sky+ box stuck in standby

bossman99

Lads, Any ideas if I can fix this before the match tonight... our friends in sky say it will be friday before an engineer is available and experience suggests that could be a month.

Was in the middle of a playback last night when the box just switched itself off. Wasnt an electircal failure or surge or anything just turned itself off and back on. When I went back to planner all programs had been wiped... and then it went into standby automatically and nothing ever since.

I have restarted numerous times before speaking to sky and also did the emergency download all of which has not worked. The box is now stuck on standby and I'm stuck without any tv until friday at best.............

Any similar experiences? Any independent guys I can get to fix it? I'm out of warranty (argh by a couple of months) so its no skin off my nose who does it...

whippet

this happened me a few weeks ago after getting a replacement box installed.

I was told that it would take a engineer call out, but I called again spoke to another bloke in tech support and he did a 'housekeeping' jobbie on it. Works fine now.

I would get on to their tech support again and ask them if there is anything they can do on line.

bossman99

Thanks whippet but I think that is the forced emergnecy download your refer to which yielded no results. (Thats holding in the backup button and plugging in the box. After 30 seconds you the connection to Sky will be made and it will force a download which takes 10 mins. Then just pess sky on teh remote and you should be back in business)

I have done a bit of research this mornign and apparently a common enough problem in the UK especially on the 160 sky plus boxes however mine is only V2 pace 40gb.

Anyway its one of tow things. Either the hard drive is fried therefore needing a new hard drive to be installed which I can do myself by ordering the maxtor drive to replace the old one or go for a factory reset whcih I will try tonight.

To do a factory reset and this will wipe your drive so dont do it unless you have to or have watched everything you want to is...

hold in the left and right navigation buttons and plug in the box. hold for 30 secs or so until the green play light comes on. press select. playlight will rotate wjile the bos resets. Can take about 5 mins or less. depends on what is storde on harddrive. it will then revert to standby. for 2 mins leave the machine alone as the hard drive reformats. when its finished it should be back to new.

we'll find out tonight when i get home. will post result tomorrow. I hope to **** its not the harddrive that's fried....

digitaldr

The hard disc failed on my inlaws sky+ box - it worked ok except no sky+ functionality. Anyway I replaced it with a 160Gb disc and alls been fine since.

bossman99

Disaster.... factory reset yielded nothing. still stuck in standby. Got through all the stages but for the final reformatting of the harddrive. So I think it is the harddrive at this stage....

Do Sky engineers replace the harddrive? .... cos if they dont I'll tell him to sling his hook and his 100 eurobucks.

any of the lads in the trade have any suggestions... should I just order a harddrive and insert or just buy a new box?

bossman99

Guys, Is it possible to just buy a new pace sky plus box in Dublin. Do any of the guys here sell them or do you have to go through sky to get one?

Tony

bossman99 wrote:

Guys, Is it possible to just buy a new pace sky plus box in Dublin. Do any of the guys here sell them or do you have to go through sky to get one?

you can buy one retail either with or without the quad lnb

bossman99

Thanks Tony...


Where would I get them retail? I'm based in city centre. Do you sell them? I can only see the whole package on your website. Dont need the quad as everything else is working just not the sky+ box. what sort of eurobucks are we talking?

JimmySmith

Just buy a new harddrive and install it yourself. Its very easy.
In fact buy a 160GB hard drive and intall it and you'll get 60 hours tv on it.
i wouldnt pay sky to fix it. they'll just swap it for a reconditioned box.

have a look at this site.

http://forum.digitalspy.co.uk/board/showthread.php?t=30514&page=1&pp=25

you should be able to find a link to detailed instructions

bossman99

JimmySmith wrote:

Just buy a new harddrive and install it yourself. Its very easy.
In fact buy a 160GB hard drive and intall it and you'll get 60 hours tv on it.
i wouldnt pay sky to fix it. they'll just swap it for a reconditioned box.

have a look at this site.

http://forum.digitalspy.co.uk/board/showthread.php?t=30514&page=1&pp=25

you should be able to find a link to detailed instructions

jimmy... i'm going to do that anyway I think and keep the box as a spare in case it happens again. that would also take a few more days. If its not too expensive I'd buy the new box today and have tv tonight and repair the other box next week at my leisure and have it for the next time it decides to balls itself up.

please help.... cant find anywhere that sells the digibox by itself other than the uk..... must be somewhere in dublin

JimmySmith

Do yourself or a mate have a spare hard drive lying around that you can spare. If so, just pop it in and away you go. The screwdriver bits can be bought in woodies or atlantic etc for a few €
A disk 40GB disk can be bought be bought very cheaply.
it will take you no more than 5 minutes to change the disk believe it or not.
I wouldnt go buying one even to have a spare. Better off having a spare disk as thats 99% what goes wrong anyway.

Just trying to save you a few bob

Tony

I'm sorry I cant go into that as it may be thought of as advertising which is not allowed here. You only need the box so you should be looking to pay around 264 for the box alone

bossman99 wrote:

Thanks Tony...


Where would I get them retail? I'm based in city centre. Do you sell them? I can only see the whole package on your website. Dont need the quad as everything else is working just not the sky+ box. what sort of eurobucks are we talking?

Tony

bossman99 wrote:

please help.... cant find anywhere that sells the digibox by itself other than the uk..... must be somewhere in dublin

there is

DMC

http://www.satellite.ie/acatalog/Sky__receiver_and_digital_video_recorder.html tbh....

bossman99

JimmySmith wrote:

Do yourself or a mate have a spare hard drive lying around that you can spare. If so, just pop it in and away you go. The screwdriver bits can be bought in woodies or atlantic etc for a few €
A disk 40GB disk can be bought be bought very cheaply.
it will take you no more than 5 minutes to change the disk believe it or not.
I wouldnt go buying one even to have a spare. Better off having a spare disk as thats 99% what goes wrong anyway.

Just trying to save you a few bob

unfortunately not. If i had i would have sorted it last night before the match. shame i had to go to be pub.......;)

Kesh electrics are not back until 9th jan... is there anywhere else to get the parts for the pace box?

digitaldr

Am I right in thinking that your box is stuck in standby? If so it doesn't sound like the hard disc is the problem. maybe you should try popping it into a PC and see if it works??

webbie

Your other option is to phone Sky and tell them you want to cancel your subscription because your Sky+ box is knackered. Go all the way through the process of cancelling your subscription and most likely just before they cut you off they will offer you some sort of deal on a new box (there have been various posts in the past saying this works), you will probably have to commit to another 12 month contract. If they do actually go ahead and cancel your sub, you can always phone back once you fix the box or get a new one and reinstate your subscription again but as it is you can't view anything at the moment anyway.

If you do try this, let us know how you get on as I'm thinking of trying this myself to get a 2nd Sky+ box.

JimmySmith

Another thing you might try is a full low level format of the hard disk. This usually fixes disk corruption problems if the disked is not physically screwed.
You'll need to download the maxtor tools for this.
The tool makes a floppy for you. Just put the disk in yo0ur pc and swith it on. Takes a few hours to complete. Basically its a complete reset of the disk.

A word of advice though. Unplug your existing disk from your PC before doing this. Some people have formatted the wrong disk