# System Failure following SW Update?



## Dave Marsh (Sep 16, 2004)

Up until yesterday, my 921 has been performing normally (i.e., with the usual bugs). However, last evening when I went to turn on my unit (wake from sleep by pressing the power button) the green power light wouldn't come on. I noted that the red record button was on, as I expected it to be since I nightly record the news to watch and wanted to restart the program to watch as we had dinner. After a few simple presses of the power button with no results, I held the power button down for several seconds and it appeared to perform a soft reset. The Dish HD circle logo appeared on screen for awhile, then the screen went black. After another minute or so, the power light came on with the SD amber light and the red record light, but no image appeared on screen. I tried changing TV inputs to a standard RCA plug input (since SD is for standard RCA inputs and I normally view with the DVI connection), but couldn't find a video signal on any of my TV's inputs. I then tried a hard reset (pulled the plug for a minute), and the HD logo reappeared on my RCA input, the power light came on, the red-blue-amber lights cycled about a dozen times, then the power and red lights remained on solid, but this time I had a typical computer screen image on my RCA input (white text on black screen) that said System Failure.

I called Dish Technical Support, and they said my unit would have to be replaced. They said I'd get a call back in the next 48 hours to arrange the swap-out.

Since my DVR was working properly the night before, I can only conclude that following the automatic nightly reboot, the unit attempted to download a new system software update that failed.

Has anyone else experienced this issue, or was I just lucky?


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

Assuming you already had L188 loaded from like a week ago, there's nothing since then.

You might try to do some more power plug reboots - you might get lucky.


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## lujan (Feb 10, 2004)

Something similar just happened to me. I was watching a DVR recorded event and I stopped it just before the end so it's not that problem. I then erased the event and after it erased, I did not get a picture on the screen at all. I could not get anything with either the yellow light or the blue light. I tried several other stations by keying in the channel directly but there was no sound or picture. I then did a power plug reboot and at first it did not show any picture or sound either. I was already on the phone with technical support when all of a sudden the yellow light came on so I switched it over to HD (the blue light) and all is well for now. Who knows what may have caused this?


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## Dave Marsh (Sep 16, 2004)

After waiting six days for a call-back, Dish Network called this morning and agreed to UPS me a replacement 921. It remains unclear whether the software update contributed to the System Failure on the hard drive, but I'm glad they're finally doing something. It took three separate calls over six days for me to finally get someone in the Tech unit to get back to me. Apparently the customer service folks aren't permitted to make a decision about replacing a defective/failed 921. You have to call them, explain the problem, they email a supervisor who makes a decision whether to forward the issue to the tech unit, who then calls the customer back to again ask them to explain what happened and decide how to proceed.


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## Dave Marsh (Sep 16, 2004)

To its credit, after nearly six days of trying to get the tech group to call me back, after they did, they overnighted the replacement 921. So, I'll be setting it up this afternoon.


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## bytre (Sep 10, 2003)

I actually waited 10 days to get a tech group call back. It was absurd. I did finally get it though.


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