I record TV to my unraid server.  The hardware in the server failed at one time, so I recorded TV to a local drive for my home theater computer.  When I was on the local drive, if I deleted a TV show (using windows media center), the deletion happened almost instantaneously or at least within a few seconds.  I got my server back up and running, and when I delete recorded TV from the server, it takes a while for WMC to respond that the file has been deleted.  This time period seems to relate to how long/big the recorded TV file is.  That is, if I delete a three hour HD tennis match, it takes a long, long time before WMC reports back the file is deleted (and during this time, WMC is simply "waiting" and you can't do anything).

 

Is this normal?  Is WMC physically deleting the file somehow?  Is there any way to speed up this process? 

I would be taking a bit of a guess here but I know that the WMC library is somehow linked to WMP (Windows Media Player). I had some issues a long time ago when using WMC where the library became corrupt and I had all sorts of weird issues. You can try removing/re-adding your library but this may take some time:

 

1. Close WMC

2. Open WMP

3. Go to Library > Videos > All Videos

4. Select All > Delete > Make SURE you tick the option "DELETE FROM LIBRARY ONLY"

5. May take a while to delete depending on how much media you have

6. Open WMC

7. Re-add your videos as you did when you first setup WMC

 

(I hereby accept no liability if you do not read these instructions properly and accidently delete all of your media)