I am pretty sure I have the 'lock satellite' turned on...but I can't get into it to turn it off, nor can I get into the Parental Controls. Here's what I did:
1. Decided to blind scan Galaxy 18, so I went in to Manual Scan and deleted the TPs.
2. Went into Automatic Scan and chose FTA-ALL and set it to 4 (instead of the default of 6)
(this scans for 250 possible TPs, but it found 18 or 19 when it was done)
3. Edited the channels and sorted them by name.
-- This is basically what I do a month or so --
4. The next few days when I powered on my receiver it would ask for a PIN.
5. I would punch in 0000 and it would work.
6. After a week of this, I decided to rerun through steps 1 to 3 thinking I messed something up.
7. It still would ask for a PIN, so I did a search here...found mention of the 'lock satellite'.
8. Checked the settings but didn't see it on (showed Lock Sat = No)
9. Decided to post here.
10. Tried the Parental Control recommendation:
A. Put in the "old" PIN of 0000
B. Put in a new PIN of 0000, and reentered it.
C. Pressed OK on the 'Unlock' and it said it saved it.
11. Tried to bring up a channel, and it asked for a PIN, but 0000 didn't work.
12. Powered off the receiver and even left it disconnected from the power for a few hours.
13. Tried the PINs recommended on this site for Fortecs.
14. Decided last night to reload the firmware from Fortec (LifeClassicFTA_375SUA_XPA_NOX_XL_060206)
15. No luck. Still asking for a PIN and no PIN I found works.
I even e-mailed Fortec last night taking a chance they'd reply. It ran through the firmware update with no problems. I figured this would clear everything but it didn't appear that it did (ask it's still asking for a PIN). I never turned on Parental Control (lock). I was taking a chance just setting a PIN would be the trick.
I know this happened to me some time back where it was always asking for a PIN. I thought once I did a factory reset it fixed it...however, no PIN I enter gets me into anything, except Tetris and Snake (the games). Anything else prompts for this mysterious PIN.
Now, I wouldn't be surprised if it's gone to that Clark Belt in the sky. I don't exactly have a lot of space between all the receivers I have under my TV, so I could see how over time this eventually would fail due to heat exposure (it's the top receiver in the group). I think heat played a factor in my HD receiver dying some time back. Plus, it's always done some weird things, namely how it keeps track of the time or how it won't turn on with the remote and I need to switch the power switch off & on to reset it.