# DATA COLLECTION: If your Daily Schedule is stuck, showing no future timers, RESPOND!



## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

For those of you experiencing the problem with the Daily Schedule being stuck in the past, and not showing any future (today and beyond) timers in the list, please answer the following questions for me in as much detail as you can:

1. In this state, can you rewind and skip back in the live TV buffer?

2. In this state, can you view program information from the DVR events screen (pressing INFO button, and selecting DVR event - do you set program information displayed)?

3. Search for something that you know will be found multiple times. Is the search successful? 

4. Can you define a successful DishPass rule for an event that you know will be on multiple times? Does it define all of the timers that you expect to see defined?

5. Can you successfully create an "All" epsidoes timer or a "New" epsiodes timer, and do see the correct number of timers that you expect to see defined?

Once you answer these questions for me, here is the suggestion for temporary workaround from the Dish Engineers:

Run a checkswitch. Once the checkswitch is done, cancel back to live mode, go through the acquiring satellite signal box, and do through the EPG data download process. Once the EPG data is downloaded, this should rebuild the Daily Schedule timer list into the future. If you have a lot of timers, this make take a little while to do, so give it a few minutes. Then check your Daily Schedule to see if it's been rebuilt.

If not, delete all of your timers, reboot by pulling the power cord. After the reboot, go through the checkswitch process above, then start adding back your timers one by one. Are you able to add them back at this point?

Please report back.


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## Pat A (May 29, 2002)

Well Mark, so far it looks like my unit is the only problem child....

1) Pause, rewind and skip back all work in the current program buffer (it did lock-up on me one time last week when skipping back in a HD program, but has been working since then).
2) INFO button works from the dvr events screen.
3) Search does not function. Search results window is blank with "error" in the upper left corner.
4) Dishpass rule results in no defined events for episodes known to be in the guide.
5) "All" or "New" episode timers only result in a timer being set for the highlighted episode in the guide. No future events are scheduled for future episodes known to be in the guide. 

I have run three separate checkswitch tests this afternoon, following the procedures detailed above. It is still not working.


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## BobMurdoch (Apr 24, 2002)

I just don't think there are that many 942s out in circulation yet......


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## Pat A (May 29, 2002)

I got a call from the Dish tech folks this morning. They suggested selecting "protected" in the options screen when programing a all or new episode recording. I tried this and it seems to be working. It is now scheduling timers into to future, and the basic search function is working again. Mark, thanks for passing my issue to the tech group. Hopefully they can get this picked up in the next software revision.


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## Mike Johnson (Jan 16, 2005)

Well, as Pat suggested, my "Search" problem posted here appears to be the same issue Pat has had.

In answer to your questions, my answers are the same as Pat's:
1) Pause, rewind and skip back all work in the current program buffer.
2) INFO button works from the dvr events screen.
3) Search does not function. Search results window is blank with "error" in the upper left corner.
4) Dishpass rule results in no defined events for episodes known to be in the guide.
5) "All" or "New" episode timers only result in a timer being set for the highlighted episode in the guide. No future events are scheduled for future episodes known to be in the guide.

I have tried Pat's suggestion about "protecting" the events, but that isn't working for me. Most of my timers were already "protected" before I encountered this problem.


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## oldred (May 5, 2005)

Pat A said:


> Well Mark, so far it looks like my unit is the only problem child....
> 
> 1) Pause, rewind and skip back all work in the current program buffer (it did lock-up on me one time last week when skipping back in a HD program, but has been working since then).
> 2) INFO button works from the dvr events screen.
> ...


 I don't think you are the only one with this problem.I am new to Direct TV and the 942.I just had it installed on May 1st. I lost my ability to search three days after I got it . I had it freeze ....just the top menu bar on the screen ...had to unplug it to get it to reset. I called Dish and went through all the STUFF and still nothing. I got the ...We will have someone else contact you in 24 to 48 hours ...So we will see what happens


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

We're working on it. I'm going through this right now with my test unit, and we're making progress because of it.


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## Buckett (Aug 22, 2004)

Mark,

This has happened to me twice in the past 48 hrs. Just reporting in. Also posted this in the 942 bug tracking thread.


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## viper0440 (May 8, 2005)

My 942 (L224) just started having the daily schedule problem. 

