losing services

i recently got a dreambox 500 for my sister.plugged it into my set up , flashed it, scanned for servises all worked great , no probs .left it running for a week all ok.
went to my sisters plugged it in, scanned found everything, good strong signal all ok.
but heres the thing, when we turned off power to the dream, on re-starting all services were gone, and we had to re scan, all found again but a pain in the butt .
the difference between our set ups are this
me.......
ex telewest, older connection , telewest broadband set top box with no card- ( signal split to tw box and dream box) no virgin broadband connection
sister..........
ex ntl, new connection ,virgin hd set top box, with card , (signal split to set top box then dream ) with broadband connection
my question is this, has anybody else got this problem ? and what can i do about it ?
is this to do with fact her box uses a card, and is this an attempt from virgin to combat the dream box boys, any thoughts fellas ???

That's strange.....

If your using the DW 2.0 image there's an option to backup/restore your sevices via the blue button under 'User Features'

yes i am using dw image , will this solve the problem without to much hassle, as i will have to instruct her over the phone and she aint too good a technical stuff !!

It's not really a solution to the problem, but it will save you having to keep scanning for all the channels till you find the problem

great, so i go blue button - user features - service backup. then user features - service restore
and she will be able to turn off power and then on restart her services will be there ??

That's the idea

If there not there when you turn it back on just goto restore services in the menu and it should replace them

thanks monkey top man, ill get on the phone to her and sort it out

Can I clarify this - every timethe dreambox is turned off at the wall, it looses the channels?

I think this may have happened to me.

Do I need to rescan, or can I just turn it back on? I left mine on for a couple of days, but nothing has come back.

You shouldn't have to do anything. I have unplugged mine, taken it to a friends house and connected it there hours later and everything was as it was left.....

I don't understand why your boxes are losing the channels.

Try changing your default password to the box if you havent already.

MONKey said:

You shouldn't have to do anything. I have unplugged mine, taken it to a friends house and connected it there hours later and everything was as it was left.....

I don't understand why your boxes are losing the channels.

Try changing your default password to the box if you havent already.

Click to expand...

Do you mean the FTP password? How do I change that?

click on START > RUN and type 'telnet 192.168.100.5' (Replace the IP with the IP of your box)

Login with username 'root' Password 'dreambox'

Then type passwd and press ENTER.

The prompts will take you from there

MONKey said:

click on START > RUN and type 'telnet 192.168.100.5' (Replace the IP with the IP of your box)

Login with username 'root' Password 'dreambox'

Then type passwd and press ENTER.

The prompts will take you from there

Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply.

I have never had to enter a password to telnet to my box. This is what I get when I telnet to the box:

PLi« iolite dm600pvr

dm600pvr login: root
root@dm600pvr ~ #


How do I change the password?

Type 'passwd' and see if it prompts you?

Thanks again for the lightening quick replies!

That changed the password:

PLi« iolite dm600pvr

dm600pvr login: root
root@dm600pvr ~ # passwd
Changing password for root
Enter the new password (minimum of 5, maximum of 8 characters)
Please use a combination of upper and lower case letters and numbers.
Enter new password:
Re-enter new password:
Password changed.
root@dm600pvr ~ #

How does this help the box to clear channels more quickly?

Cheers

It doesn't lol

The only reason I can think of for you losing your channels is someone is accessing your box from the outside (May be some new attack VM are trying).

If you change your default password then they, or anyone else will have to spend a lot of time to get into your box. That's if they can now get in at all

OK, lets hope that'll work!

Thanks

OK - some progress.

I remembered that I had also upgraded to Evocamd 2.17 around the time that this started, so i downgraded back to 2.14, and that seemed to clear a number of channels instantly. I then began changing channels, and ran into problems again! I keep losing channels, and then finding them again. Occasionally, they freeze, or become blocky/pixellated.

I then began to think of possibly a weak signal. My SNR ranges 94-97% and AGC ranges 45-48%. Is this normal?

As a third possibility, I wondered if it might be the new hard disc that I installed that set this off. The HDD does spin a lot even if it's not recording, or playing anything. I has been functioning well othersise, in terms of recording and playing back properly. Could this be the culprit?

Any ideas?

Sorry for the late reply but DigitalWorldz died on me last night.....

err76 said:

OK - some progress.

I remembered that I had also upgraded to Evocamd 2.17 around the time that this started, so i downgraded back to 2.14, and that seemed to clear a number of channels instantly. I then began changing channels, and ran into problems again! I keep losing channels, and then finding them again. Occasionally, they freeze, or become blocky/pixellated.

Click to expand...

Sorry err76 m8, I mis-understood what you meant by losing channels. I thought you was the same as cheechnchomg. In that case I would downgrade yet again to Evocamd 2.12 as I was having some peoblems with channels not clearing and locking up and that solcevd it

err76 said:

I then began to think of possibly a weak signal. My SNR ranges 94-97% and AGC ranges 45-48%. Is this normal?

Click to expand...

That singal strength looks fine to me, certainly not weak at 97%. Could also be your problem as too strong a signal can also cause problems. If you a have any attenuators try a low one on your line. From my experiance it's best to keep your SNR around 92 - 95% on all channels.

err76 said:

As a third possibility, I wondered if it might be the new hard disc that I installed that set this off. The HDD does spin a lot even if it's not recording, or playing anything. I has been functioning well othersise, in terms of recording and playing back properly. Could this be the culprit?

Any ideas?

Click to expand...

I don't think the HDD will be the problem. It's most likely spinning all the time so that when you press record there is no delay. I would imagine there is a spin down time you can set somewhere but being as I have a DM500-C that has no drives built in I couldn't tell you.

MONKey said:

Sorry for the late reply but DigitalWorldz died on me last night.....

Sorry err76 m8, I mis-understood what you meant by losing channels. I thought you was the same as cheechnchomg. In that case I would downgrade yet again to Evocamd 2.12 as I was having some peoblems with channels not clearing and locking up and that solcevd it

That singal strength looks fine to me, certainly not weak at 97%. Could also be your problem as too strong a signal can also cause problems. If you a have any attenuators try a low one on your line. From my experiance it's best to keep your SNR around 92 - 95% on all channels.

Click to expand...

Thanks again for the reply. I will try the downgrade first. I don't think I can downgrade past 2.13 on the box itself. Where should I put the file when I ftp into the box? I thought I saw a thread in the forums on how to do this, but I cannot find it now. Where can I find 2.12?

Regarding the attenuator, would something like this suit?

www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?ModuleNo=223051

Thanks again for all this help.

2.13 should be fine m8 but if your still having problems i'm sure someone else will point you in the right direction as I believe the filesystems work different on other boxes than on a DM500 so can't really say.

That attenuator should work. Looks like it's designed for a standard ariel so better double check. Being as it's got coax connections you'll also need some coax to f adapters