# What's the best time to reboot the 921?



## Jerry G (Jul 12, 2003)

I know the 921 is supposed to reboot itself nightly to prevent some of the 921's many problems from manifesting themselves, but many posts suggest that these may not be happening. So I'm going to pick up some timers today and set them to reboot the 921 nightly. What's the best time to do this? I don't want to interrupt guide data which I assume comes down during the night, but I don't know when. I don't want to interrupt new software which tends to come in the later afternoon. I'm thinking of doing the reboot at 5am, Pacific time. Any thoughts on this?

While I'm at it, I'm also going to do a nightly reboot of my 811s. The current 811 software is a disaster if you watch OTA digital channels. When you've been watching OTA for a while, on some occasions when you change to a sat channel, all video and audio is lost and can only be recovered with a reboot, which means about a 5 minutes wait to be able to continue watching your program. Dish has absolutely no idea of when this will be fixed, but they don't have it scheduled for a fix on the next few updates. I'm hoping that this is something that might be related to the 811 being powered for some period of time (perhaps a memory leak) and that a nightly reboot might help. It probably won't, but it probably can't hurt. So, the same questions apply as to what is the best time to reboot the 811.


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

5AM Pacific sounds real good.

You can use the PiP window on the 921 to determine if it has rebooted. While watching some SD satellite content, hit PiP, Position, Position. The Pip window should move to top center. Now, PiP, PiP to hide the window. When you turn it on the next day, hit PiP. If the window has returned to the bottom right, it rebooted.


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## Mike123abc (Jul 19, 2002)

The 921 will reboot on its own if you just put it in standby when you are done with it for the night.


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## Jerry G (Jul 12, 2003)

Mike123abc said:


> The 921 will reboot on its own if you just put it in standby when you are done with it for the night.


I know that's what it's supposed to do, but various posts would suggest that it may not be doing this. Thus, the need for a timer.


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## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

Jerry G said:


> I know that's what it's supposed to do, but various posts would suggest that it may not be doing this. Thus, the need for a timer.


Yes, I think that it does more of a guide update then a reboot. If it did an actual reboot, I think that I would have less problems. I have to do a reboot at least once a week or more.


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

You would be wise to confirm that it's not rebooting on it's own.

Hard power reboots are tougher on the box than soft reboots.

The box does NOT need to be rebooted daily - once a week is fine - but daily won't hurt.. 

Refer to post #2 for a way to see if it's rebooted since the last time you checked.


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## Jerry G (Jul 12, 2003)

SimpleSimon said:


> You would be wise to confirm that it's not rebooting on it's own.


So I wisely decided to check 

Set the PIP window to the top last night. Disabled the external timer. This morning, the PIP window was at the bottom right. So it appears my 921 is rebooting on it's own during the night.


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

Of course, this does NOT mean it will reboot EVERY night. Dunno why it sometimes misses, but 1-5 nights in a row shouldn't be an issue.

Keep an eye on the PiP window every now and again, and hit the front panel button if it needs encouragement.


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## Jerry G (Jul 12, 2003)

SimpleSimon said:


> Of course, this does NOT mean it will reboot EVERY night. Dunno why it sometimes misses, but 1-5 nights in a row shouldn't be an issue.


What's really sad is that after almost 10 months since release, we even have to worry about this. At the rate the major bugs are NOT being fixed, I have serious doubts that the 921 will ever have it's basic functionality. I'm basically bidding time until DirecTV gets more HD or Voom gets it's DVR out the door. Then it's goodbye Charlie.

It really annoys me that I'm supporting a company that releases such flawed equipment and then can't fix it in a timely manner. Add to that the Superdish fiasco, years of "50 HD channel" nonsense, "compelling content" BS, and I see a company that just can't be taken seriously. I'm very sure that the day will come when I, and many others, will leave Dish because of this.


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## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

SimpleSimon said:


> 5AM Pacific sounds real good.
> 
> You can use the PiP window on the 921 to determine if it has rebooted. While watching some SD satellite content, hit PiP, Position, Position. The Pip window should move to top center. Now, PiP, PiP to hide the window. When you turn it on the next day, hit PiP. If the window has returned to the bottom right, it rebooted.


SimpleSimon, thanks for the PIP info. I'll start checking it regularly. I did it last night, the powered down the 921. This morning at about 9:00PST, I checked the PIP and it was still in the upper center. I guess that it didn't reboot.


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## Jerry G (Jul 12, 2003)

boylehome said:


> SimpleSimon, thanks for the PIP info. I'll start checking it regularly. I did it last night, the powered down the 921. This morning at about 9:00PST, I checked the PIP and it was still in the upper center. I guess that it didn't reboot.


So much for the reliability of the 921's nightly reboots despite the programmer's intent to have the 921 reboot nightly to prevent some other bugs from surfacing. I had just changed my timer to only reboot the 921 (power off, then power on 5 minutes later) once a week. Rather than wasting my time checking the PIP every evening and morning, I think I'll just set the timer back to nightly reboots. The Eldon engineers and Dish sure seem to love making us suffer with their equipment.


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## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

Jerry G said:


> I'm basically bidding time until DirecTV gets more HD or Voom gets it's DVR out the door. Then it's goodbye Charlie.


You are not alone.


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

Jerry G said:


> Rather than wasting my time checking the PIP every evening and morning, I think I'll just set the timer back to nightly reboots.


I never said anything about checking it daily, let alone twice a day. Once a week is sufficient.

Of course, it's your choice to accelerate wear and tear on the 921 by doing unnecessary hard reboots versus spending less than 5 seconds - ONE LOUSY BUTTON PRESS - to check the PiP window. :nono:


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

Simon- I'm not sure if you can state what specific issues you are observing with the 921 lately. I will tell you that since L187, I have removed my mechanical timer and I power down the 921 to standby nightly at about 4-5AM. Since this latest software I have not had any observable issues as I did in the past. The tom,ers I have fire weekly and I havn't had and system slowdowns in a month. The last major issue I had with the 921 was in July and that was fixed with the two OTA stations adding their PSIP generator, essentially, nothing to do with the 921. Other bugs remain but stability is not one of them. 

Now that I stated that for you, when I did use the timer back in July I chose 6 AM at first but then realized that 6AM caused a few late night recordings to be flawed so I finally figured that 7:30AM was about as good a time as any and I recognized that that time I rarely recorded anything.


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## SimpleSimon (Jan 15, 2004)

Don: I still see various 921 bugs, although stability IS much improved.

This thread is just about the reboots, automatic and otherwise. I am a night owl, and sometimes my 921 is still on well into the assumed time window for auto-reboot. When I forget for several days to ensure it rebooted, I notice that there are still memory leaks. That's an assumption. The observation is some of the old crap bugs reappear.


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## DonLandis (Dec 17, 2003)

Night owl here too. It's a period of time I can work and not be interrupted with frequent phone calls. 

To be fair on this, I do admit that my 921 usage has indeed been sporadic the past 3 weeks due to my travel schedule. So, I believe the auto reboots has been fairly consistent and when I return, the 921 is refreshed, ready to go for a few days while I'm here. Therefore I suppose my trackrecord in the past 3-4 weeks is just not applicabable to your situation. However, what I did back in July- early August with the manual timer still holds. I suggest you try between 7AM and 8 AM if your viewing habits and recording habits are similar to mine. Also, my timer shuts the power to the 921 for a 15 minute period before it reapplies again. I used a cheap 2 pole timer. The 3 pole timers with ground are much more expensive. Then I ran a bypass wire for the ground using two cheater plug adapters on the timer.


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