**DISH ViP 722 lock-up/freezing vide problems!!!**

[AngryStamen]

Starting Monday, February 11th, my DVR has been randomly locking up/freezing during playback of pre-recorded DVR events. No warning signs at all, no rhyme or reason; a show will be playing back, and all of a sudden the picture freezes. No buttons pushed on the remote control or the DVR box itself will unfreeze the image, or exit out to live TV . At this point, there is no remedy but to reboot the box. Let me also state that nothing has changed with my setup: the box has not been moved/bumped, the vents are not being blocked, it is still plugged into the same powers trip that it has been for the last 2 years.


I have only noticed it on playback of pre-recorded events, but this may be because we rarely watch live TV. This freezing will happen whether I am recording other TV shows during playback, or when nothing is recording at all. When recording other shows, even if I leave the frozen image up and do not reboot until after the shows are over at the top of the hour, the damage is already done. After reboot, the show are cut off at the moment the picture froze from the playback of the pre-recorded DVR event, even though the red record light stayed lit the entire time.


Now that it has become a consistent and recurring problem, I'm reaching out to the community here. Has anyone else experienced the same kind of problem? Some postings I've read suggest that there may be an issue with the hard drive going bad/dying. Others have indicated that perhaps the box is over-heating. Here are the numbers from the diagnostic test:


Hard Drive Counters:

• Dst: 0x00
• Hard Drive Info: 0x6034
• HDD High Temp: 134 d F
• HDD Low Temp: 104 d F
• HDD Average Temp: 122 d F
• Reformat Partition: 0x00
• Fsck: 0 : 02-14-13 5:59 am
• Transfer Mode : 0
• Fail FS Count : 0
• Fail umount Count: 7
• HDD SMART status: 0
• HDD Last Fcode: 0x0521
• HDD START FCount: 5
• RCount E:V:A:M 0:1:1:0
• MCount E:M 5:3
• DST Count:Result 1: 0x80
• HDD EFS RW FAIL count: 0

If anyone can offer some insight here, I'd really appreciate it. I have a DVR full of shows that I don't want to lose by either a dead hard drive, or having to get a replacement DVR. Of course, maybe a silver lining here; perhaps I could convince DISH to send a Hopper/Joey setup, if they need to send a replacement DVR, as a show of good-faith.

Thanks!

 

[MaryB@SlingTV]

Hi, I am sorry that you are having a problem with your DVR and I would like to assist you. Can you please tell me what percentage of your hard drive is full right now? Also, please PM me your account or phone number so I can check the internal diagnostics on the receiver? Thank you!

 

[dare2be]

I'd buy an external USB hard drive and start transferring shows to it, just in case.

 

[AngryStamen]

Son of a b!tch!! Just froze again (during a recording that I was watching live), but this time, I was pushing over ~30 shows to my EHD. The transfer said 3+ hours, and after only 5 minutes, everything froze up!!

AHHHH!!!! DISH, what the hell?!!?!

Rebooting now, and PRAYING that everything is not corrupt!! I have ALOT of stuff on my EHD...if this freeze up during a transfer causes that to get corrupted and I lose almost a terabyte of movies/TV shows...won't be happy! :

 

[TheKrell]

Plug your EHD into a Linux box and run fsck on it. That should recover at least as much as can be recovered, which would probably be everything that wasn't being written at the time of the crash.

 

[JayStil]

I've got the same issue Angry. I'm pretty sure it's a sign of the hard drive dying. I've been trying to offload my recordings to EHD a few at a time. If I try to do too many at once it will error out after a few and I have to start over.

One strange thing with mine is older recordings playback fine. Only the ones that have been recorded since the problem began have issues. I don't have much hope for those working after being transferred to EHD, but will try it anyway.

 

[AngryStamen]

Plug your EHD into a Linux box and run fsck on it. That should recover at least as much as can be recovered, which would probably be everything that wasn't being written at the time of the crash.

Thanks for the suggestion...hopefully, it won't come to that. I'll also have to scrounge up a Linux box, since I do not have one.

 

[AngryStamen]

The situation is not improving. Came downstairs today and looked at the screen, where it was 2 of 5 green bars into reboot, and had been that way for an hour, my wife told me. I reset the box, and it again hung there for 15 minutes. I have now unplugged the box and I have also put one of my wife's cooling racks underneath it, thinking that maybe it is a heat issue. This now gives the ViP 722 a minimum of 3" clearance on all sides. Maybe I should leave it unplugged until I get home this evening?

So FRUSTRATING!!!

 

[AngryStamen]

I've got the same issue Angry. I'm pretty sure it's a sign of the hard drive dying. I've been trying to offload my recordings to EHD a few at a time. If I try to do too many at once it will error out after a few and I have to start over.

