# 3.63: Don't do a Check Switch!



## Flasshe (Aug 17, 2004)

Aaaargh. Since 3.63, I 'd been having some minor audio & video dropouts on my local satellite HD channels. So I went into Point Dish and noticed, like others have, that the signal strength on most of the 129 transponders was lower than it used to be (below 60). The other satellites looked normal. So, silly me, I decided to do a Check Switch. Bad move! Now it doesn't work. Tuner 2 doesn't respond at all. Tuner 1 did the "of 4" tests the first time (failed) and then only the "of 38" tests the second time and third times. Now I've only got satellite 119 on one tuner. I called Dish support and they had me unplug the satellite inputs, wait a while, plug them back in, and do the Check Switch again. Same thing. (Weather here is a little overcast but okay.) They are going to send out a technician on Sunday. I hope I don't miss the Sunday night Broncos game.

The phone tech said it was a mistake to do the Check Switch and that if it brings back any invalid info, it can mess up the receiver. First I'd heard of it. Never had any problems with it before.

Has this happened to anyone else? Any suggestions? Having a dead 622 for the weekend is no fun.

Thanks.


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## pdxsam (Jun 20, 2004)

Did they have you power cycle the unit before you removed the satellite inputs?
I'd power it down and remove the cables. Power it up and let it check switch. Then power off plug the cables back in and try again. 

If you didn't power down the registers might not get cleared.


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## Flasshe (Aug 17, 2004)

They did not have me do any powering off or hard/soft resets. I took your suggestion and tried it. Thank you, thank you, thank you, pdxsam - you are a life-saver. It took a few tries and I had to do a full power cord reset rather than just powering off, but that worked.

No more Check Switches for me...


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## psumattDE (Mar 29, 2006)

I noticed the same thing here - hard-reboot did the trick.


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## Flasshe (Aug 17, 2004)

The key for me was doing the Check Switch with the cables unplugged after the hard reset, and then doing the hard reset again followed by the Check Switch with the cables plugged in. A hard reset alone didn't fix it.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Ocassionally, if you're connected to a DPP44 switch, you will need to reboot the switch as well by unplugging the power inserter, and then plugging it back in. Bad checkswitches about half of the time are caused by the switch getting fubar'd.


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## TBoneit (Jul 27, 2006)

I'll go with teh reboot the switch too, I've had to do that with a Sw64 in the past and that fixed everything. I guess as with anything electronic something can get corrupted in the logic that makes it work.


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## CricTic (Mar 17, 2006)

I've had this issue a couple of times, and usually what fixes it is unplug a sat input cable, check switch, replug the cable, check switch. I haven't had to do a hard reset yet.


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## Flasshe (Aug 17, 2004)

I do have a DPP44 and I tried cycling the power inserter at one point, but that didn't help.

I'm beginning to think that with this kind of problem, if you eventually try enough different stuff, something is bound to work. Or maybe the accumulated effects of all the different methods makes the 622 finally shout "Okay I Give - I'll start working again now!"

I think it's strange that the phone tech did have me disconnect the cables temporarily, but didn't have me do the Check Switch while they were unplugged.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

I believe if you do a check switch withough the 622 hooked up to the cables, the switch matrix in the 622 will clear itself. I have in the past had a switch or two act stubborn and had to do the. 

1) Disconnect Switch.
2) Do a check switch to clear it out.
3) Power off 622. (Unplug)
4) Power off switch. 
5) Reconnect.
6) Power switch back on
7) POwer 622 back on 
8) Do check switch again. 

At least that is what I think I have done, but it has been ages. Sounds like others have had success doing the same thing when strangeness appears.


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## lujan (Feb 10, 2004)

I don't know if this has been reported or that it's related to the issue on this thread, but if you are tuned to one of the digital locals on satellite and then do a "Menu", 6, 1, 1 to check the signal strength. Then cancel out of that, the channel you were previously tuned to will have no audio or video. The only thing I can do is tune to another station and then back and it will be fine. Anyone else notice this? This is definitely repeatable.


