# Reboot work-around Series 2



## chuckg (Sep 15, 2007)

I have collected daily data regarding reboots on one of my Samsung S4040Rs with 6.3e on a Seagate DB35 160 GB drive. Phone line connected. Almost always the channels were CNN and MSNBC as they are viewed, superficially, from lunch till 6 pm PST weekdays.

The unit *will only reboot once each day* after being on Standby overnight.
If it is put on Standby for several hours after the first reboot it won't reboot if turned on again. Something happens overnight.

*When will it reboot?*
When I put the receiver on Standby for the night there is an active or channel-being-viewed and the alternate or non-displayed channel (= NDC). If the Live Buffer (= LB) of NDC is less than 30 minutes then the reboot the following day will occur after turn-on, 30 minutes plus whatever time is in NDC LB. For example I have many days where both LBs were set to 0:00 in the evening and reboot the following day *always* occured at 30 minutes and generally about 50 seconds after turn-on.

When the LBs were set to 15 minutes the reboot occured at 45 minutes and change. Two incidents.

It doesn't matter how much time is in the LB of the displayed channel when the unit is put on Standby. Sat 1 and Sat 2 don't matter. Only NDC LB.

Here are three time-to-reboot when NDC LB = 30 minutes which means the buffer may have been active for an indeterminate period of time before the last 30 minutes. This *may* explain a *random* reboot well into a viewing period.

Time on Time to reboot
05:00:00 pm 1:29:34
02:00:00 pm 1:08:18
11:00:00 am 1:11:55

Tonight I am going to run the NDC exactly one hour before going to Standby so I will know exactly how long it was on that channel.

I disconnected the AC line after putting the unit on Standby with 30 minute DLBs. When I plugged it in the following day it rebooted to the point where most of the colored dots were displayed 4 minutes 30 seconds of 5 minutes when it went through another Power Up. Ran flawlessly for the remainder of the day.

I don't know if GC: and/or Indexing: play any part as they take place around 9 am and I seldom turn it on until the early afternoon. I don't know what happens when viewing recorded programs.

Recommendation:
Set DLBs to zero before going to Standby in the evening. Then turn the receiver on 40 minutes before you wish to view. 31 minutes to reboot, 5 minutes rebooting and 4 minutes grace.

Might try this. Set DLBs to zero and select a one hour program to record say one hour before you expect to turn on the receiver. Should trigger the reboot @ 30 minutes. Or perhaps record two programs with time overlap. Haven't tried music channels.


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## Dr_J (Apr 15, 2007)

Thanks for this detailed analysis. Very impressive! 

Mine rebooted on Sunday twice while in standby mode while XM stations were on the tuners, so I don't know if this is applicable to every situation.


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## chuckg (Sep 15, 2007)

Dr_J said:


> Thanks for this detailed analysis. Very impressive!
> 
> Mine rebooted on Sunday twice while in standby mode while XM stations were on the tuners, so I don't know if this is applicable to every situation.


Unfortunately, apparently, hard drive problems and of course power line glitches can cause confounding data. I am only reporting what I have discovered with this Samsung unit with this hard drive. I spent too many years troubleshooting too many types of electronic devices to draw broad conclusions from limited data.

I know someone has posted that they had no problems when using the XM stations. And I have seen your earlier posts regarding your failure. My other Samsung unit with a different DB35 drive would spontaneously reboot (I think) whereas this one over the past 20 days has never rebooted while on Standby. I may transfer this HD to the other Samsung although the ideal thing would be to to degrade its HD from 6.2 WeaKnees $60 back to 6.3e.


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## Dr_J (Apr 15, 2007)

I'm beginning to wonder if watching pre-recorded programming triggers the reboots. For the first time since November, I watched a pre-recorded program on Saturday night, and this was followed by the two reboots on Sunday. I then did the Pause-5-2 thing to reinstall the software on the alternate root partition and then unplugged the phone line. Last night, I put both tuners on channels 0 and 1. I haven't noticed any reboots, but that doesn't mean it's not happening. Last night, the channel guide had gone back to default, which is usually an indication of a reboot. If I didn't have the option to use another TV, I would have thrown in the towel a long time ago with this TiVo. Fortunately, for now I have the luxury of waiting to see if a fix is released.


