Then I closed the interface. Shut down my PC. After reboot, same problem. I've done this about 4 times, and each time the changes made in the Detailed Setup setup window are lost. The only thing that appears to be saved is the default quality, but other things like the various default renderers, aspect ratio, load at startup, sleep/screen saver all lose the changes I made.

Any ideas?

[korben_dallas]

Well, I've more narrowly found the problem.

If I let the Sage GUI launch at startup, via the registry key HKLM Windows Run > Sage.exe -startup, then my settings are lost. However, if I manually start the gui, all my settings are there.

Does the -startup cause Sage to load default values for some reason?

[Opus4]

It shouldn't reset things by doing that & if it is consistently clearing your settings that way, then I would let tech support know.

So... if you boot with the startup option, make your changes in Detailed Setup, then close the GUI (and possibly the service, depending on how you have things set up), then restart SageTV w/o rebooting, do your settings remain? If so, what happens when you then reboot again with the startup option still enabled?

- Andy

[kny3twalker]

Opus4 thats what you have to do to keep settings in SageTV 2.1
they always get reset if I reboot without closing SageTV and disabling the service first

[korben_dallas]

KNY,

Do you have the Sage service start automatically?
Do you have the Sage GUI startup automatically?

OT: How do you like the 6800?

[kny3twalker]

I was running the service but not now
I do have UI to boot with computer
and 6800 is nice
good vMR9 playback especially liking the new nvidia post processor

and seems to do very well with gaming so far

[korben_dallas]

Well, it seems to be working ok having the service start automatically, and then run the GUI manually.

What I don't understand is where are those old/default values coming from if the GUI starts automatically.

[Opus4]

It almost sounds like the UI is using the same properties file as the service when they both start at boot time, so any settings it saves are overwritten by the service later. I do not know that this is what is happening, just commenting on what it sounds like _could_ be happening. As I said above, if things are not working correctly, I would let tech support know.

- Andy

[korben_dallas]

Well, I'm not sure if it is not working correctly.. OR it is just not working as I would expect it to work.

It seems to me that the UI should always present the settings that the service is using, and being that it is a UI, let you change those settings. But in my case, how the UI is started determines which set of values(?) it presents.

If there is some necessary procedure, such as a 1 2 3 step method to save the settings before restart, then that is fine. Except, I haven't seen anything mentioned in the manual or in the forums to that case.

I'll do some more experimentation tonight.

[Opus4]

There shouldn't have to be a set of steps to get the settings to be saved. Unless the system crashes or the power is turned off before an orderly shutdown is performed, your settings should be saved. At least that would be my expectation.

- Andy

[korben_dallas]

I may have a theory.. I noticed that my hard drive is doing a lot of activity when XP is booting, and this continues for a while even after the UI has started.

I think the UI is starting before the Sage service has finished starting, and so the UI is starting as if it were in non-service mode.

I'm going to play around with a batch file that delays the UI startup for 60 seconds, to see if my theory is correct.

[AWS]

I'm getting the same problem with my Sage setup, too. It was rembering it's settings then I had to do a full system rebuilt (format) and now it's not remembering the settings I feed it. And for the Cayars16 STV, THOSE ARE A LOT OF SETTINGS! SageTV 2.1

Was there a solution found? The wife acceptance factor has been dropping quickly esp since the HTPC's mobo died and I had to wait to replace it, time to replace it, setup, etc!

[AWS]

Another problem I'm experiencing with Sage forgetting my settings is that each time I reboot and restart, it tries to use the ffdshow for my "DVD decoder file" instead of my NVIDIA Video Post Processor. And what the odd thing is, is that I've uninstalled ffdshow a few days ago and ffdshow isn't in the list of available DVD Video Decoders.

[Cayars]

What's I think is happening is that the service isn't fully loaded and the GUI is getting confused and pulling info from the wrong properties file. Either way, try doing this. Set SageTV to not auto load. Then instead create the batch file below and drag it into your startup folder.

What this will do is force the SageTV service to load or finish loading before starting the GUI. It's pretty simple in concept and I haven't tested it but it should work.

sagelnch.bat
-----------------
net start SageTV
c:
cd "\program files\frey technologies\sagetv"
start sagetv.exe
exit

[AWS]

Cayars, that worked as you thought it should! Thanks! I love your STV, BTW

Problem solved.

[Cayars]

Cool, glad it worked!

[korben_dallas]

Cayars,

A possible problem with your batch file is that it assumes the Service database is not locked when it runs, which is what was happening with mine. I found a little utility on the internet called sleep.exe and put it in the batch file, so it would have some timed waits in between the startup, service start, and GUI launch.

Since I rebuilt my PC, I have just been letting the service start automatically and then starting the Sage Gui manually, and I haven't had any trouble.

I did ask Frey about it, and they told me to try out 2.2.. but I'm not a big fan of beta testing.

[Cayars]

A locked service database shouldn't matter when using the net start command. It will wait and retry unless it gets an error back. A locked database will just cause it to retry.

I originally was going to delay the process and then launch Sage but decided it better to go thr route I went. BTW you don't need a 3rd party app to do this on XP.