Failed Again

Belly

Belly

Belly

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My sky+ planner keeps displaying FAILED against recorded programmes. It’s intermittent. The reason shown states insufficient disk space.

I know this to be incorrect with over 26% of the disk free for recording. It’s only just started happening this week.

Any ideas? It’s a Thomson box which came with sky in 2006.
 
press services on your remote and then press 4, 0, 1, select.

this should take you into an engineers menu.

within there rebuild your planner (defrags it) and see if it happens again.

if it does go back into the same menu and format your system.
it'll wipe everything off but if it's not recording it shouldn't be an issue.

hopefully one of those will work for you.

also something else you could try is a software update too.

Turn your machine off at the plug
Press and hold the backup button on the box
keep it pressed and turn back on the sky box
keep it pressed until all lights on front light up
a message on screen should tell you it's updating.
once finished it should just turn off and hopefully have any updates installed.

this may help also
 
Thanx a lot Magicroundabout, I've tried your first recommendation and I'll see how it goes from there.
 
Thanx

Not Really! I did a planner rebuild: the sky+ box then turns itself off and can be turned back on almost immediately. This seems pretty strange because defragging a HDD on a computer takes quite some time. At the moment it’s hit-and-miss, it records some and doesn’t record others, the amount of remaining space seems immaterial. It’s very strange, I’ll set a programme to record through the planner and wait for the red button and nothing will happen. I look at the planner and it will state FAILED, I come out to the planner find the programme through either all programmes, or by selecting the programme and hitting the record button and the programme will record. At the moment I’ve got something like 47% free space but all FAILED recording state out of disc space.

At the moment I have a few programmes I recorded some time ago and haven’t got round to viewing (Jonathan Meeades and some foreign films) that I don’t want to loose before I try a complete rebuild. I watched the whole eight recorded episodes of Ashes to Ashes this weekend to free up some space.

Does a Software Update wipe the drive?
 
Belly said:
Thanx

Not Really! I did a planner rebuild: the sky+ box then turns itself off and can be turned back on almost immediately. This seems pretty strange because defragging a HDD on a computer takes quite some time. At the moment it’s hit-and-miss, it records some and doesn’t record others, the amount of remaining space seems immaterial. It’s very strange, I’ll set a programme to record through the planner and wait for the red button and nothing will happen. I look at the planner and it will state FAILED, I come out to the planner find the programme through either all programmes, or by selecting the programme and hitting the record button and the programme will record. At the moment I’ve got something like 47% free space but all FAILED recording state out of disc space.

At the moment I have a few programmes I recorded some time ago and haven’t got round to viewing (Jonathan Meeades and some foreign films) that I don’t want to loose before I try a complete rebuild. I watched the whole eight recorded episodes of Ashes to Ashes this weekend to free up some space.

Does a Software Update wipe the drive?
Click to expand...

NO. A software update leaves your recordings intact so it's probably best to try this first before doing a format of the HDD.

Hopefully that will work for you
 
This may sound strange but check that nothing has been moved in the way of the dish' view of the satellite.
My parents had a similar problem with programs not recording for no obvious reason.
I tried defrag, even swapped the drive for a new one, but didn't fix it.
In the end we got an engineer to move the dish, and it all worked perfectly. Turned out that after 20 years of perfect view from dish in same position, a tree had grown just enough to block the satellite.
 
If you do go down the route of changing HDDs you can try Copy+ :)

I moved my standard 160GB drive to a 1TB drive when I bought my Sky HD+ box.
 
Thanx MagicRoundabout, I’ve just done a software update. The actual update version is still the same (5.04.e), so I’ll see how it goes.

Thanx El Watcher – No I don’t think there is anything new on the horizon. I’ve got it fixed to the wall of my house about a foot above my garage and it has a clear view. Next door neighbour’s cat is on my suspect list ‘cus it’s always on my garage roof. Snagglepuss will become Stranglepuss if it is him!

