Since 6.3e, Tivo's freezing - Page 2

descentr · 09-09-2007, 05:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by patrickd88

It's the same problem a lot of us are having. 6.3e IS GARBAGE. Email or call DIRECTV right away!

I sent an email mentioning the problems I started having with my HDVR2 after the 6.3 upgrade and asked if they were acknowledging any issues with this patch. We'll see what they say.

Mike

UPDATE:
Apparently it is just me:

"Thanks for writing. I'm sorry to hear that you are having trouble with your HDVR2 receiver. Based on my research, I found no known issues reported yet regarding our most recent software download. However, we've found simply resetting your receiver will often restore your service..."

On the plus side, it hasn't locked up today (yet).

tbrogan · 09-09-2007, 10:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by verchad

So a questions. Has anyone tried the reset that wipes the hard drive and has it actually worked? I don't want to waste time transfering about 10 hours of stuttering stuff to the dvd-r if it's not going to help the DTivo.

Yes, I have tried the "Clear & Delete Everything". No, it did not fix the problem. I had no program info nor any of my local channels. The unit was worse off than before. DTV ended up twisting my arm and sending me a "free" R-15 DTV+, which is very inferior to me compared to Tivo.

I guess I'm going to send the R-15 back and bite the bullet and buy a replacement Tivo drive.

tigercat74 · 09-10-2007, 07:21 AM

I have had no rebooting or freezing problems on my three TIVOS until last night. I was watching live football when a heavy rainstorm hit. Instead of losing the signal like normal, two of them froze up and the other rebooted. I had to unplug the other two to reboot them. All three rebooted twice more during the heavy rain, but after that there has been no problems. These are stock units except for one that had a new hard drive installed when the old one failed. I have no way of knowing what caused this. I posted this in two threads because I did not know which one it should go in.

SuncoastTivoFan · 09-10-2007, 08:33 PM

Same thing is happening to me. In Tampa bay we get thunderstorms every afternoon. When signal goes out, the DirecTiVo freezes. This has happened on an R10 an Phillips 704. I e-mailed asking what's up.

kalex · 09-11-2007, 03:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tbrogan

Yes, I have tried the "Clear & Delete Everything". No, it did not fix the problem. I had no program info nor any of my local channels. The unit was worse off than before. DTV ended up twisting my arm and sending me a "free" R-15 DTV+, which is very inferior to me compared to Tivo.

I guess I'm going to send the R-15 back and bite the bullet and buy a replacement Tivo drive.

Don't buy a new drive, it's almost certainly the software. There are now at least 5 different threads going here about the same problem. Call DirecTV and tell them about the problem. The first time I called I was told that there were no similar things in their Known Problems list and that it took at least 5 reports for something to be listed. I'm guessing that that means 5 reports that get to the right person who sees a pattern, it may take dozens of calls for that to happen.

The second time I called the rep had never heard of the issue but wanted me to format or get one of their units. When I refused both he offered a free service call. The tech showed up with a new unit, which I didn't even let him take out of the truck. He had no suggestions and hadn't heard of the problem yet. Now he's warned.

One thing you might try [suggested in another thread] is to change the number your receiver is set to call, then force a call. I was having a reboot almost every day, sometimes two. I forced a call Sunday afternoon and as of Tuesday morning it hasn't rebooted yet. I did get a lockup with a black screen on a recording show though, but I was able to clear that by just changing the channels. Someone else said that the forced call fixed their reboots for a few days.

tigercat74 · 09-11-2007, 09:08 AM

One of my TIVOs froze up again this morning during a heavy rainstorm. The other two lost signal but did not freeze. The one that did freeze had to be rebooted. This is the only time mine reboot.

snookuda · 09-11-2007, 03:32 PM

I am having the freezing up problem with the R10 series 2 tivo. The first time i called they said they had no listed problems on this, i dont think they recorded my issue because i was not in front of my tv. I just emailed them again because it happened again yesterday. Waiting for a response now.

I think that if the tivo is recording, even if not be watched and there is a lightning strike or power failure the tivo is locking up. This never happened in the past to me. I have a UPS with my tv and tivo plugged in and never had problems before.

Anyhow, those having there tivo lock up need to make sure DTV records your problem or they wont come up with a fix.

On another note, i have an R10 DTV Tivo 80 GB hard drive original from about 1 year and 9 months ago. If DTV offers to replace the unit with an R15 is this a bad move? If so, why? Would it be benificial to keep my R10 and try to replace the hard drive?

Can i do a ghost on windows of my existing hard drive, or will this not work?

