Please help with DVR40 / R15

[Nutter]

I tried this question in the DTivo forum and got nothing, so I thought I'd try it here.

Recently one of my DTivo's started having a problem. Its a Hughes DRV40 unit that I added a 60GB drive to a long time ago. When watching LiveTV, recorded shows or even just in the animated menu it will play fine for 10 - 15 sec then pause/freeze for 2-3 sec then play again. When I listen to the unit I can hear a high pitched whine. Now I called DTV and got them to send me out a new DVR for $20 shipping. Well when it showed up it is an R15 unit. So I thought I'd try it out. Lets just say it does not work for me and leave it there, so Im sending the R15 back to DTV and now I have as I see it 2 choices that I need help with.

1. Repair the DVR40 by replaceing the bad drive/drives (if that is the real problem). I have a new 100GB drive spare to hand but is there an easy way to identify the bad drive ?

2. Give up on the DVR40 and buy an R10 off ebay ?

thanks in advance for your feedback.


John

[eboydog]

Try repairing the Hughs DVR40 and personally If it was me, I would try to get DTV to take back their R15.

Since you indicated that you had a 100 Gb, spend the 19.95 at Ptvupgrades for the 6.2 Instantcake image and try that route (sounds like you know enough on the technical side since you upgraded it once already), as far as determining if the drive is bad or not, everything you indicated would sound like it's a drive failing esp with the noise you describe as the only thing that would make such a noise is either the fan or the hard drive AND if it's the fan that's not working, that's an easy fix with the fine folks over at WeaKnees. Don't take the drive out and hook it up to a Windows PC to try to diagnose it as if you running XP, you will mess up the drive when Windows writes it's little signature to it (Which this can be fixed but only make matter more complicated).

If enough people would return their R15's back to DTV, perhaps they would wake up!

Your older DVR40 is much better than the newer R15, try to stay with the Tivo as possible!