Guide takes extremely long time to load

[Bear on the job]

This happens on both my main Media Center PC (connected to my living room TV) and on my Xbox 360 (connected to my bedroom TV). Media Center itself loads normally, and all other menus seem to respond fine. But the first time I try to open the guide after starting Media Center, sometimes it will take 1-5 minutes for the guide to actually load. On the Media Center PC when this occurs, any playing video will also freeze until the guide finishes loading. Once it becomes unfrozen, the video will play at 2-4x speed until it catches up with where it should be.

This seems to occur randomly, and more frequently on the Media Center PC (~60% of the time) versus the Xbox (~25%). Once the guide is loaded the first time, it will be fine the next time I try to re-open it. And scrolling through the guide is also fine in all cases. Previously, I was having issues with the guide scrolling slowly as well. I made edits to my host file to fix that issue, since the episode images downloaded with the guide data were enormous. The host file changes were:

Code: Select all

127.0.0.1	images-eds.xboxlive.com
::1		images-eds.xboxlive.com
127.0.0.1	images.windowsmedia.com
::1		images.windowsmedia.com

I also checked my "mcepg2-x.db" files to see if the DB was too large. I have 3 files, "mcepg2-0.db", "mcepg2-1.db", and "mcepg2-2.db", so it looks like the DB was already rebuilt a few times. All of them are around 450MB, but I'm not sure if that's an average size or overly large.

I don't really know what else to check. I don't think it's my HDD, as it has been fine for years, and there have been no significant changes recently. Also, it seems to occur randomly, so I'm not sure what kind of process my be interfering, or what Media Center would try to load sometimes, but not every time. Could it be the hosts file edits, and Media Center is freezing while it tries to connect to the servers and fails? Any ideas?

[Vistaar]

Googling "windows 7 media center slow guide" indicates that problems like this have been reported for years on various forums. If the problem got worse after the Rovi changeover, the culprit might be larger thumbnail images for the guide. Of course you can open the guide, go to the bathroom, pour a cup of coffee, etc, by which time the guide should be more responsive. Someone once suggested switching off your wireless mouse. I can report that Vista with TV Pack is also subject to this issue, but I don't think the legacy version of Vista WMC was.

[Pat1024]

I have been chasing a similar problem with my guide hanging. I came here to post about it and was happy to find a thread already started, although my exact symptoms are a bit different than OP's. Here's what I have found so far:

- The problem began right after the switch to Rovi guide data (I did not have the trouble that many others did with not being able to download guide data)
- The hang occurs when pressing the guide button, or when performing a task that relies on guide data, like editing series recordings or pressing info during live playback etc
- When it hangs, video playback continues ok, but any subsequent button presses get queued up until the guide finally loads
- The hanging behavior will return after not accessing guide data for a little while, maybe a few minutes.
- Same behavior on main PC and extenders
- Hang time is generally around 1 minute
- Once the guide finally loads, it works ok, but intermittently scrolling is a little slow (a few seconds per page).
- During a hang, looking at resources, CPU, memory, and network utilization are generally fairly low. Disk, however, is always quite busy. The file most consistently being accessed is mcepg2-x.db.
- Running ObjectStoreRecoveryTask, the new mcepg2-x.db file initially builds to around 200 megs. During this time, guide access is fairly speedy. It eventually grows to 400 megs, and at that point the hanging behavior returns.
- I did try the host file hack for blocking image downloads, but it didn't have a noticeable impact. I confirmed the hangs occur even with no large image files in the temporary internet files directory.
- Everything else non-guide data related appears to function properly - playback, recording, navigating menus, etc

I've been searching for similar reports or references to aid troubleshooting, but haven't had much luck.

[prouton]

I've seen this happen sporadically as well. I've just learned to live with it, as I don't go into the Guide very often. It's definitely hard drive bound, so one solution (if you consider the problem significant enough to throw money at it) is to put your system drive on an SSD (but leave recordings on the spinning disk). People have reported that this speeds things up considerably, especially via the XBox.

[lopezi]

I have been chasing a similar problem with my guide hanging. I came here to post about it and was happy to find a thread already started, although my exact symptoms are a bit different than OP's. Here's what I have found so far:

- The problem began right after the switch to Rovi guide data (I did not have the trouble that many others did with not being able to download guide data)
- The hang occurs when pressing the guide button, or when performing a task that relies on guide data, like editing series recordings or pressing info during live playback etc
- When it hangs, video playback continues ok, but any subsequent button presses get queued up until the guide finally loads
- The hanging behavior will return after not accessing guide data for a little while, maybe a few minutes.
- Same behavior on main PC and extenders
- Hang time is generally around 1 minute
- Once the guide finally loads, it works ok, but intermittently scrolling is a little slow (a few seconds per page).
- During a hang, looking at resources, CPU, memory, and network utilization are generally fairly low. Disk, however, is always quite busy. The file most consistently being accessed is mcepg2-x.db.
- Running ObjectStoreRecoveryTask, the new mcepg2-x.db file initially builds to around 200 megs. During this time, guide access is fairly speedy. It eventually grows to 400 megs, and at that point the hanging behavior returns.
- I did try the host file hack for blocking image downloads, but it didn't have a noticeable impact. I confirmed the hangs occur even with no large image files in the temporary internet files directory.
- Everything else non-guide data related appears to function properly - playback, recording, navigating menus, etc

I've been searching for similar reports or references to aid troubleshooting, but haven't had much luck.

I've seen exactly the same as you list. I have not run the ObjectStoreRecoveryTask but everything else you mention is exactly the same for me and I've noticed it after the Rovi switch. Before the switch, I did not experience any guide slowdowns or more so, none that were ever as noticeable as they are now.

Any one else been able to get to the root of the issue?