Thanks,
Snookuda

bengalfreak · 09-11-2007, 05:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by snookuda

Can i do a ghost on windows of my existing hard drive, or will this not work?

Thanks,
Snookuda

Nope, won't work. You need to use the Linux equivalent of ghost.

tsg · 09-11-2007, 09:49 PM

Hi all,

I have a HDVR2 and in the last couple days it has been freezing up on me. Mine also make a clicking noise after it freezes. I had been able to restore it by unplugging it.. until this afternoon. Now it won't get past the 65 PERCENT mark in the getting info from the satellite. I have never had my receiver hooked up to a phone jack... so I don't know if I have been getting firmware updates....

Do I have the same problem?

restart88 · 09-11-2007, 11:20 PM

I'm thinking it's time to try a hard reset but I don't remember the step by step.

When you unplug it as it's booting there's a code you can input to trigger a diagnostic mode. I just can't remember the code but it was mentioned recently in one of the forums.

But you could lose use of your Tivo for hours as it trys to self repair, so be forewarned.

metermac · 09-13-2007, 07:28 PM

I've got 2 DirecTivos that now have 6.3e loaded on them after updating back in August. One, a Philips DSR7000 started having issues like it was losing the satellite signal during a storm. Tuesday morning it decided that it wanted to start rebooting after about 10 minutes of tv watching. It usually likes to reboot twice, then lock-up on the "Welcome. Powering up" screen.

I tried a force dial-home to see if that might clear it up, but it hasn't improved. BTW, it's never been hacked, had it since October 2003, and isn't connected to a phone line.

I'm gonna try a "Clear and Delete Everything" the next time it boots up, but I have a feeling that won't resolve the issue or even add a couple of minutes to the time between reboots.

durst · 09-14-2007, 09:21 AM

Just to add to this thread, I have TWO Hughes DVR40's. One in the living room and one in the bed room. They have BOTH frozen up twice AT THE EXACT SAME TIME! (requiring a reboot)

I have never had any problems in the past until just a couple of weeks ago. Thankfully it's not doing it every day like some of you, but it is clearly not a hard drive problem when both of the units freeze up at the same time. I am not moving away from Tivo or going to a stand alone, so a fix is necessary. Any word on this yet?

I refuse to move away from Tivo Boxes as well as stand alones

metermac · 09-14-2007, 10:18 AM

To follow-up to my post from last night, my Clear and Delete Everything was still running this morning (12 hours

). I've never seen one take that long so I pulled the plug on it. It booted back up to the Clear and Delete Everything in progress screen, so I guess I'll see what it's up to later after work.

snookuda · 09-14-2007, 03:45 PM

I really feel like this is power interuption problem along with the 6.3e upgrade. I have a ups hooked up to the tv and tivo and have never had any freezing problems in the past. But since the 6.3e upgrade, i believe any time there is a power outage (lightning) that the tivo is freezing up, but this never used to happen.
I live in south florida and have ALOT of lightning strikes (power issues) so i think its occurring more often.

verchad · 09-14-2007, 03:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by metermac

To follow-up to my post from last night, my Clear and Delete Everything was still running this morning (12 hours

). I've never seen one take that long so I pulled the plug on it. It booted back up to the Clear and Delete Everything in progress screen, so I guess I'll see what it's up to later after work.

Well I held out, finally transferred all tivoed stuff to dvd recorder. I started the clear and deletealmost an hour and a half ago, still showing the clearing and deleting message, great. Hopefully the next time I call DTV I don't have to tell them yes I tried EVERYTHING you have suggested and now it's froze up.

metermac · 09-14-2007, 07:30 PM

My Clear and Delete Everything was still running when I got home tonight, so that's another 10 hours. At this point, I'm thinking about buying InstantCake and putting in a new hard drive.

Very disappointing, but my other DirecTivo is working just fine at this point.

chuckg · 09-14-2007, 08:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by snookuda

I really feel like this is power interuption problem along with the 6.3e upgrade. I have a ups hooked up to the tv and tivo and have never had any freezing problems in the past. But since the 6.3e upgrade, i believe any time there is a power outage (lightning) that the tivo is freezing up, but this never used to happen.
I live in south florida and have ALOT of lightning strikes (power issues) so i think its occurring more often.

I live in Berkeley, CA and if we have more than one lightening storm a year it is a bad year. Both of my DTivos have rebooted several times since the 6.3e update.

verchad · 09-15-2007, 09:14 AM

My Directivo has now been stuck on the clearing and deleting screen for over 18 hours.