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## chuckg (Sep 15, 2007)

Dr_J said:


> I'm beginning to wonder if watching pre-recorded programming triggers the reboots. For the first time since November, I watched a pre-recorded program on Saturday night, and this was followed by the two reboots on Sunday. I then did the Pause-5-2 thing to reinstall the software on the alternate root partition and then unplugged the phone line. Last night, I put both tuners on channels 0 and 1. I haven't noticed any reboots, but that doesn't mean it's not happening. Last night, the channel guide had gone back to default, which is usually an indication of a reboot. If I didn't have the option to use another TV, I would have thrown in the towel a long time ago with this TiVo. Fortunately, for now I have the luxury of waiting to see if a fix is released.


I have only one recorded progam on the HDD and haven't watched it so for past 23 days it has rebooted almost daily always while watching live TV. None of it Local. Mostly CNN/MSNBC.

Never tried to reinstall software. Don't understand what you mean by "tuners on channels 0 and 1". They don't exist.

For my Samsungs, if they reboot both tuners are set to the channel being viewed or last viewed before Standby. Same thing happens when Satellite Signal level is checked. Same thing happened around 2 am when we had a brief power failure.

I use List Guide and Clear Banner Quickly and neither is changed with reboot.


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## Dr_J (Apr 15, 2007)

chuckg said:


> Never tried to reinstall software. Don't understand what you mean by "tuners on channels 0 and 1". They don't exist.


These are tips I picked up from tivocommunity.com. I was desperate to try anything. During the initial stage of a reboot (where the screen says "Welcome. Powering up.", there's a few-second window where the green light flickers momentarily yellow. During that window, quickly press Pause-5-2. Make sure the phone line is connected. The box calls up the mother ship to reinstall the software (the current version, 6.3e, unfortunately) on the alternate root partition. If one of your root partitions is malfunctioning, doing this might fix the problem, or it might restore 6.3e to its baseline state anyway. 6.3e worked fine for me the first few weeks before going on the fritz, so if doing Pause-5-2 every few weeks helps, it might be worth a try.

Because channels 0 and 1 don't exist, it was suggested to tune to those nonexistent channels to disable the live buffers, with the thought that it might prevent or reduce the incidence of rebooting. Again, I was desperate to try anything, so I'm currently experimenting with this. Not optimistic, but we'll see.

A year ago at this time, who would've thunk that the HR20 would be more stable a year later than the DirecTiVo?


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## chuckg (Sep 15, 2007)

Dr_J said:


> These are tips I picked up from tivocommunity.com. I was desperate to try anything. During the initial stage of a reboot (where the screen says "Welcome. Powering up.", there's a few-second window where the green light flickers momentarily yellow. During that window, quickly press Pause-5-2. Make sure the phone line is connected. The box calls up the mother ship to reinstall the software (the current version, 6.3e, unfortunately) on the alternate root partition. If one of your root partitions is malfunctioning, doing this might fix the problem, or it might restore 6.3e to its baseline state anyway. 6.3e worked fine for me the first few weeks before going on the fritz, so if doing Pause-5-2 every few weeks helps, it might be worth a try.
> 
> Because channels 0 and 1 don't exist, it was suggested to tune to those nonexistent channels to disable the live buffers, with the thought that it might prevent or reduce the incidence of rebooting. Again, I was desperate to try anything, so I'm currently experimenting with this. Not optimistic, but we'll see.
> 
> A year ago at this time, who would've thunk that the HR20 would be more stable a year later than the DirecTiVo?


Both of my receivers started acting up within a day or two from when 6.3e was activated. My test unit had 6.3e activated and I started having problems. Roughly a week later my main receiver displayed the message that the software had been upgraded. And that very day it had a problem. I knew I had problems and started a lab notebook recording symptoms.

The early indication it was a live buffer related problem was the fact that the ND channel FF, Rev, skip-to-(beginning/end) functions didn't work properly until the channel was changed. What this indicated was that the software controlling the ND LB no longer worked properly until it was "reset" by the channel change. The question is What triggers the software malfunction?

I had power failure last night. Both receivers rebooted. The power failure occured before the 3 am download, etc. The test unit, although in Standby mode, was recording to the ND LB when I turned the receiver on! (I believe I have seen this before but couldn't "prove" it. I proved it today) The ND LB worked perfectly with FF/REV etc and the unit rebooted right on schedule for zero LBs 31:22 after turn-on! Even though the ND LB actually had been recording for an indeterminate period of time the time-to-reboot is consistent with zero in the ND LB.

