Advice on getting to talk to a clueful tech at e*

[dboreham]

I have a new 942 that reboots constantly. Looking at the diagnostic
counters page, I see a large number of OS watchdog timer events,
roughly similar to the number of times it's rebooted. It only reboots
when I have the sat feed connected. If I leave that disconnected it
stays up solidly and operates correctly (or as far as it can with no
sat input). Once the sat signal is connected it goes through the
aquisition process and then is unresponsive to the remote (although
front panel buttons still do something). It displays a picture (HD)
but of course I can't get the guide up or change channel. Shortly
after (the watchdog timer interval perhaps?) the box reboots.
Left to its own devices it will do this all night.

I called e* tech support last night. Was put through to 'someone
that had been on the training for the 942'. That tech ignored what
I said about watchdog timer count and said 'it's trying to take a download'.
Actually he didn't seem to know what I watchdog timer was.
He advised to leave the receiver 'off' (which means powered but in standby
mode I guess) overnight. Needless to say when I did so it failed to cure
the rebooting syndrome. It's exactly the same this morning. The 'it's
trying to take a download' thing seems to be the e* equivalent of 'try rebooting your PC'.

So my question: what magic phrases should I use when talking to tech
support folk so I stand the best chance of my call being escalated to someone
with some clue about known bugs in the 942 ?

It's running the L282 release.

At what point should I give up and return the unit to the retailer ?
I took delivery of it a week ago.

 

[Tom Bombadil]

There are sharp techs in the Dish organization, I've found a couple over the years. But I don't know how to get to them. I remember once that when the tech I was speaking too got totally stumped, he forwarded me to an "engineer" who was very good.

I just activated my 942 (w/L282) yesterday with no particularly annoying problems as yet. However at the time I called to activate, I had only one of my satellites inputs connected (because I was still using the other one for another task). I had already run through all of the check switches and was calling just to have the 942 activated.

When I told him that I had only one dish input, he told me that a 942 could not work with only one input. He insisted upon it. When I responded by telling him that it was already working, and that I was sitting here watching the HD Demo Channel, he let out this, "uhhhhhhhhhhh". Then he turned on the rest of my channels and it worked perfectly.

I connected the second input the next day, and ran a check switch, and both now work fine. I thought I might have to call Dish back but didn't.

 

[gdarwin]

One day my 942 started rebooting randomly... At the time I was moving my OTA antenna around in the attic trying to get a better signal. Each time I would try a new position I would watch to see how it was doing. My signals were going up and down like crazy on all the OTA channels. I decided to bite the bullet and mount the antenna on the roof.

As soon as I did this the reboot problem went away. My guess is mutipath signals were driving the receiver crazy also... My OTA channels are rock steady now and I don't need an amp.

G.