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This is my first post, but I've been lurking so I think you guys can help me with my problem.

For about the last week my DVR has been very, very slow bringing up the guide and responding to other remote commands, such as list and entering channel numbers, etc. It has also been freeze framing on recording playbacks and more recently on live tv as well. When I say freeze framing I don't mean pixelating, I mean on recordings that it freezes for about a minute and then resumes right where it left off. Live TV does the same but of course it jumps back live. The only commands it responds to during that time is the off button. I can go back to the recording, rewind a little and resume playback and it doesn't freeze again at the same spot. Last night I was trying to watch a recording and it froze on me about every thirty seconds. It also doesn't pause very well on live tv.

Also, a few days ago playback and live tv was very choppy looking. The picture wasn't smooth at all, but audio was okay. I haven't noticed this recently.

I have another DVR in the bedroom, and it is not having any problems.

The guide sometimes takes almost a minute to come up. And it is so slow entering channels that sometimes it will decide that the first digit isn't a valid channel before it takes the other digits. This is driving me nuts.

I also have an AM21 OTA tuner connected to the box. I have my antenna connected to both the TV directly and to the AM21 via a splitter. The picture for local channels when viewed through the TV directly is crystal clear with high signal strength. The picture when viewed through the AM21 is pixelated, but the signal strength is high. I reconnected the antenna directly to the AM21 with the same result. This situation resolves itself for a little while with a reset.

I will say that my son's family has been visiting this week, so the TV has been on most of the day, instead of just at night. And, no, they didn't do anything to it.

This is what I have tried so far:

I have reset the thing about 15 times. This sometimes helps for a little while, sometimes it doesn't help at all.

I have unplugged the unit for a minute to do a hard reset. Same result as a red button reset.

I have updated the software twice in the last week.

I have done a system test from the menu. The only error was not having a phone line connected.

I have done a surface test twice, as well as most of the other diagnostics. No errors.

I have checked my satellite signal strength. 90's and 80's.

Most of these help for a little while, but I think it is the reset involved that is doing it.

I called DTV tech support last night. It was mostly a waste of time. I felt like I knew more than she did. For the guide problem, she had me be sure that native format was off (it was because I already did that) and had me turn off scrolling effects. I don't think she understood what I meant when I said the picture froze because she just kept telling me she couldn't help me with the recordings because it probably recorded that way. I mentioned it might be the hard drive but she was pretty much clueless and was just going through her troubleshooting instructions. She asked me how much space I had left to record (18%) and she said I probably needed to delete some recordings and make it at least 50% because sometimes that will make it act up. I've had it down to 3% before without any problems. After I hung up I deleted a bunch of things, like the children's programs recorded in the last week (does anybody else just despise Dora the Explorer?) and got it to 50%. Of course that didn't help at all.

Is my hard drive going bad, and how do I get that through to tech support so they will send me a new one? This is driving me crazy so any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.