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## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

Ron,

One time months ago I had to perform a procedure similar to the one you describe at the direction of Advanced Tech. Support:

1) Power off the 622
2) unplug the power inserter.
3) disconnect the cable from the power inserter at the, "to switch" end.
4) power on the 622 and run a check switch (It will do the legacy matrix which takes a long time)
5) power off the 622 when the check switch is complete
6) at the DPP44 disconnect all the satellite LNB connections
7) reconnect the cable from the switch end of the inserter 
8) reconnect the A/C to power inserter 
9) power on the 622 and run a check switch (It will read and clear the DPP44 satellite matrix)
10) power off the 622 when the check switch is complete
11) power off the power inserter
12) reconnect the satellite LNB cables to the DPP44
13) reconnect the A/C to the power inserter
14) power on the 622 and run a check switch

this should totally clear and correct any problems.

John



Ron Barry said:


> I believe if you do a check switch withough the 622 hooked up to the cables, the switch matrix in the 622 will clear itself. I have in the past had a switch or two act stubborn and had to do the.
> 
> 1) Disconnect Switch.
> 2) Do a check switch to clear it out.
> ...


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## Flasshe (Aug 17, 2004)

lujan: I tried to recreate your problem and I couldn't. I do not lose the audio or video on the tuned station when I cancel out of Point Dish.

boylehome: I would have a lot of trouble disconnecting/reconnecting the LNB connections at my DPP444, as the switch is up high and very hard to get to...

BTW, my signal strength on 129 is curiously back up to normal again, even though the weather situation is pretty much the same as last night (more overcast, if anything).


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## lujan (Feb 10, 2004)

Flasshe said:


> lujan: I tried to recreate your problem and I couldn't. I do not lose the audio or video on the tuned station when I cancel out of Point Dish.
> 
> boylehome: I would have a lot of trouble disconnecting/reconnecting the LNB connections at my DPP444, as the switch is up high and very hard to get to...
> 
> BTW, my signal strength on 129 is curiously back up to normal again, even though the weather situation is pretty much the same as last night (more overcast, if anything).


Were you tuned to one of the digital (HD) local satellite stations first? If so, then it is only my 622.


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## dude2 (May 28, 2006)

What is the power inserter. All I have to the antenna is the rg6 cable to the splitter and then too the two inputs to the 622. Is the splitter the power inserter.


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## Flasshe (Aug 17, 2004)

lujan said:


> Were you tuned to one of the digital (HD) local satellite stations first? If so, then it is only my 622.


Yes, I was tuned to one of the Denver local HD satellite channels (6330).


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## Flasshe (Aug 17, 2004)

dude2 said:


> What is the power inserter. All I have to the antenna is the rg6 cable to the splitter and then too the two inputs to the 622. Is the splitter the power inserter.


The power inserter is a small box that is inline on the cable that goes between the receiver (before the splitter) and the DPP44 switch. It is powered by a large brick plugged into a wall outlet. It is used to send power to the DPP444 switch through the coax cable. It's not the splitter. If you don't have a DPP44 switch, you probably don't have one.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

boylehome said:


> Ron,
> 
> One time months ago I had to perform a procedure similar to the one you describe at the direction of Advanced Tech. Support:
> 
> ...


THanks John.... I am sure there was more steps I forgot. Been a while since I did it.


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## clarkbaker (Sep 23, 2006)

Na.. you can checkswitch til the cows come home.. your dish just got misaligned.. which is unfortunete.. but common. No worries. You will be up and running stronger than ever. I bought a signal detector on EBAY that helps me get realigned. I also used to have a second dish that I could swing around for channels on 61.5 and 148. Now.. my HD locals are flowing over 110 or 119 so no more CBS from 61.5 or 148 and the second dish will stay up when they decide to turn on some other crazy sat. with cool channels!! Pointing at 61.5 is nice.. I get East Coast programming on the West Coast. Means I can watch CSI at 6pm rather than 9pm on the West Coast feed.

