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Exporting and Importing Windows Media Center Recording Schedules

29 October 2016 • by Bob • Windows Media Center

I ran into an interesting problem the other day which warranted some investigation: I was replacing the computer which my dad uses for Windows Media Center, (which he uses as his DVR and to watch movies), and he had an elaborate recording schedule set up for all of his favorite shows and wish lists. The problem for me - as his IT guy - was to figure out how to migrate his recording schedule from his old computer to his new computer, and as it turns out - there was already a command line solution from Microsoft which was pretty easy to use.

The tool in question is called loadmxf.exe, and you can find out more about that utility in the Windows Media Center Guide Listings Format article on MSDN.

That being said, here are the steps to export your recording schedules from one Windows Media Center computer and import them into a new Windows Media Center computer.

On Your Old WMC Computer:

  1. In Windows Explorer, navigate to the following folder:

    "%ProgramData%\Microsoft\eHome"

  2. Find the most recent "mcepgX-X" folder
  3. Find the "backup\recordings" folder
  4. Copy the latest "yyyymmdd_hhmmss" file to a share or flash drive

Note: The "yyyymmdd_hhmmss" file is an XML file which contains your recording schedule, and you can find detailed information about the data in the file in the Windows Media Center Guide Listings Format article which I mentioned earlier.

On Your New WMC Computer:

  1. Copy "yyyymmdd_hhmmss" file from earlier to the following folder:

    "%ProgramData%\Microsoft\eHome\mcepgX-X\backup\recordings"

  2. Open a command prompt and type:

    "%windir%\ehome\loadmxf.exe" -i "%ProgramData%\Microsoft\eHome\mcepgX-X\backup\recordings\yyyymmdd_hhmmss"

  3. Once completed, the tool will display the import status
  4. Open the Windows Media Center application
  5. All of your scheduled recordings should be displayed in Windows Media Center, however - they will not work until you open each scheduled recording and resave it without making any changes

Tags: Window Media Center, Windows