1. The live TV buffer works fine.
2. Info button in DVR Events screen works.
3. Search for multiple items works fine.
4. DishPass for a new event defines multiple times on multiple channels fine. However, on deletion of this timer the daily schedule still lists the deleted timer.
5. "All" Timer for a new event works fine, but deletion of this timer from the Timers List doesn't delete the items from the daily schedule.
"New" timer for a new event works correctly, skipping the old episodes and only setting the new episodes to record, but it put two items in the daily schedule for the one specific event I used to create this timer. Deletion of this timer from the Timers List doesn't delete the items from the daily schedule.

Hope this data helps get a new software version out soon!

I tried the temporary workaround but because of some issues that i'm guessing are related to having legacy LNB's i'm not able to get my 942 to acquire at the moment.

A question about the LNB's: I have legacy LNB's (Dish 500 twin 119 & 110, and dish 500 single 148) hooked up to SW21 switches that are then hooked up to the 2 satellite inputs on the 942. The acquiring and check switch screens take a very long time and appear every day or two, even though they result in very good signal strength in the point dish screen. Would it help this acquiring time if I got new dish pro or dish pro plus equipment (lnb's and/or switches)?


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## Justin (May 15, 2005)

I just posted a bug to the bug list about something that sounds similar to this. The only way I was able to get everything back was to delete/recreate all of my timers. The problem seemed to start when I deleted my #1 priority dish pass of 'stargate'. Please see my post on the buglist for more info.


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## Thinman (May 17, 2005)

My 3 day old 942 started doing this today. Cannot create a new Dish Pass, error when using search, and previously established Dish Passes have stopped looking into the future. Only had Dish for 3 days. Any help would be appreciated.


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## Mike Johnson (Jan 16, 2005)

Welcome, Thinman! :hi: 
I have suffered form this problem twice so far. See the bug report thread here. 

There are some ideas there on what to try to fix it. Some have said that going into the timer schedule and toggle the protection status on each event. If it is protected, unprotect it. If it is not protected, then protect it. Then do a check switch to force a guide download. This has never worked for me.

What did work for me is to go into MENU-8-5 and change the update time to occur in the next few minutes to force an update. Do this THREE times. After the third update, my 942 is back to normal.

Please try some of these ideas and report back on what works. And again, Welcome to DBSTalk!


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## Thinman (May 17, 2005)

Thanks for the welcome. When I try the 8-5 suggestion, should the receiver be off or does it matter? Also, should I not be recording anything?


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## Mike Johnson (Jan 16, 2005)

It doesn't matter if it's on or not, but it would be best if there are no records active. I just left mine on and watched the update.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Welcome, Thinman. You don't want to have anything recording when you do the guide updates. And, please report back whether doing the guide update 3 consecutive times works for you.


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## Thinman (May 17, 2005)

Thanks for the input. Will try when I get home from work and report success or failure...success I hope !!


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Of course, there's a new software update downloading today as well, which may or may not play into this as well.

And, for what it's worth, I'm not getting reports from other sources as well about the validity of setting the update to happen 3 times in a row as a temporary fix.


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## Thinman (May 17, 2005)

After performing the 8-5 trick 3 times, everything is back to normal. Hooray !!! Unfortunately. I don't know if the trick worked because in the process, software L225 downloaded. Seems to be working fine now. I'll let ya know.


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## Allen Noland (Apr 23, 2002)

The 8-5 Trick worked for me also. Only for new timers. The Daily schedule was blank after running the work around. However, new timers worked fine. No duplicates.


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## Thinman (May 17, 2005)

It's been 3 days since I did the 8-5 trick and everything is still OK.


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## tootall (Dec 21, 2004)

My timers all disappear after the daily update runs at 2 am. If I just go to the guide and hit the right arrow the guide updates (up to 5 minutes) and then all of my timers reappear as if they were never gone. It is frustrating when you go on a three day trip and come home and nothing has recorded. I just got home from a trip and was planning on going to manual not auto timer updates will that solve the problem. I also have the old LNBs and am having problems but I will go to that question.


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## RAA (May 6, 2005)

tootall said:


> My timers all disappear after the daily update runs at 2 am. If I just go to the guide and hit the right arrow the guide updates (up to 5 minutes) and then all of my timers reappear as if they were never gone. It is frustrating when you go on a three day trip and come home and nothing has recorded. I just got home from a trip and was planning on going to manual not auto timer updates will that solve the problem. I also have the old LNBs and am having problems but I will go to that question.


