# Do 921's auto reboot?



## jergenf (Mar 31, 2005)

It has been suggested that the 921 automatically reboots during the early morning hours when left in standby mode. The reason I ask is I turned my unit off midnight to 6:30AM expecting it to reboot but it didn't because I'm still at L218 even though L219 is pending on my hard drive. 
Yes I know I can force a push button reboot at any time but I wanted to see if autobooting occurred. Anyone know more about this? When does it occur and how often or is this just a myth?


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## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

jergenf said:


> It has been suggested that the 921 automatically reboots during the early morning hours when left in standby mode. The reason I ask is I turned my unit off midnight to 6:30AM expecting it to reboot but it didn't because I'm still at L218 even though L219 is pending on my hard drive.
> Yes I know I can force a push button reboot at any time but I wanted to see if autobooting occurred. Anyone know more about this? When does it occur and how often or is this just a myth?


The 921 does automatically reboot in the early hours of the AM if the right conditions exist. The 921 has to be in the Off mode (standby, green light off) or the Inactivity Mode must be enabled. If you have any repeatable auto-tunes set, the 921 most likely won't auto reboot. Also if you have timers firing sometime during the wee hours of the AM the 921 won't reboot. Sometimes there is some corruption of some sort with the software and the 921 just will not auto reboot, so the best way to get auto rebooting back to working is to put the 921 in standby (off) and do a power cord unplug for at least 30 seconds.


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## BobMurdoch (Apr 24, 2002)

jergenf said:


> It has been suggested that the 921 automatically reboots during the early morning hours when left in standby mode. The reason I ask is I turned my unit off midnight to 6:30AM expecting it to reboot but it didn't because I'm still at L218 even though L219 is pending on my hard drive.
> Yes I know I can force a push button reboot at any time but I wanted to see if autobooting occurred. Anyone know more about this? When does it occur and how often or is this just a myth?


I always do a hard reboot by unplugging for 30 seconds. I've never had a problem with installation of new software and I think this is part of the reason....


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## jergenf (Mar 31, 2005)

I didn't want to force a reboot because I was curious if it would do it by itself.
Also I didn't have any autotune or recording enabled last night. 
The unit was in standby mode (all lights off) from 12AM to 6:30AM.

I was thinking that it only reboots if new software downloads when the unit is in standby mode (versus on mode which was the case when L219 arrived about 2 weeks ago). Or maybe auto reboots are totally random and not at any specific time as some suggest. 

I've never set inactivity mode yet. That feature was new in L215 and auto reboots was in effect long before that.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

From my experience. The auto-reboot occurs sometimes in the middle of the night. I believe the window is between 2 and 3 am. If you have your unit on during this time or a timer to fire the unit will not auto-reboot. Your unit must be in stand-by mode for this to occur. 

Here is the kicker. The inactivity timeout feature I believe places the unit into standby mode 4 hourse after no user intervention. So if you go to sleep at midnight with the TV on like I do the auto-reboot usually does not trigger. 

I have confirmed it auto-reboots. Place the PIP window in the upper right corner and place the unit in standby. In the morning the turn on the unit and press the pip button, the window should appear in the lower right if an auto-reboot occurred. 

That is my understanding of the feature. Since it happens in the middle of the night, my understand could be incorrect. However when I tried it it the PIP moved from upper right to lower right. 

It is my believe that the reboot is happening to free up dangling resources that have yet to be tracked down and fixed. (Just an opinion based on my experience as a developer and I have no proof either way)


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## AVJohnnie (Jul 27, 2004)

BobMurdoch said:


> I always do a hard reboot by unplugging for 30 seconds. I've never had a problem with installation of new software and I think this is part of the reason....


I agree with Bob - Even if the nightly reboot manages to update my 921 to a newly downloaded firmware version, I still do a power-cord reboot anyway. It seems to be the necessary "fiber" that "purges" the box and helps the new "firmware brain" work better.


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## jergenf (Mar 31, 2005)

Well I'm still at L218 (menu 6-1) and L219 (menu 6-7) is still waiting so I know my box hasn't rebooted yet. Would like to see this autoboot take place because I don't think I ever seen it happen before.