Likely the cloudy contributed.. and when you checkswitched it just memorized the new 'issue'. Likely.. if you waited for a sunny day you would be all good.. but you might as welll tune that puppy for some 100+ signal.

clarkbaker



Flasshe said:


> Aaaargh. Since 3.63, I 'd been having some minor audio & video dropouts on my local satellite HD channels. So I went into Point Dish and noticed, like others have, that the signal strength on most of the 129 transponders was lower than it used to be (below 60). The other satellites looked normal. So, silly me, I decided to do a Check Switch. Bad move! Now it doesn't work. Tuner 2 doesn't respond at all. Tuner 1 did the "of 4" tests the first time (failed) and then only the "of 38" tests the second time and third times. Now I've only got satellite 119 on one tuner. I called Dish support and they had me unplug the satellite inputs, wait a while, plug them back in, and do the Check Switch again. Same thing. (Weather here is a little overcast but okay.) They are going to send out a technician on Sunday. I hope I don't miss the Sunday night Broncos game.
> 
> The phone tech said it was a mistake to do the Check Switch and that if it brings back any invalid info, it can mess up the receiver. First I'd heard of it. Never had any problems with it before.
> 
> ...


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## Flasshe (Aug 17, 2004)

clarkbaker said:


> Na.. you can checkswitch til the cows come home.. your dish just got misaligned.. which is unfortunete.. but common.


Ah... no, my dish did not get misaligned. The signal strength is back up to where it was before, and there was no realignment of the Dish done. (It's on top of my roof and very hard to get to, even with a ladder, so I'm glad that wasn't the problem.) See the rest of the thread for the actual problem and solution.


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## Mike D-CO5 (Mar 12, 2003)

Funny I did a switch check without the sat cables connected just to clear out the matrix . I then did a power cord reboot -leaving the receiver unplugged for a minute then plugging it back in. I ran another switch check with the sat coaxes plugged in and now I am not suffering from any more audio drop outs/video freezes/spontaneous reboots. I watched tv all day long due to rainey weather and I didn't suffer from any of the previous days problems. Maybe everyone should do what I did to see if it fixes their problems.


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## David K (Nov 27, 2004)

I'm suffering from the same problem. Last night while watching TV the 622 told me I needed to do a check switch, I did and it would only find the 110 on Sat input 2.

I tried unplugging the 622, unplugging the sat input cables, powering back up, doing a check switch, powering back down, unplugging the 622, plugging back in the sat input cables, powering back up, doing another check switch as suggested above. It didn't work, same thing only the 110 on sat input 2. Could my switch have actually "really" went bad?


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## Flasshe (Aug 17, 2004)

David K said:


> I'm suffering from the same problem. Last night while watching TV the 622 told me I needed to do a check switch, I did and it would only find the 110 on Sat input 2.
> 
> I tried unplugging the 622, unplugging the sat input cables, powering back up, doing a check switch, powering back down, unplugging the 622, plugging back in the sat input cables, powering back up, doing another check switch as suggested above. It didn't work, same thing only the 110 on sat input 2. Could my switch have actually "really" went bad?


That doesn't sound like what happened to me, since I never got any message saying I needed to do a Check Switch - it was just something I undertook on my own because I was concerned with the signal strength loss on 129 after the update. You may really have a bad switch or LNB or something.


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## tommy1956 (Sep 25, 2006)

David K said:


> I'm suffering from the same problem. Last night while watching TV the 622 told me I needed to do a check switch, I did and it would only find the 110 on Sat input 2.
> 
> I tried unplugging the 622, unplugging the sat input cables, powering back up, doing a check switch, powering back down, unplugging the 622, plugging back in the sat input cables, powering back up, doing another check switch as suggested above. It didn't work, same thing only the 110 on sat input 2. Could my switch have actually "really" went bad?