My 942 is doing exactly the same thing. It started sometime Sunday after the 3AM update. I have lost many season finale's because of this and my wife is really pissed at me. She blames me for these kind of things :ramblinon ... My 942 is 3 weeks old and it has already rebooted twice when searching for movies.
RAA


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## rjenkins (Jul 18, 2002)

I had this happen today. Doing the 8-5 forced update once seemed to clear up the problem. Interesting, it took about 15 minutes after the update for the timers to start coming back. I missed my Saturday morning Yu-gi-oh!'s, before I noticed no timers were appearing, though.


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## RAA (May 6, 2005)

I know this is an old thread but I did too have the same timers issue a while back. After calling support numerous times and talking to 1st level support and wasting my time on the phone with this, I said screw it. I saw L226 load and somehow the problem got fixed (but only after I deleted all of my timers and recreated them). I went out of town for a while and no one mentioned any issues until yesterday that I noticed that Six Feet Under did not record. I went to the schedule and there it was, the timers shown started back on May 29th (Yesterday was June 20th). Are we back to this again? Anyone else still having the same issue?


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

RAA - try the "force the daily update to happen 3 times in a row" trick, and you should be back in business. I haven't seen this problem for some time in the betas, so I'm pretty confident that it's fixed in the next update.


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## wilmath (Jun 15, 2005)

Just got my 942 a couple of weeks ago.  I REALLY LOVE THIS THING!  
After reviewing this thread, I have to ask a question. I do NOT subscribe to local OTA channels through DISH. I use a roof antenna to get all of my OTA channels. Am I supposed to see a fully populated program guide which includes my local channels? 

I have seen only incorrect information in the guide for OTA channels since I got the receiver. That lasted for only an hour or two and there hasn't been anything in there since.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

No, you must subscribe to your Dish local channels to get guide data for your local OTA digital channels.


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## gutkin (Jun 16, 2005)

Mark Lamutt said:


> RAA - try the "force the daily update to happen 3 times in a row" trick, and you should be back in business. I haven't seen this problem for some time in the betas, so I'm pretty confident that it's fixed in the next update.


I got Dish installed last Sat, 942 is one of my 2 receivers. Yesterday I notices the same problem, when I pull up my schedule It showed nothing to be recorded, after doing a hard reset the schedule showed up again, but now I cannot create more then 40 counters. Everytime I try it simply gives me the standard search screen and then no counter is created.

I've also had the 942 freeze on my three times in the last week. Very frustrated here. Should I insist that Dish replace my 942?

Also can someone please post a link to a thread the describes that forced update trick?


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Forced Update trick:

Navigate to the Daily Update Screen.
Set update time to be 5 minutes from now.
Put 942 into standby mode
Update happens - you'll see the disk diagnostics screen, it'll reboot and then be back in standby mode.
Check your daily schedule to see if your timers are there now.
If not, repeat process.

You usually get your timers back either on the 2nd or 3rd time through the process.

And, this should be fixed in the next software version.


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## gutkin (Jun 16, 2005)

Mark Lamutt said:


> Forced Update trick:
> 
> Navigate to the Daily Update Screen.
> Set update time to be 5 minutes from now.
> ...


Will this also help fix the problem I'm having trying to create more then 40 timers?


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

No, but you should be able to define 64 individual timers, not 40...unless something changed along the way that I don't know about. 

You actually have more than 40 diffferent shows you want to record over the summer months? Yikes! I had no idea there were that many on.


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## Stutz342 (Sep 29, 2004)

Mark Lamutt said:


> . . . you should be able to define 64 individual timers, not 40...unless something changed along the way that I don't know about.


I think it's 96. I've got 91 defined right now, although 15 of them are low-def backups of OTA HD shows that might get missed.

With DishPass timers set for generic stuff, (like any shows with 'Mustang' in the description,) I could actually use more slots.

I did have a situation where it would tell me I couldn't set more when I only had 35 or so defined. Somewhere in the resets I did trying to get OTA guide data, it freed up.


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## gutkin (Jun 16, 2005)

Mark Lamutt said:


> No, but you should be able to define 64 individual timers, not 40...unless something changed along the way that I don't know about.
> 
> You actually have more than 40 diffferent shows you want to record over the summer months? Yikes! I had no idea there were that many on.


Yeah, ashamed to admit but I do. Currently I use the Timer, since with the Dish Pass you cannot specify to only get new shows. I miss my Tivos, I actually enjoyed Tivo suggestions since it gave me shows to browse when nothing else is on. So I set timers for shows that remotely interest me. I didnt realize there was a cap on home many timers one can set. Is 40 the limit?


