I posted this in the Receivers forum as well, but got no responses, so I'm trying here:

I've had this sodden thing for about 3 weeks. Came back from going out of town for the weekend, and it won't finish booting. I get the first boot screen (with the Java logo and such), then it goes blank, with only Ait displaying on the thing. If I turn the unit on, it says "searching for signal". I can't get a tech out until Thursday. Please, tell me a way to find out what's wrong, I don't really want to swap out the box. I have a 2 year old, and by God, if I don't have Over the Hedge back for her soon, I'm a dead man.

I'm not afraid to try just about anything. I've also been a part of the CE program over @ DBSTalk (and, when I get to move back home, I'll be rejoining), so I have a pretty good stomach for this kind of thing.

I can call up the diagnostic menu. Anything I should be looking for in particular? It's all greek to me.

Also, I noticed that if I enter numbers from the remote, it accepts them, looking for a 4 digit code. Anything I should try there?

I've had 3 HDC boxes. The 2nd box had the same symptoms you describe. The 3rd box was better but had problems with several HD channels. I finally found that the coax the tech had replaced when the 2nd box was installed was flakey. I replaced it with one of my own and all problems cleared up. Made me think the coax may have caused the boot problems with the 2nd box.