Hey David did you get this problem resolved? I have the same issue.
Tommy


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## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

tommy1956 said:


> Hey David did you get this problem resolved? I have the same issue.
> Tommy


If your receiver is currently in the Single Mode, when the receiver restarts after booting, cancel out of the Check Switch window and put the 622 in dual mode by pressing the front panel button, then do the Check Switch. Do you have a DPP44?


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## tommy1956 (Sep 25, 2006)

boylehome said:


> If your receiver is currently in the Single Mode, when the receiver restarts after booting, cancel out of the Check Switch window and put the 622 in dual mode by pressing the front panel button, then do the Check Switch. Do you have a DPP44?


No i dont have a DPP44,, I will try switching to dual.


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## David K (Nov 27, 2004)

tommy1956 said:


> Hey David did you get this problem resolved? I have the same issue.
> Tommy


Nope, still got the problem. I did try switching to dual and doing a check switch, it didn't work either. Maybe my switch did go out. Just seems ironic that my switch would go bad right around the time so many others are discovering the same problem. I guess I've seen stranger things happen. We'll find out Sunday when the tech gets here. If changing the switch doesn't work, I can only imagine what scenario he will come up with. I'll post the results!!


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## tommy1956 (Sep 25, 2006)

Mine still not working dish tech is here now. He swapped LNBs at dish.
menu 611 sat 129 has no signal. The tech swears 129 is tuned in 100% at
the dish with test equipment. He is stumped... any ideas out there?


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## David K (Nov 27, 2004)

My tech swapped the switch and LNB's and it fixed the problem. Still have the guide data issue though. I turned the antenna to Cinci and got the data, but I'm going to watch this site closely to see if they get the problem fixed eventually so I can turn it back around. Cinci pulls in to weak.


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## deer_slayer01 (Oct 8, 2006)

I've got the DPP44 and every time when I get home from work and turn on the dish I have to run check switch to pick up 110. Is is possible that the switch is bad?


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## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

deer_slayer01 said:


> I've got the DPP44 and every time when I get home from work and turn on the dish I have to run check switch to pick up 110. Is is possible that the switch is bad?


If not a bad cable/connector from the LNB to the DPP44 it is bad LNB or bad DPP44. I just had a DPP44 replaced. Port 4 for the LNB inputs went bad. I discovered this by swapping other LNB's to Port 4. The other LNB's didn't work on that port.


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## odbrv (May 12, 2006)

One of my 622s stopped being able to change channels. My other 3 receivers worked fine. The CSR had me do a soft and hard reboot with no improvement.The CSR then had me do a check swith on the bad 622. This resulted in a switch error message and loss of use of the 622. I could not even get to my DVR recordings. I then searched this site. I disconnected my tuner inputs and did a check switch. I then did a soft reboot. I then reconnected the tuner inputs and redid the check switch. Everything is working again. I will say that the check switch I did with the CSR was during an overcast sky. By the time I found this thread and redid the check switch , it got sunny. So I can not say which was the real problem solver. I am just thankful that I could try something without having to pay for a service call.


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## ebaltz (Nov 23, 2004)

David K said:


> I'm suffering from the same problem. Last night while watching TV the 622 told me I needed to do a check switch, I did and it would only find the 110 on Sat input 2.
> 
> I tried unplugging the 622, unplugging the sat input cables, powering back up, doing a check switch, powering back down, unplugging the 622, plugging back in the sat input cables, powering back up, doing another check switch as suggested above. It didn't work, same thing only the 110 on sat input 2. Could my switch have actually "really" went bad?


This sounds pretty much like what happened to me. What was the final resolution? A new switch? Seems like this might be happening more often for some reason.


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## BillJ (May 5, 2005)

I've had the Check Switch message pop up twice since 3.65 downloaded. Once I know I was changing channels. The second time a scheduled recording was just starting. I just selected Cancel and everything worked fine again. From what I've read here, I'm glad I didn't try to do the Check Switch. Hope E* gets this one fixed quickly before I accidentally kill my 622.


