C
Cliffskier
I have a computer that I bought for video streaming, as well as recording and watching broadcast TV. It serves no other function. For recording, I have found no satisfactory substitute for Windows Media Center, so I had no plan to upgrade from Win 7 to 10.
However, following the advice in a ZDNet News article (usually a trustworthy source for computer info) I decided to upgrade to 10 before the free offer expired. The article assured that an image of my Win 7 installation would be saved as part of the upgrade process, allowing me to return to the original state of my system, while locking in the free upgrade in case I ever do decide to switch to 10 in the future. (And since support for 7 ends in only four years, I might need to do that eventually.)
Everything went smoothly. After the downgrade, I could still run Media Center and watch broadcast TV with it. However, I soon discovered that WMC would crash if I tried to record what I was watching or schedule a future recording.
I tried going to the panel to turn Windows features on or off, with the idea of reinstalling WMC. I deselected all of the Media Features, followed the directions to reboot the computer, then reactivated Media Features. Problem solved. I was able to record what I was watching and schedule future recordings.
Except that the scheduled recording didn't happen. After further experimentation I realized that WMC would only record when it was running. If I closed WMC, no scheduled recordings took place, even if the computer was set not to sleep.
I found a possible solution in another discussion on this forum. The poster found that a few tasks in the Task Scheduler related to WMC were corrupted. A couple of respondents reported that deleting those tasks, then restarting WMC, caused the tasks to be recreated and solved the problem.
I went into the Task Scheduler and sure enough, I received pop-up messages for the same two tasks (StartRecording and MCupdate_scheduled), reporting that the task image is corrupt or has been tampered with.
I also got the same error message for a number of other tasks:
GoogleUpdateTaskMachineUA
GoogleUpdateTaskMachineCore
Adobe Flash Player Updater
HotStart
BackgroundConfigSurveyor
RacTask
WindowsParentalControls
SystemDataProviders
SessionAgent
GadgetManager
Autowake
IPAddressConflict2
IPAddressConflict1
However, I can't find any of the offending tasks in the Task Scheduler list, so I can't try deleting them. What am I missing, and how should I proceed from here?
(I know I should have taken additional precautions such as backing up the system or creating a restore point, but I don't have those. None of the past restore points were preserved, and I didn't have the disk capacity to back up the entire system.)
Continue reading...
However, following the advice in a ZDNet News article (usually a trustworthy source for computer info) I decided to upgrade to 10 before the free offer expired. The article assured that an image of my Win 7 installation would be saved as part of the upgrade process, allowing me to return to the original state of my system, while locking in the free upgrade in case I ever do decide to switch to 10 in the future. (And since support for 7 ends in only four years, I might need to do that eventually.)
Everything went smoothly. After the downgrade, I could still run Media Center and watch broadcast TV with it. However, I soon discovered that WMC would crash if I tried to record what I was watching or schedule a future recording.
I tried going to the panel to turn Windows features on or off, with the idea of reinstalling WMC. I deselected all of the Media Features, followed the directions to reboot the computer, then reactivated Media Features. Problem solved. I was able to record what I was watching and schedule future recordings.
Except that the scheduled recording didn't happen. After further experimentation I realized that WMC would only record when it was running. If I closed WMC, no scheduled recordings took place, even if the computer was set not to sleep.
I found a possible solution in another discussion on this forum. The poster found that a few tasks in the Task Scheduler related to WMC were corrupted. A couple of respondents reported that deleting those tasks, then restarting WMC, caused the tasks to be recreated and solved the problem.
I went into the Task Scheduler and sure enough, I received pop-up messages for the same two tasks (StartRecording and MCupdate_scheduled), reporting that the task image is corrupt or has been tampered with.
I also got the same error message for a number of other tasks:
GoogleUpdateTaskMachineUA
GoogleUpdateTaskMachineCore
Adobe Flash Player Updater
HotStart
BackgroundConfigSurveyor
RacTask
WindowsParentalControls
SystemDataProviders
SessionAgent
GadgetManager
Autowake
IPAddressConflict2
IPAddressConflict1
However, I can't find any of the offending tasks in the Task Scheduler list, so I can't try deleting them. What am I missing, and how should I proceed from here?
(I know I should have taken additional precautions such as backing up the system or creating a restore point, but I don't have those. None of the past restore points were preserved, and I didn't have the disk capacity to back up the entire system.)
Continue reading...