Black screen lock ups

ultimate_ed · 05-07-2008, 06:57 PM

Hello all. I see from my last log in date that I've been away for a long long time. Guess that's what happens when all is going well (or other gadgets around the house give me more trouble and need attention)

Anyway, I've got a DSR7000 with a 2nd hard drive that has been dutifully serving w/o complaint for the last several years. A few weeks back, we turn on the TV to find a black screen and the box does not respond to either the remote or the front buttons. I unplug the unit for about a day and started looking into what the options were for a used box, figuring that mine had finally given up the ghost.

But, after I plugged it in, it booted up just fine and worked as normal - TV, recodring, etc. However, it has gone and done this same lockup again on me on average of once a week. If I unplug it and replug, all goes back to normal for several days.

The one thing I do notice is that, when the box is frozen, the red "recording" LED is lit. So, where I had previously thought it was the board, now I'm thinking that there's a bad spot on one of the drives and maybe the box is locking when it tries to write to that area. I'll admit I'm a bit stumped at this point.

I've searched through the forum for similar symptoms and found a lot of thread regarding the 6.3e and 6.3f software updates. My machine shows 6.3f and I had no problems last year when the updates rolled out. Also, I have not had any of the other color or pixelization problems I've seen in those threads.

The only thing close is a guy reporting that he had to replace the IDE cable after he did an upgrade. I'm going to replace my cable to see if it helps, though mine has been in service untouched for a good couple of years now.

If anyone has any other ideas, I welcome them.

skipw · 05-07-2008, 08:33 PM

If your screen goes black everytime, it might be hardware related. But here is something else to check before you drive yourself crazy. If your in the Houston market, there is a possibility that you have been hit with the local feed "virus". Not really a virus, but there are problems with the local feed and ver 6.3f.
If your not in Houston area, then maybe your in a new area that is now having this problem. This only happens if the tuner (or one of the tuners if it has 2) is on a local channel. Something is being sent down that either locks up the box and freezes the screen or reboots it. We had this problem pretty bad in early March (Raleigh, NC area). It has since shown up in Conn., NY, and Houston. Maybe a few others. We were all having it freeze up at the same time on the same channel and on multiple receivers. Also, this only happens on the Tivo based DirecTV DVR's running 6.3f. That many people pretty much ruled out hardware. It took 3-4 weeks for DTV to admit there was a problem.

There are a few threads here on the subject and some more on DirecTV Forums.

http://forums.directv.com/pe/action/...ardID=10100106

Good Luck.

Dkerr24 · 05-07-2008, 08:46 PM

Could be one or both of your drives are bad. If so, buy a single large hard drive and ditch the dual drive setup. The unit will run quieter, cooler, and have 1/2 the chance of failure.

ultimate_ed · 05-08-2008, 07:09 PM

That's very interesting, skipw - I am in the Houston market. I don't think I would have ever suspected a location feed based problem. I'll definitely check out that other thread.

As for the hard drives - at least a few years ago, the word I read was that, once you expanded to a second drive, you were pretty much done with upgrades. Is is possible now for me to step back to a single larger drive and transfer my shows?