Thanx EVH – copy+ looks like ROCKET (typo edit) science to me but I’ll have to consider it if I don’t have any success. How does one “get into” the back of a Sky+ box to change the HDD? Is there an Idiot’s guide, with lots of photos? Simple Hammer and Screwdriver jobby?
 
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No, the software update did not cure it.

Thinking about it I've only started having this problem since I installed SKY's new viewing card. I certainly never had the problem before installation. I wonder if that could be the problem?
 
I rang Sky! The friendly man from Bradford (or was it Bombay) advised me to do exactly the same as I have been advised to do on this forum.

I said that I did NOT recall this problem before I was issued with the new viewing card. He said that would have nothing to do with the problem.

I also asked about Anytime TV which I’ve got switched on by default, he stated that Anytime TV could NOT be causing the problem.

The only advice he could give me was to “Go Where No Man Has Gone Before” and reformat the HDD. I said I’d view the important stuff I’ve still got on the planner and then give that a try.

I asked him what would be the next step if the reformat didn’t work. He said they would send out an engineer (on payment of course), I could take out an extended warranty (?) of some sort, and pay for a reconditioned Sky+ box which would be guaranteed for three months. The box I have was installed new in 2006.

I’m still considering ditching Sky, mainly for financial reasons, and buying a FreeSat Box. But then I’d really miss Sky Sports, Sky Arts etc.

Of course if it’s NOT the Sky+ box causing the problem, but next door’s cat, I might still have the same problem with FreeSat.
 
there has been reported issues with anytime tv causing issues with Sky boxes etc.

with the HD there is lipsync issues and a simple switch off of anytime tv cures this.

it's worth trying to turn this off but personally it is looking towards a format of your system.
 
Belly said:
I rang Sky! The friendly man from Bradford (or was it Bombay) advised me to do exactly the same as I have been advised to do on this forum.

I said that I did NOT recall this problem before I was issued with the new viewing card. He said that would have nothing to do with the problem.

I also asked about Anytime TV which I’ve got switched on by default, he stated that Anytime TV could NOT be causing the problem.

The only advice he could give me was to “Go Where No Man Has Gone Before” and reformat the HDD. I said I’d view the important stuff I’ve still got on the planner and then give that a try.

I asked him what would be the next step if the reformat didn’t work. He said they would send out an engineer (on payment of course), I could take out an extended warranty (?) of some sort, and pay for a reconditioned Sky+ box which would be guaranteed for three months. The box I have was installed new in 2006.

I’m still considering ditching Sky, mainly for financial reasons, and buying a FreeSat Box. But then I’d really miss Sky Sports, Sky Arts etc.

Of course if it’s NOT the Sky+ box causing the problem, but next door’s cat, I might still have the same problem with FreeSat.
Click to expand...

I had all that guff and then rang disconnections and got a free box.

Seriously there's a point at which they don't lose you for a box unless you're new, you've had sky+ longer than I had when my psu went bang last year.

Ring up and disconnect because you're not prepared to pay for a replacement box when you're paying £40+ a month (I also don't have any premium channels so you're instantly a better customer than me) and if through some disaster you don't get another free box then you can always ring up in a couple of weeks and say you've changed your mind.
 
I’ve managed to view or delete all the programmes on the planner. Five hours of Jonathan Meades has left me brain battered!

I then did a complete reformat (option 8 I believe) and so far it seems to be working OK - but it is a bit too early to be certain. The proof will be recording series links because previously it failed 80% of the time.

If it doesn’t work I’ll go down the line suggested by Matt100, so thanks for your advice Matt. Hopefully it will be OK.

Next door neighbour’s cat is off-the-hook!
 
I had the same problems with my old original Thomson box and paid the extended warranty and got a newer Thomson which solved the problem but after searching around on the Internet found out the problem is probably the well know PSU issues this box has.

I wish I had changed the PSU rather than changing the box, I wonder if yours has the same problem .

Have a look on AVforums and do a search for "Thomson PSU"
 
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