Did you know that it is possible for the TV Archive function in your Windows Media Center to become corrupt? I have found this to happen when the system tries to upgrade connectors, removing the beta for the release upgrade or when you do a fresh OS install. Have you received this message?
If you have received this message the first thing you want to check is the Services area. You want to make sure it is not just a one time occurrence.
From the Start Menu type in “services.msc”
Once Services has started, scroll down and find Windows Media Center TV Archive Transfer Service and check the Status. It must show as “Started”. See how mine is NOT? Crap.
Right mouse click on it and try to Start it. If it starts then close out the window and go back to Media Center and verify it worked.
If it tries to Start and then you get THIS ERROR:
you will need to reinstall the WHS Connector! Crap again.
Remove the Windows Home Server Connector. You may have to perform this step twice.
Restart your PC.
After the restart verify TV Archive is NOT in your WMC and then install the WHS Connector from the 55000 port. You could also use the latest image from CD I guess…
Walk through the install process.
Once the WHS Connector is complete then run the WMC Connector. It will be in the Start Menu once the WHS Connector is finished.
Restart your PC. Again.
After the restart you will now see the TV Archive again.
Open it to make sure it is working again.
Now if it crashed you probably have some shows waiting for upload. Click on Activity.
Verify your shows are moving again. You can see that mine died right after I installed PP3 and all of the shows on the 24th did NOT upload. Once you get the service running again they will start to upload immediately.
This was a long one but I did not want to wait till Friday. I cannot be the only one out there with this issue. Or can I? David and Andrew know how I love to break stuff…
Now You Know,
Tim
You, break stuff? Never 🙂
Andrew
I had the same erroe message but when I checked services the windows media center recorded TV transfer service was runing. I stopped and then restarted the service and that cleared the error.
Got the same thing. Opened services.msc and the tv archive service was not running. Since I had not elevated the services panel I could not start the service so I restarted services.msc elevated and by then the tv archive service was running. Went back to media center and the tv archive stuff worked. Didn't have to reinstall or do anything but wait.
I guess the tv archive service is a bit slow to start the first time or something.
The first time I installed the WHS/MC component it worked just fine transferring files. Not knowing I would break things, I decided to reinstall the connector on the Win7 MC box because I wanted to change the option to wake up the PC for backups since I could not find another way to change that setting. Anyway, I got the connector reinstalled and went into MC and loaded the WHS component when prompted. All went OK and after a reboot I tested it and encountered the error that you describe a fix for. I went through your reload procedure and had the same issue. When I started the service manually and tried the TV Archive feature it gave me the following 'unable to launch "tv archive"…….'. I tried the whole process again and came up with the same results.
I feel for you my brother. I break shiet all the time. Did you uninstall the WMC Connector twice? I have noticed that it did not go away for me the first time.
Uninstall the WHS Connector and reboot. Go to control panel and see if it is there. If it is, uninstall it again.
Once it is totally removed go to your 55000 webiste and download the latest WHS connector. Reboot. Go to your Start Menu and use the WMC Connector icon which is there now to reinstall the WMC Connnector. Reboot.
Have a couple of beverages while you wait.
Tim
I seem to have fixed the problem by changing the HP Video Converter "from" directory (on the Mediasmart) back to "Videos" from "Recorded TV". I did this based on another post I read about this problem which indicated that a "from" folder change might fix the issue. Unfortunately, the fix was not that specific so I tried this and it worked.
Hopefully this will fix this permanently.
Does it work if you change it back? There was a WMC patch that fixed that error already. Strange.
I have not tried that. Do you have the patch number so I can see if it was installed on the WMC box?
I have not been able to find the patch number. I hope your system is working by now.
Good luck,
Tim
I encountered a similar issue after installing AC3filter except the Windows Media Center TV Archive Transfer Service had started and was running with no apparent issues. I had to uninstall AC3filter then reinstall the connector then I reinstalled AC3filter again. It's back to working now.
My Transfer Service stops every few weeks for no apparent reason. It does not happen enough to try and track down the issue. It only seems to happen on CableCARD shows so I just check the HTPC every few days over RDC to ensure it has been transferring the shows over as expected. I had installed the AC3 after the connector.