This is just an intellectual exercise for me. I have 2 40 GB HDDs w/6.2a and 2 300 GB HDDs with 6.2. I just purchased a Phillips unit with a bad HDD $21 total cost which I will use as a backup. And will purchase one or two more Series 2 units. And play around with 6.3e until 6.3f becomes active. But because I have no need for *any* feature upgrades, I don't *need* software updates.


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## chuckg (Sep 15, 2007)

Another data point.
Last night I put exactly one hour in the NDC LB on MSNBC. I then zeroed the viewed channel LB, CNN by channel up to Comedy and down to CNN. Waited several seconds and then put the unit in Standby.

When I turned the unit on today it was on CNN with zero LB. NDC was Comedy, not MSNBC, the LB progress bar was at the current time and instantly jumped back 30 seconds and continued from there. It had been, while in Standby mode (no scheduled recordings, no Wishlist, no Season Passes, NADA) recording the Comedy channel. I have seen this before.

1:30:39 after powering on the receiver rebooted. Confirming my speculation that the time to reboot from turning on is 30 minutes plus the length of time the NDC had been on the channel when the receiver was put on Standby.

It means that there is a software timer (a 30 minute LB timer?) that starts (zeroed) when a Tuner is switched to a channel. The timer is stopped when Standby occurs. But the time *is not cleared.* Or it is stored.

When the receiver is turned on a timer (the 30 minute LB timer?) is started on the NDC (without regard to what the progress bar displays) which when it reaches 30 minutes in turn triggers a "countdown timer" of the time stored from Standby which also had not been cleared by turning on. Roughly, of course. Which in turn explains random times to reboot because who the hell pays any attention to how long the NDC was on a particular channel.

Wish I could see a flow chart of the software.


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## Dr_J (Apr 15, 2007)

chuckg said:


> Another data point.
> Last night I put exactly one hour in the NDC LB on MSNBC. I then zeroed the viewed channel LB, CNN by channel up to Comedy and down to CNN. Waited several seconds and then put the unit in Standby.
> 
> When I turned the unit on today it was on CNN with zero LB. NDC was Comedy, not MSNBC, the LB progress bar was at the current time and instantly jumped back 30 seconds and continued from there. It had been, while in Standby mode (no scheduled recordings, no Wishlist, no Season Passes, NADA) recording the Comedy channel. I have seen this before.
> ...


If you turn on the box and immediately change the channels on both tuners, do you still get the rebooting?


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## chuckg (Sep 15, 2007)

Dr_J said:


> If you turn on the box and immediately change the channels on both tuners, do you still get the rebooting?


I don't think it has anything to do with the viewed channel when the receiver is turned on or off. But I will give it a try tomorrow with 15 minutes in the NDC LB and 0 in the viewed which means I should have the answer within 47 minutes.


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## chuckg (Sep 15, 2007)

15 minutes in DLBs at Standby. Changed channels on both tuners on power up. No reboot over 6 hours.


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## Dr_J (Apr 15, 2007)

chuckg said:


> 15 minutes in DLBs at Standby. Changed channels on both tuners on power up. No reboot over 6 hours.


Cool! That would seem to be the way to go until there's a fix.


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## Eric The Red (Nov 6, 2007)

Dr_J said:


> Cool! That would seem to be the way to go until there's a fix.


I'm not as detail-oriented with exact numbers as Chuck G, but I can confirm that simply changing both channels and clearing the buffers at start-up have taken my random reboots from daily down to maybe twice in the past 8 weeks.


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## chuckg (Sep 15, 2007)

I tried a half-hour recording for the next morning on ESPN2 with the NDC on MSNBC and the viewed on CNN. The idea was that because MSNBC was the NDC even though the unit was on Standby that the software would select the NDC channel to record ESPN2 and thereby "clear" the NDC LB. Nope. Has no effect on the LBers.

So last night I set CNN/MSNBC each with 0:15 minutes. Then did a Satellite Signal Strength test which sets both tuners to the viewed channel and immediately went to Standby. When I turned the receiver on today both LBers were near 0:00 the channels were CNN/MSNBC (MSNBC the NDC had the flakeyness one expects when first turned on) rather than the CNN/CNN I expected (I have seen strange behaviour in the channel selection retention overnight) *and it rebooted in 30:37 exactly what one would expect with zero LBers.*


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