Will the cleanup routine still run if MC is NOT loaded? As no music or TV will be viewed or recorded if MC is not loaded I'm thinking that may be a way to delete the old recordings. Or will MC still tie up tuners if TV records are scheduled even if MC is not loaded?
MC needs at least the MC Server or the MC Client running to do the background clean-up process. (Yaobing beat me again.
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Tuners aren't tied up by future scheduled recordings of programs. They are only tied up when the recording process begins.
This is what I suggest you do.1. Set up your PC to go to sleep when idle, rather than shutting it down or hibernating it manually when you don't need it.
2. Set the time delay for the PC to go to sleep to one hour. You may be able to reduce that to 30 minutes later if that is enough time for everything to happen. I use 30 minutes myself.
3. Make sure MC is set to start with Windows. In fact, you should have MC Server and MC starting with Windows.
4. Set up a Windows Task Schedule to wake the PC at say 2am everyday. If you are using Task Scheduler to collect EPG data outside MC, run this at 2am rather than at another time during the day.
The above will mean that the PC wakes at 2am, and MC is started. As the PC has nothing to do its sits idle for a little while, then MC will start doing its background processes. If you do an external to MC EPG collection at 2am, the PC will fall idle after that finishes, and then MC will run the background processes. After that finishes and the PC is idle for an hour, it will go to sleep.
Also, do you backup this PC at all? I run two overnight backups on my PC. One for the system drive and one for my data drive, at 2am and 4am respectively. This usually means that there is plenty of time to complete the backups, and plenty of idle time for MC to its job. You may want to implement something similar.
Another thing some people do is wake their PC during the night to have it reboot. That way the PC is rebooted at least once a day, which is usually a good thing to do. It means any installation that requires a reboot to complete will be finished, and it cleans up memory, any running processes and so on. I don't do this with my HTPC at the moment, but it is something I have been thinking about doing. You just need to make sure that the reboot only happens when the PC is idle in case of late night recordings, and that if it can't reboot immediately it wakes, then it will try again later when the PC is idle. There are Task Scheduler settings for all those issues.