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## jcrobso (Mar 30, 2005)

Just to add: if you have more than one receiver it may be necessary to unplug al of them to get a complete hard boot of the switch. John


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## ebaltz (Nov 23, 2004)

jcrobso said:


> Just to add: if you have more than one receiver it may be necessary to unplug al of them to get a complete hard boot of the switch. John


Yeah I tried all of that. If a switch failed wouldn't it fail completely? i.e. not work at all.

I get all three sats on input 1 and only 119 on the second. So Everything works fine unless I try to have one tuner on a 110 channel and the other on anything other than 119. If I switch the input cables on the back then tuner 2 works and tuner 1 only gets 119. So its apparently not the 622 or at least the connections on the back. Something happening in the switch not passing the other two sat signals. And obviously the sat is pulling in all three signals fine since they show up on tuner 1.


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## ebaltz (Nov 23, 2004)

Just so anyone who reads this thread knows, there is a fix for this problem. Contact me if you need it. Everything is working fine for me now and I didn't have to have Joe Buttcrack come out and adjust my disgronificator.


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## David McDaniel (Jan 3, 2005)

Hi, 
I had to replace a non-working 622. My picture had been great with the failed unit. It is poor with the new 622 installed (over the phone installation)! Panic. I checked the signal strength and for 110 it's around 80 but for 119 it's 59 on both tuner 1 and 2. As I recall my signal strengths had been around 90 on both before. Are these levels acceptable or might they be responsible for my poor picture quality (resolution)? Thanks.
David:


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## ebaltz (Nov 23, 2004)

David McDaniel said:


> Hi,
> I had to replace a non-working 622. My picture had been great with the failed unit. It is poor with the new 622 installed (over the phone installation)! Panic. I checked the signal strength and for 110 it's around 80 but for 119 it's 59 on both tuner 1 and 2. As I recall my signal strengths had been around 90 on both before. Are these levels acceptable or might they be responsible for my poor picture quality (resolution)? Thanks.
> David:


Its all or nothing with resolution. Either the picture comes through or it will be broken and probably drop out. Is that what you are getting?

More likely, you have forgotton to set the output to 1080i or 720p from the default that the box is set to, which is I think 480i.


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## ebaltz (Nov 23, 2004)

ebaltz said:


> Its all or nothing with resolution. Either the picture comes through or it will be broken and probably drop out. Is that what you are getting?
> 
> More likely, you have forgotton to set the output to 1080i or 720p from the default that the box is set to, which is I think 480i.


Or not, it worked for a few days. Same problem returned and now the fix doesn't work any more so I am back to single tuner working. Which means big trouble for recordings that go to tuner 2. I wish you could tell it which tuner to use. Isn't there a way to do that. I end up having to set multip tuners to try to get it to force the show I want to record off of tuner 1.


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## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

ebaltz said:


> Or not, it worked for a few days. Same problem returned and now the fix doesn't work any more so I am back to single tuner working. Which means big trouble for recordings that go to tuner 2. I wish you could tell it which tuner to use. Isn't there a way to do that. I end up having to set multip tuners to try to get it to force the show I want to record off of tuner 1.


I received your PM and shot one back at you. It sounds like it is time for a replacement.


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## BCGreg (Aug 3, 2006)

jcrobso said:


> Just to add: if you have more than one receiver it may be necessary to unplug al of them to get a complete hard boot of the switch. John


This was the key for me. I could get 119 channels on my ViP211 but no HD. I didn't want to mess with the 622 because it was working but decided to try it on Friday since a tech was supposed to stop by Saturday. Was able to cancel the service call. I wonder why E* doesn't have its CSRs do the unconnected "Check Switch" followed by a connected one--too confusing? They never had me unconnect the dish input.


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## ebaltz (Nov 23, 2004)

Dish came out. They replaced my wall plater, which apparently had older cable jacks that only carry 1GIG wahtever and not much current, so they may have fried after time. Everything is working fine now.


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