Thanks to jeramykeith I used the number he posted - 877-575-4332 to call DTV, got through in one ring.

She transferred me to a tech service person, she checked for current issues in their system, she said nothing under issues about the directv tivo freeezing/software update problems, then put me on hold to talk to a supervisor.

She asked if I could switch the sat in cables and told her the wiring was not that easy to get to in my setup. Then told me unplug the unit for 20 seconds and replug it in, did that, didn't work.

They said I could contact TIVO and see if they know of the problem and are doing anything to fix it.

In the end, the best they offered was a free replacement sd dvr (non tivo

) plus shipping or upgrade to HD-DVR for $299-$100 credit=$199 plus shipping. The HD-DVR credit offer came only after she asked how long I had been a customer, almost 9.5 years, I mentioned the Dish Network offer for free HD-DVR for new subscribers (response was they must be doing that because DTV is ready to roll out more HD stuff in October), and that I wasn't crazy about paying $300 for something I was just leasing (response was that you can still buy the HD_DVR but the cost was substantially more). Said I wasn't sure what do. Said the DVR credit would be noted on my account if I wanted to call back within 30 days (I think it was 30).

Decisions, decisions, what to do?

metermac · 09-15-2007, 01:01 PM

I went ahead and used an old IBM 40 gig drive and put a 6.2a image on it and what would you know, its been working for a good 16 hours now with no reboots. I haven't dialed in yet to see if 6.3e would work or not. At this point, I'm just happy that I have a working Tivo again. Although that old IBM drive is much louder than the Maxtor 40 gig I pulled out.

Athenian · 09-15-2007, 01:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TivoJD

Has anyone else run into the problem of their Tivo freezing since they have gotten the 6.3e update?

Yes, I'm seeing similar problems on 2 different units. I don't have to reboot/reset to clear it though, just changing the channel will set things right -- which of course clears the buffer.

I thought at first that it was a problem with one of the tuners but after it started happening on the second machine I now think it's more likely a software problem.

richa65 · 09-15-2007, 03:32 PM

I have had 2 DirecTivos for 5 years. Never had a single problem with either of them except for the rebooting problem created by DTV last fall. About a week ago one of the two froze up with a message "Could not get satellite info" or something to that effect. It then froze up again last night on a black screen. I pulled the power, booted, and tried playing a recording and it froze again within 1 minute.

The other unit has been fine to this point, they both have 6.3e. DTV has shown a clear pattern here in that since they have decided to abandon the Tivo platform, their lab testing prior to a software release has gone to hell. When you have a few million units in the field, you better do some serious regression testing, DTV. But you knew that, didn't you? You just don't care any longer.

I won't bother calling their CSR's, because if they tell me one more time that I need to do a hard reset and lose all of my shows and programming information, I think it might just push me over the edge. You've told me that at least 10 times in the past (I have an HR20, btw) and that has not been the proper solution any of those 10 times. How do I know? Because I didn't do it, you released new software, and the problems magically resolved. Get your ass in gear on resolving this one.

tallgntlmn · 09-16-2007, 11:16 AM

I have an unhacked Hughes SD-DVR40 (6.3e-01-2-151) and it is doing about what everyone here is describing. I question whether it could be the HDD but I am beginning to doubt that. I've had it since 12/03 and it's been on the whole time with the exception of a few days here and there for moving.

What seems to happen for me is when I am watching something on the 30 minute delay, when I go to skip the commercials, it wants to freeze or not FF. I hit play, then FF, then play, then FF and it finally goes forward. Sitting here today I am watching ESPN and it's probably 15 minutes behind when it just freezes. Signals are in the 97-99 range on both tuners. I get audio dropouts and random freezes. Another thing that happens when on the 30 minute delay is I hit FF to go past the commercials and it might skip 15 minutes ahead forcing me to figure out where I was by going back and trying to get to where I was. This stuff is annoying as all get out.

I would think, given the age of the HDD that it could be something to do with it, but with all the issues shown here, I thought I'd throw my DirecTiVo into the mix as being a PITA lately. If I recall correctly, this issue cropped up some time back around the end of June or early July but it has gotten worse over the last month.

Question though...if I report it to D* and they offer a new unit, would the HD unit work with the ancient 18" dual-LNB that points at 110 or would I need the 5LNB dish? I don't have HDTV but would love to have the dolby-digital on everything. Is the audio also good on the HD channels, yeah I know, that's a little off topic.

innocentfreak · 09-16-2007, 08:35 PM

I was at my friend's house tonight and one of his units finally wouldn't recover after freezing so he is replacing that hard drive. His other unit froze up four times while we were watching it and it was during a storm. When I came home I found my unit frozen which it must have gone out during the storm also, yet my other unit is working fine.

goony · 09-17-2007, 03:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bengalfreak

Nope, won't work. You need to use the Linux equivalent of ghost.

