Monthly Archives: January 2013

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No data available – Windows Media Center Guide Data Missing

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This is not the way you want to start your evening. If you are one of the unfortunate souls who has been hit with an empty guide, hopefully this will help you get back to the awesomeness of the Media Center experience.

Backup

Wait, my guide is busted, why would I backup now? Recording Schedule! Ian Dixon, of The Digital Lifestyle has created a handy utility to backup and restore Media Center settings called mcBackup 3.0 from Made for Media Center. This utility allows for the back and restore of Scheduled Recordings, Channel Lineup, Recorded TV, Extra Folders. So, before we go any further, backup the recording schedule. I recommend this just in case things get worse before they get better.

Guide Recovery

To restore proper guide data, I had to step through the Setup TV signal wizard. The following screenshots step through the wizard. Don’t schedule the eye exam just yet, the following screenshots are a tad blurry. (Note to self: Don’t shrink Media Center so much when taking screen shots).

These configuration steps allowed Media Center to pull the proper data again. It did take a few (five) minutes for the data to populate again, but I was soon back to the wonderful state of upcoming recordings and a full grid of guide data. The following screenshot shows my guide data restored.

Recording Schedule Recovery

The scheduled recording data was unaffected by the TV Signal Setup wizard. If you were not as lucky, now is when you can pat yourself on the back for creating a backup before you began. Go back into mcBackup and restore your Scheduled Recording (Be careful, you do NOT restore your Channel Lineup at this point)

Conclusion

This article documented the steps I took to restore my Windows Media Center Guide to its usual state of awesomeness, as well as adding some fail safes along the way. I would like to thank Phil Lozen from http://thedigitalmediazone.com for discussing his issues with his guide, causing me to check my guide. I rarely watch linear television, so without warning, I could have lost out on the opportunity to record quite a few shows. Have you experienced similar issues with your guide data?