Constant Reboots / Obsolete Replay Channel Messages

[Ben732]

Help...

This morning I found one of my units constantly rebooting itself. The "please wait" screen would come up, a green flash would occur and "please wait" would come up again, etc...

I pulled the plug for a few minutes and when I powered it back on, it came up with all the settings wiped clean. It forgot the network settings, zip code, etc... When I went into messages, I got "obsolete Replay Channel" messages for each channel I had scheduled recordings for. In the body of these messages it said for example, "the show-based replay channel "my name is earl" was dependent on this channel and will no longer record shows from this channel. You may delete this show-based replay channel if you wish." Thankfully, all my shows are still intact in the replay guide and when I browse ahead in the guide, my scheduled recordings are still set to record.

Also, when I go into setup, the option to turn on CA is gone and my CA button on my remote changes the input instead.

This is a 5040 with a 200gb HD that was built with the 530511440 image. My units receive their guide updates via WiRNS.

Has anyone ever seen this before? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

- Ben

[Ben732]

Oh, the HD in this unit is a Maxtor Diamondmax 10 6L200R0. It's 200mb, 7200RPM and a 16mb cache. I remember reading here that people have had problems with the 16mb cache, could that be what's causing my problem?

[Mikeyboy]

I assume the recorder worked normally for months with this drive. If so, it sounds like the drive may be going bad, or it could be some isolated malfunction. You should test the drive with Powermax.exe from maxtor.com. If it's OK, reimage with a new disk image. Don't worry about the unsubscribed channels or lack of commercial skip. Those will correct themselves when it net connects.

[Ben732]

Well, normally I would agree with you and re-image it. However, this is the 2nd time this happened and the last time it happened, i lost all the shos in the replay guide. About 2-3 weeks ago I pulled the drive and reimaged it. At the time, I ran powermax and ran full diags on the drive and they passed.

Yes, it worked fine for months, but I've had random problems wiht the drive since I put it in, like it would do the constant reboots and I'd power it off by pulling the plug for 10 - 15 min. When it would come back up, the channel guide would be blank and I'd have to force a net connect. So, maybe it is a cache problem with the drive.

I think I'm gonna buy a new 200gb HD with 8mb cache and sell my HD to my brother or something. :) I just thought I'd post and see if anyone had seen this before.

[nded]

I've had similar problems with one of my 550X'x for the last month. I'm about ready to send it to Mikeyboy for diagnosis and repair. I've tried multiple hard drives and every one of them will work for a few hours/days, and then it goes into the reboot loop.....

[Ben732]

I think I'm gonna go with this HD...

Western Digital Caviar SE WD2500JB 250GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16822144309

Anyone have any experience with it? I normally stick with Maxtor drives but this one is such a good deal I dunno if I can pass it up!