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## geodi (Aug 8, 2004)

Unfortunately, my 942's Daily Schedule future events started to disappear yesterday (6/25). My timers are composed of 4 Dishpass events. I rebuilt the daily schedule with the "check switch / forced program guide download" yesterday evening. However, this morning the future events disappeared again (auto updates set to on and to fire off at 3 AM).

I've restored the daily events both with the check switch and 8-5 methods but each time I do a power off switch / reboot, they disappear. I did another check switch and turned off the auto update. I usually turn off both tuners at night, but I plan to leave TV2 on and see what happens Sunday AM.

Any updated info from Dish? I'm assuming that this is software related, as this apparently occurred during the previous nites' (Thursday and Friday) auto update or after a reboot....thanks for listening!


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## gianfri (Jun 20, 2005)

Mark Lamutt said:


> Forced Update trick:
> 
> Navigate to the Daily Update Screen.
> Set update time to be 5 minutes from now.
> ...


After about one week of being the proud owner of a new 942, I experienced the first loss of search, schedule and timers, as described in this thread.  After MULTIPLE updates using the 8-5 method, check switch, and soft reboots, I seem to have got the schedule back. 

One thing that surprised me using the 8-5 method is that I actually could not see the new guide being downloaded. The Disk Diagnostic screen came up, then the unit rebooted, the Acquire Satellite screen came up, and then it went straight to live programming. Is that the way it is supposed to work? Is there any other way to force an updated guide download?

Thank you,

Gianfranco


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

A checkswitch forces a guide download.


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## gianfri (Jun 20, 2005)

Mark Lamutt said:


> A checkswitch forces a guide download.


Thank you, that is what I suspected. My question remains, though, _should I not see a guide download also after the 8-5 trick_? And if I don't see that, then should I follow the 8-5 with a check switch? Or, for that matter, why even bothering with an 8-5 and not just doing two or three check switch operations, if all we are doing is forcing new guide downloads?

Thank you for your help,

Gianfranco


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

I am not seeing any guide download either when I set it to update say 5 minutes out. I see the hard disk diagnostics screen come up then the screen goes black and then the floating dishnetwork screen saver comes up. No matter how many times I do it. 

I turned off both of my 942 s on auto update. I see my guide updated to Tues at 6:30 pm on the bedroom tv , but it is only at 6:30 am on my living room 942. I am going to leave the auto updates off and see if the receivers will update on their own. when I set it to auto update at 3:00am I get nothing at all. 

I am not having any problems with the timers disappearing though just the guide data not down loading .


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## geodi (Aug 8, 2004)

Mike D-CO5 said:


> I am not having any problems with the timers disappearing though just the guide data not down loading .


I never saw the guide data download when I was experimenting with the 8-5 trick. However, ever since I turned off the automatic updates, my 942 has stabilized. I reboot the unit every 2 - 3 days which also updates the guide data. I'll monitor these boards to see when updates occur and force a download then. Hopefully, the next update will fix these issues.


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

gianfri said:


> Thank you, that is what I suspected. My question remains, though, _should I not see a guide download also after the 8-5 trick_? And if I don't see that, then should I follow the 8-5 with a check switch? Or, for that matter, why even bothering with an 8-5 and not just doing two or three check switch operations, if all we are doing is forcing new guide downloads?
> 
> Thank you for your help,
> 
> Gianfranco


I'm really hoping that after this week, we won't have to worry about this anymore, but the reason to do the Menu-8-5 trick rather than 3 checkswitches in a row is that the Menu-8-5 trick has worked for many people, while the checkswitches have not. It's that simple...I don't have a good explanation for it, though.


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## gianfri (Jun 20, 2005)

Mark Lamutt said:


> I'm really hoping that after this week, we won't have to worry about this anymore, but the reason to do the Menu-8-5 trick rather than 3 checkswitches in a row is that the Menu-8-5 trick has worked for many people, while the checkswitches have not. It's that simple...I don't have a good explanation for it, though.


Thanks, Mark, I will take your word for it. I must say that it all feels sort of like doing some magic ritual, where you dont't know why but you have faith that it will do some good to you. Not the best feeling when it comes to technology....

Anyway, I appreciate your help and support.

Gianfranco


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

Except in this case, it had nothing to do with faith - it worked twice for me, and has worked for many other users as well.


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## RAA (May 6, 2005)

Last night the problem came back. Missed a couple of recordings and when I looked that the schedule it was showing me things in the past. The 8-5 Trick is not doing anything and the check switch is not fixing it either. When I looked at the timers they don’t show any future shows either. I’m Very disappointed with this, thinking of canceling the service all together. I can’t stand it anymore.


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