One strange thing with mine is older recordings playback fine. Only the ones that have been recorded since the problem began have issues. I don't have much hope for those working after being transferred to EHD, but will try it anyway.

Thanks, Jay...Probably is a dying hard drive. Looks like I have a nice long weekend pushing 50+ hours of HD tv shows/movies off to my EHD!! And then, a call (or multiple calls) to DISH about this issue!!

 

[Charise]

That sounds exactly like the behavior I was seeing before a hard drive failure. I, too, tried to get as many progams as possible to the EHD a few at a time, which was not totally successful, as I recall.

Did you contact Mary as she requested? The DIRT team members do a GREAT job, and Mary will be able to help you with a replacement too.

 

[ardeel]

a dish dvr is like a desk top pc, minus, a power supply, the ability to defrag the disc and run disc clean up. so plug the power cord directly into the wall outlet, especially if its in a cheap and over crowded power strip ( worried about surge protection ? why ? a 3 prongged power cord neads as much surge protection as your washing machine , low current is more destructive besides its leased ) If you only have 10 hrs of space available, clean it out and look into an external HD. Delete those old recordings that you know youll never watch anyways ( if they were any good, you would of watched them by now ) Clean out your list of timers, issues start around 85-95 timers. delete the search history if you use it often, shut off the memory hogging banner from the guide, shut off mode reminder and inactivity stand by

 

[AngryStamen]

That sounds exactly like the behavior I was seeing before a hard drive failure. I, too, tried to get as many progams as possible to the EHD a few at a time, which was not totally successful, as I recall.

Did you contact Mary as she requested? The DIRT team members do a GREAT job, and Mary will be able to help you with a replacement too.

Thanks Charise, I did contact Mary...she basically said that if I wanted, they could send me a replacment (same kind-ViP 722, I assume) for $15. I'm really wanting to move to the Hopper universe though.

 

[AngryStamen]

Well, the saga continues. Froze up again during an EHD transfer. I did manage to get a batch of shows over, though...about 6 or 8. Then, during the last transfer, it froze up. I reset. But this time, I saw a new screen:



I hit OK and it attempted to boot up:


Then, I got the real scare:

When I hit ok, it would go back to the "Acquiring Signal" screen, stop at two green bars, and go back to the "Hard Drive Failure" screen.

No amount of reboots helped it.

So, I unplugged the box for ~45 minutes. I really figured that I was screwed by this point, and I was already thinking about which shows I would now have to find online to watch.

But when I plugged it back in again, low and behold, it came back online! I got this message:


It went all the way through and came back to live TV. I immediately back to pushing shows over to the EHD.

Hell of a song and dance I got goin' on tonight!!

 

[flatlander]

My DVR also started freezing up a week or two ago, been freezing more frequently every day. I first wondered if it was a software update gone awry, but since there aren't many complaints, looks like I may also be seeing a dying hard drive. Looks like it's time to contact the DIRT team...

 

[eacalhoun]

I realize "your mileage may vary", but typically how long do the 722 or 722k units last until their hard drives begin to fail? I've had mine for 2 years with no problems, but I'm just curious.

Eric

 

[lucky86]

I had a 722 for years and never had hard drive failure.

 

[JayStil]

According to the activation date in MyDish account I've had my 722 for 5 years. Just started acting up with signs of hard drive failure last month. Finally ordered a replacement last night.

 

[ohioankev]

That is how my 722 ended it's life. The only problem is you won't get a new 722 you'll receive a reconditioned one. Hoepfully it works out for you but I had nothing but problems with mine which is why when the Hopper was released I upgraded. One thing I noticed was your high temp was 134 degrees. You might want to get some kind of usb fan and vent out the heat on your next unit. This is the one that recommended to me here at Satelliteguys a couple years ago.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00080G0BK/?tag=satell01-20

 

[ohioankev]

That is how my 722 ended it's life. The only problem is you won't get a new 722 you'll receive a reconditioned one. Hopefully it works out for you but I had nothing but problems with my replacement and had to replace it again six months later. That is why when the Hopper was released I upgraded. One thing I noticed was your high temp was 134 degrees. You might want to get some kind of usb fan and vent out the heat on your next unit. This is the one that recommended to me here at Satelliteguys a couple years ago.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00080G0BK/?tag=satell01-20

 

[dvrexpander]

ran a 622 for nearly 7 years before the HDD started to fail - I had a external I was moving things over to at random times so I never lost anything when I switched it out. If you lose content just remember its only TV, not the end of the world and should be pretty easy to swap out.