MP & MPtray both crash immediately on start. (1 Viewer)

[rsbrux]

Everything was working fine last night (or rather early this morning), but now (just when I could finally convince DW to watch "The Hobbit" with me) I cannot get MP to start. TV server still appears to run OK. I am attaching the logs, but MP error logs are empty. I don't find any evidence in the Windows event logs of a software update having been installed.overnight. The first two event log errors (and many subsequent ones) look something like the following for the MP crashes:

Spoiler

Application: MediaPortal.exe
Framework Version: v4.0.30319
Description: The process was terminated due to an unhandled exception.
Exception Info: System.IO.IOException
Stack:
at System.Xml.XmlTextWriter.WriteStartElement(System.String, System.String, System.String)
at System.Xml.XmlDOMTextWriter.WriteStartElement(System.String, System.String, System.String)
at System.Xml.XmlElement.WriteStartElement(System.Xml.XmlWriter)
at System.Xml.XmlElement.WriteElementTo(System.Xml.XmlWriter, System.Xml.XmlElement)
at System.Xml.XmlElement.WriteTo(System.Xml.XmlWriter)
at System.Xml.XmlDocument.Save(System.Xml.XmlWriter)
at System.Xml.XmlDocument.Save(System.IO.TextWriter)
at MediaPortal.Profile.XmlSettingsProvider.Save()
at MediaPortal.Profile.CacheSettingsProvider.Save()
at MediaPortal.Profile.Settings.SaveCache()
at MediaPortalApp.Main(System.String[])

After those first two errors (and subsequently after each .NET Runtime error similar to the above, there is an entry like this in the Event Log:

Spoiler

Faulting application name: MediaPortal.exe, version: 1.9.0.0, time stamp: 0x54168047
Faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll, version: 6.1.7601.18409, time stamp: 0x53159a86
Exception code: 0xe0434352
Fault offset: 0x0000c42d
Faulting process id: 0xc64
Faulting application start time: 0x01d0110a7dde453e
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\MediaPortal.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\syswow64\KERNELBASE.dll
Report Id: bde809ed-7cfd-11e4-a0bf-e840f20a34db

There are a couple of events about an hour before the first MP failure (and one immediately after) complaining about low disk, but I don't understand how this could be a problem. I have 40 GB free on C: and 6 GB free on D:, and I have run out of space on D: many times before without it causing any lasting problems. Here they are anyhow, just in case they are relevant:

Spoiler: 1st Low Disk Event Before MP Failure

Windows (4040) Windows: An attempt to write to the file "d:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows\MSStmp.log" at offset 0 (0x0000000000000000) for 1048576 (0x00100000) bytes failed after 0 seconds with system error 112 (0x00000070): "There is not enough space on the disk. ". The write operation will fail with error -1808 (0xfffff8f0). If this error persists then the file may be damaged and may need to be restored from a previous backup.

Spoiler: 2nd Low Disk Error Before MP Failure

Windows (4040) Windows: The database engine is rejecting update operations due to low free disk space on the log disk.

Spoiler: Low Disk Error Immediately After 1st .NET Runtime Error

Windows (4040) Windows: An attempt to write to the file "d:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows\MSSres00002.jrs" at offset 0 (0x0000000000000000) for 1048576 (0x00100000) bytes failed after 0 seconds with system error 112 (0x00000070): "There is not enough space on the disk. ". The write operation will fail with error -1808 (0xfffff8f0). If this error persists then the file may be damaged and may need to be restored from a previous backup.

Can anyone give me any tips on how to troubleshoot this and get MP running again?

P.S. MP Configuration also crashes immediately on attempted start with the following data:

Spoiler

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: CLR20r3
Problem Signature 01: configuration.exe
Problem Signature 02: 1.9.0.0
Problem Signature 03: 54168040
Problem Signature 04: System.Xml
Problem Signature 05: 4.0.0.0
Problem Signature 06: 53b51313
Problem Signature 07: 748
Problem Signature 08: 27
Problem Signature 09: System.Xml.XmlException
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48
Locale ID: 2055
Additional Information 1: 0a9e
Additional Information 2: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
Additional Information 3: 0a9e
Additional Information 4: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789

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[clarkey2r]

Did you get any luck with this? Oddly enough, one of my clients has started to crash with similar runtime errors, have you installed any windows updates recently?

 

[mm1352000]

@rsbrux
I'd be almost certain that your MediaPortal.xml file is corrupt/empty.
If your D: drive gets so full that MediaPortal.xml can't be written then it will cause problems like this, regardless of if you make the space available later. The damage is already done. I don't know if you'd call this a "lasting problem". It is fixable (by freeing space, deleting MediaPortal.xml, then running MP config to reconfigure)... but you lose your configuration. Doesn't seem particularly ideal.

 

[rsbrux]

@clarkey2r
No windows updates, just a Firefox update.

@mm1352000
Thanks for the tip! MediaPortal.xml was indeed 0 Bytes. I thought that it was only written by MP Config and didn't realize that MP itself was also writing to it during normal operation. After replacing it with a month-old backup version, I can start MP Config again. I am waiting for a backup to finish before I try to restart MP. Meanwhile I have enabled a disk quota for D: so as to avoid this in the future. Of course it would be nice if:

1. MP would warn when attempting to schedule more recordings than will fit in the space available. Then I could selectively delete the old recordings I least value, instead of letting MP delete them arbitrarily by date.
2. MP (and MP config) would display a useful error message on attempting to start with an invalid MediaPortal.xml. I realize that it might not be possible to catch all types of file corruption, but a zero-length file should be obvious enough.

Thanks for your help!