Windows Media Center Bogging down..Alternatives?

[John.hesser]

So let me start off by saying that I have an HTPC built on a gigabyte board with an amd phenox x3 black edition cpu. I have a ceton tuner and its all in an antec fusion remote black case.Running windows 7 using media center, remote potato and plex. I love the thing, I have had it for a few years and just love it. However, a couple weeks ago my media center was bogging down tremendously, no idea what it was I couldn’t even navigate and when i could it was unbearably slow. At the time I had over 300 recordings on and thought maybe the indexing or something was slow? No idea I cleared about a bunch of recordings, just about all. I restarted a time or two and it started to act normal again. Well now I have maybe 40 recordings and it is happening again. I can’t seem to figure out what it is. Does anyone know what would cause this? Nothing else on the computer is running slow, if i manage to minimze it the task manager is showing no spikes or high usage, everything else performs snappy. It is stictly windows media center. Storage shouldn’t be an issue, i have a 64gb ssd for my boot device and run apps. and i have a 2 tb storage hdd that stores all my media. 

I want this resolved. I also want to know if anyone knows of an alternative that will work in place of windows media center with Ceton without losing anything. Been looking around for as long as i remember and can’t find anything fully compatible makes me sad especially since I read on here a little while ago that windows is dropping media center. 

[oliverredfox]

Are auto-updates turned on?  It’s possible something got pushed that broke/slowed things down.  I keep mine turned off, just because that happens on occasion.  Check the logs of updates over the last few weeks and try uninstalling them.  Of course, if they’re turned off, then disregard.

[John.hesser]

Well, it was slow lastnight and i had a few recordings set so i didnt fool around. So i opened up plex to watch recorded shows, appears it had trouble rendering the video so its not just my media center its my pc. i turned it off i’ll have to open it clean it and let it rest maybe that will help? i would hate to think hardware is starting to fail.

[mikinho]

Do a hard drive diagnostics test. Sounds like your hard drive may be going.  If so, that is a relatively cheap fix assuming it is just your data drive.

For your SSD, what manufacturer?

[John.hesser]

The solid state drive is a kingston I believe… If i remember correctly. I’ll go test the HDD now. What tool would you recommend for a SSD test?

[John.hesser]

It passed a SMART test and a short test in seatools. Running a long one now.. The SSD is actually a Samsung 830 256gb drive

[NightCactus]

You might also try:

1. Disable file indexing in services.msc

2. Exclude your storage HD from virus scans

3. Archive old recorded shows to an additional hard drive or NAS (adding their location to the media library will still allow you to access them directly)

There doesn’t seem to be any viable alternative to WMC where CableCard AND protected content are involved. WMC has become Microsoft’s neglected step-child. I wish they would sell it off and let someone else improve upon it.

[John.hesser]

How do I check queue length? I  neglected to run the test so I can run it whenever and I can this out..

[babgvant]

It’s listed in Resource Manager.

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