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## rdopso (Jan 26, 2004)

I need to do a forced reboot once in awhile to get my aspect ratio operational after it sticks (I have L219 on the 921). 

I did confirm with a call to E* a few months ago that the 921 reboots automatically every night -- I believe they said between 2 and 3 am, but they also indicated I could specify a different time through them if I wanted. From my experience, I believe the 921 reboots automatically even if timers are set to fire during the reboot period, and any recording setup is lost. I have had this happen and that's when I called E* and was told of the auto reboot. I have not attempted to specifically test this after it appeared to happen on two occasions when I first got the unit some months ago -- I just take care not to set timers for the 2-3 am period.


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## SummitAdvantageRetailer (Feb 20, 2005)

Auto re-boot is at 2 AM. They seem to like 2 AM because the 322/522/625 likes to dial out on the phone line at 2 AM for default. Plus, I turned on my TV at around 2:02 AM and it was in the middle of a spontaneous boot.


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## Grandude (Oct 21, 2004)

Auto re-boot is not a cure-all. I turn my 921 off every night.
Yesterday afternoon I turned it on for the first time that day and tuned to one HD channel for a few minutes and then to an SD channel. It was immediately locked in a stretch mode. Shucks, it had only been on a few minutes. Had to do a power reboot to get it unstuck.


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## Skates (Apr 15, 2004)

Don't depend on this auto-reboot feature.

As I repeat every time someone asks this question, I'm lucky if my 921 reboots itself once every two weeks or so. I have to manually reboot every few days, otherwise problems return, such as the 'timers firing a day early' bug.


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## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

Skates said:


> Don't depend on this auto-reboot feature.


Not bad advise but I do have fewer problems if the 921 has auto-rebooted. The auto-reboot, or for that matter a power cord reboot, do little if anything to prevent the stuck stretch aspect. I have tried leaving the stuck stretch aspect alone and have found that it is a signal that worse things are about to happen if I don't do a power cord reboot.


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## jergenf (Mar 31, 2005)

*Update:* My 921 locked up last night so I was forced to do a push button reboot. Guess I'll have to wait until the next release to test the auto-boot feature.


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## Skates (Apr 15, 2004)

Jergenf - I can tell you as a fact that my 921 never reboots to install downloaded software. If it weren't for people on this board telling us when new s/w is downloaded, I would never know!

After reading about a new s/w download here, I go home and check. Every single time, it says "software successfuly downloaded". But I have to do a manual reboot to install it.

Not a big deal - 

But what exactly are you trying to test? If it's to see if your unit auto-reboots, all you have to do is follow what Ron Barry said. Change the position of your PIP window to anything but the lower right-hand corner of the screen. If your unit successfully reboots overnight, then in the morning your PIP window will be back in it's default position in the bottom right-hand corner. If not, it'll be wherever you placed it.


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## jergenf (Mar 31, 2005)

Skates said:


> But what exactly are you trying to test? If it's to see if your unit auto-reboots, all you have to do is follow what Ron Barry said. Change the position of your PIP window to anything but the lower right-hand corner of the screen. If your unit successfully reboots overnight, then in the morning your PIP window will be back in it's default position in the bottom right-hand corner. If not, it'll be wherever you placed it.


Yeah I wanted to see if it really auto-reboots because I never seen it happen before. Also wasn't sure if PIP window really proves it rebooted but new software version would have convinced me.

When new software downloads I usually keep my unit on for a week to find out from others what effect it had. This paid off when L216 occurred because I would have lost my digital OTA channels.


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## Ron Barry (Dec 10, 2002)

The PIP test was suggest a while back by some other long time 921 users as a means to determine if an auto-reboot had occurred (I believe I I read it suggested from Simple Simon). This is a well known mechanism that I believe others have validated to be true. I did it last night and it behaved as expected. 

One way you can do a verification is do the following.

1) Place the PIP window in the upper left.
2) Place the unit in standby. 
3) Turn the unit back on. 
4) Verify that the PIP window is still in the upper left corner. 

As to it auto-reboot being a cure all. Well I agree it is definitely not one but a step in the right direction.


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