Media Browser Community Tracker

How do I enable logging? Where can I find logfiles?

In certain situations it can be useful to enable logging to find the culprit in case something doesn’t work. Or when you get error messages and want to post a question or bug report.

This topic describes how to enable logging, where to find useful logfile information and how to post the logfile.

MSI Install logging

To enable logging for the MSI Installer, do the following:

  • start a Command Prompt window as administrator (Start > type “cmd” in the search box > right-click the first result “cmd.exe” and choose “run as administrator”)
  • type “msiexec /i <path to media browser msi file> /l*v <path to a log file myinstall.log>” in the Command Prompt window and press “Enter”.

  • Run the MSI Setup like you normally would.
  • After you've finished / closed the setup program you will find the logfile in the destination location you entered.

Media Browser logging

To enable logging in Media Browser, simply enable the option in the Media Browser Configuration Menu. More details about that can be found here

After you have enabled logging in the configuration menu, it will be activated the next time you start Media Browser or The Configurator.

The resulting logfiles will be created in the following directory:

C:\ProgramData\MediaBrowser\Logs

Each time you start Media Browser or the Configurator a new logfile will be created with a randomized file name. Pay attention to the modified date and time.

Note: When using the Thunderblade release or later, log files from the Configurator will have the following text as a prefix to the randomized file name:

ConfigWizard-

It’s advised to only repeat the essential steps to reproduce a problem in order for a logfile to be as small as possible. Logfiles can get large very quickly.

Windows Media Center logging

Sometimes you may encounter an error such as “Invalid Application” when using Media Browser, this message occasionally has a Details button; if it does, then click the button and post the information displayed with your bug report. However, if this information is not presented in an easy to copy way, or if the details button is not available then you can use the Event Viewer to find the log.

To find the log using Event Viewer, follow these steps

  • Open the Start Menu
  • Type “event”, you will see an entry such as “view event logs” or “event viewer”, open whichever of these shows up
  • In the menu pane on the left, expand the “Application and Services Logs” entry and then click on the “Media Centre” entry.

Left Pane

  • In the middle pane you will see a number of log events for Media Centre, one of, if not the most recent entry will be classed as an error.

Middle Pane

  • When you have found the relevant error log, double click it, and in the new window that appears copy the contents of the text box in the General tab and either the Friendly or XML view in the Details tab into your bug report.

General

Details

Posting logfiles on the Tracker or Forum

If possible, please link to a logfile that you've uploaded to prevent large chunks of text in a topic post. More information about this can be found in this topic.

If you post logfiles on the Community Tracker or Forum please use the “code” tags so the logfiles are displayed properly and don’t use excessive room in the posts. Large logfiles can clutter up a topic very easily.

On the Community Tracker:

  • Use the 101010 button above the editor. Select the logfile text you inserted and click the button so the text is in “code” format.

or

  • Use the <code> </code> tags and insert the logfile in between the two tags.

For example:

<code>
logfile lines
logfile lines
logfile lines
logfile lines
</code>

On the Forum:

  • Use the [code] [/code] tags or click the code button and insert the logfile in between the two tags.

For example:

[code]
logfile lines
logfile lines
logfile lines
logfile lines
[/code]
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