[rob.williams]

Hi all,

I just bought a DSR704 off of Craigslist. It was purported to be working. It is unmodified.

I activated it with DirecTV, and they didn't mention any issues with the access card.

When I plugged in the DVR the first time, it powered up to "Almost there. Just a few minutes more...", and made a fairly long phone call. It never got past this screen, however. It was after this first power up that I called DTV and activated the box.

I unplugged it a few times, tried resetting it from the website, and it remains on this screen. I called DTV tech support, and they had me swap cables and reset it again. Same results.

They said that being stuck on this screen was a symptom of not getting a satellite signal. Does that make sense? Reading some other posts indicate that satellite detection is a bit further down the line. My old GXCEB0T worked fine on these cables until the motherboard gave out .

I unplugged both cables, and powered on the DVR. I tried to hit the DirecTV button to bypass any satellite detection, but I never got past the "Almost there..." screen.

Any suggestions? Is the box dead?

Thanks,
Rob

 

[rminsk]

"Almost there..." is before the satellite information download. It sounds like the hard drive may be bad...

 

[rob.williams]

That was the question I forgot to ask - Given this symptom, does it make sense to put a new upgrade hard drive in?

If this sounds like a drive problem, I'll put in a new drive tomorrow (instantcake).

Rob

 

[rob.williams]

Just for completeness, it was a dying hard drive. I replaced it and everything works great.

Maxtor's test software said that the old drive was on its last legs.

Rob