Search in this forum for dd_rescue, which is a utility on many of the utility and tools discs. It will do a block-for-block clone from one drive to another, regardless of the operating system on the drive.

DouglasPHill · 09-17-2007, 07:30 AM

Mine started freezing since the 6.3e update. I never had any problems until now.

durst · 09-17-2007, 03:38 PM

AGAIN, to those that think it is lightning, or a bad hard drive, maybe for you...but not for me.

BOTH of my DVR40's froze at the exact same time (in different rooms) and HAD to be rebooted. Both times, we didn't have a cloud in the sky and the power never went out. Since it was BOTH of my DVR40's I eliminated the hard drive, and concluded it was something to do with the dish. However, that wouldn't cause the Tivo's to freeze, it would just give a bad signal. So that is why I came here. After reading this post I am convinced it has to be something with the latest update. It hasn't froze in about a week, but that doesn't mean it's gone.

verchad · 09-17-2007, 06:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by descentr

I sent an email mentioning the problems I started having with my HDVR2 after the 6.3 upgrade and asked if they were acknowledging any issues with this patch. We'll see what they say.
Mike
UPDATE:
Apparently it is just me:
"Thanks for writing. I'm sorry to hear that you are having trouble with your HDVR2 receiver. Based on my research, I found no known issues reported yet regarding our most recent software download. However, we've found simply resetting your receiver will often restore your service..."
On the plus side, it hasn't locked up today (yet).

I love how DTV has no knowledge of this. I have called numerous times and every time they say the same thing, we don't know about that. Then when thay ask all the other crap, I tell them, "worked fine until the latest update, that's when things went haywire."

In the support forums there are even some mentions of the issues, so they might not monitor them as much as you'd think they might.

mumfinn · 09-17-2007, 09:26 PM

It has to be software! I have an HDVR2 (250GB), & an SD-DVR40 (300GB), both with single hard drive up-grades. My parents up the street in separate house with separate system have an HDVR2 with single 160GB hard drive up-grade. NO HACKED UNITS. All drives were done first 3 months of 2007. ALL 3 UNITS FROZE LAST NIGHT AT ABOUT 7:30PM EST. Had to reboot all 3. Doesn't sound like HD problem or "We're not aware of that!"

rwilliams · 09-18-2007, 02:52 AM

**Sorry, this is a repost from a much OLDER thread (before I found THIS one)...

I have a Philips 704 and it's the same as you all are complaining about. Random reboots and as of last Saturday (the 8th) the unit just locks up at the WELCOME screen. **THIS IS AN UMMODIFIED UNIT**

Not certain what the software rev was at the time, but it WAS connected to the phone line.

It REALLY p!55es me off that everything was working just fine, DTV sends an update, and WHACK! I'm out $$$ No doubt about it, this is going to cost me one way or another. Either I'm going to have to be forced into an inferior DVR (which I refuse to do) and be stuck in a contract for 2 years, or I'm going to make the move to the competition. On Demand Cable with HD is looking real good (not really) about right now...

I think we should all band together and contact our local news media Problem Solvers (Target 5 investigation here in Chicago) and report this - I bet there are thousands more users just like us, with un-modded DTivos who think their hard drives just crashed and opted to go along with the CSRs suggestion and get a new box from DirecTV - one that doesn't have Tivo.

Think about it. I don't care what anyone says about DTV playing nicey-nice with Tivo now that their disputes are "Settled" - drive enough users away from the Tivo brand and guess what? Tivo goes bye-bye. They've been having a rough go at it as it is. Then for THIS to happen - it's catastrophic!

I'm not a litigious natured person by any means (I don't even think I spelled that correctly), but this has CLASS ACTION written all over it!

I'm so angry over this...

restart88 · 09-18-2007, 06:16 AM

Of course you could always get a basic D* receiver and a SA Tivo.

I have a R10 but don't like that it can't be easily modified to more like the SAs. I think mom's gonna wind up with it because it will be all I can do to teach her basic Tivo-ing on that. She had a UTV for years and refused to record/ play anything.

I, OTOH, am searching the thrifts for a good D* box with serial port on the cheap. Yea, it's not gonna be as good as DTivo but then I don't have to worry about underground upgrades.

And true it's not dual tuner, but then since most shows repeat season pass takes care of that.