Best way to reinstall BTV?

[scooterspal]

I've had BTV 4.9.0 for many months now and am having some issues that are getting worse. Things like the calendar dropping the schedule for the coming weeks, Showsqueeze not running although it says it is, things like that.

Also, Norton finds misplaced files for BTV and cannot put them back.

What is the best way to reinstall BTV so I do not have to reprogram my schedule. That would be a bear of a job that I need to avoid. I also want to retain all my recording file settings, etc.

Should I just install on top of the existing BTV or remove it first and hope it saves all my settings, channels, etc?

Please advise.

[Banjo H]

You can backup all your BTV settings using the information here:
How to backup your Beyond TV settings - SnapStream Knowledgebase

[Banjo H]

You can use almost the same procedures to restore your settings.

[Jakesty]

Originally Posted by scooterspal

I've had BTV 4.9.0 for many months now and am having some issues that are getting worse. Things like the calendar dropping the schedule for the coming weeks, Showsqueeze not running although it says it is, things like that.

Also, Norton finds misplaced files for BTV and cannot put them back.

These types of errors don't sound normal to BTV. You might want to review your event logs to make sure that there's not something else going on in Windows too.

Originally Posted by scooterspal

What is the best way to reinstall BTV so I do not have to reprogram my schedule. That would be a bear of a job that I need to avoid. I also want to retain all my recording file settings, etc.

Should I just install on top of the existing BTV or remove it first and hope it saves all my settings, channels, etc?

Please advise.

Like was mentioned by Banjo H, backup and restore only to the same version. I would backup, then remove BTV, possibly reboot which often is needed in many programs, then re-install and restore the settings from the backup.
This backup procedure is extremely easy to do.

[scooterspal]

Yes, this seems easy enough to do. Will give this a try and see if things settle down over the next week or two.

I have found it necessary to shut down and reboot BTV every other week or so or things seem to get "clogged up" so to speak.

Have others found this necessary to clear out issues in BTV?

[gambitpvr]

Rebooting weekly shouldn't be needed. I reboot once every 3-4 months... that's when I do OS and / or driver updates.

If an uninstall / reinstall doesn't fix the issue, you may want to consider a full reinstall of the OS. There could be an underlying Windows corruption at the heart of the problem.

Personally, I would:

• Backup BTV settings (if you have any videos saved on the boot drive, be sure to also save them off to another location)
• Reformat hard drive & reinstall Windows
• Install all the latest OS patches
• Update to all the latest Drivers
• Reinstall your current version of BTV
• Restore your saved BTV settings
• Update to the newest BTV version
• Uninstall the video Driver and reinstall the latest version (I've found that sometimes updating BTV causes video driver issues, that require an uninstall / reinstall of the video driver to fix)

[Jakesty]

I have to admit that I have rebooted more often with the 4.9x version, probably every 3-4 weeks. It's not always drastic, generally the recordings continue and are reliable, but the interface sometimes will lose audio or something else in the interface will malfunction. It used to lock in smartsqueeze, but I changed it to compress to .AVI instead of DVIX.

[tscales]

This isn't normal for BTV. I go for months without rebooting.

Something else is wrong.

Personally, I find Norton to be more problem then solution. Why would it think things have moved?

If it was me, I'd format and completely start over. If the BTV installation is hosed, backup and restore with just restore a hosed system.

[captain_video]

I second the motion to start over. If you've got recordings then make sure they're on a different partition or separate drive. All you need to do is set up BTV and include the path to the existing shows and they'll show up in the playback listing.

I've tried to patch up PC problems in the past and the best solution has always been to start with a clean slate and reinstall everything from scratch. I do that with my main PC every year or two just to get rid of all of the extra crap I've accumulated over that period. Once you've created a clean install, perform a backup of the C: drive and store it on another partition or removable storage. If the current installation gets corrupted you can easily restore the working backup much faster than doing a new install.

[Fickey]

If you reinstall windows, you might want to google about slipstreaming critical microsoft updates into your install disk, or use something like autopatcher.

[Jakesty]

Although I like the slipstreaming idea for a site when you're installing multiple computers, why for when you're installing just one? Just use windows update then.
Personally I like NLite to create Windows Install disks. Much easier to set up.