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If your DirecTV DVR box took itself offline late yesterday afternoon or early evening (or earlier depending on your time zone), don't worry, there probably isn't anything wrong. I experienced this myself, and come to find out, it was a SNAFU on DirecTV's part, and not a sign that my receiver was about to give up the ghost.
According to Fudzilla, only DirecTV DVR units appear to have been affected by the seemingly random lockup. Apparently there was an issue with a program guide update that confuzzled DVR boxes to the point where they froze and/or shut down. Making matters worse, DirecTV was attempting to push out a software update at the same time, which just led to more problems.
If your box is still locked up, you should be able to bring it back to life by pressing the red button behind the access card door on the front and letting it run through its cycle. Once it finishes, press the red button a second time within 30 minutes. What this does is delete the corrupted program guide information, forcing it to reload.
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08-15
June 11, 2010 at 11:01am
After mine froze up, when I called in, I found it ominous that the initial greeting to their customer service line was an announcement on how to perform a basic reset. I'd already tried that on my own with no luck.
My box (an HR22 HD DVR) could not be helped. I have to credit DirecTV that their customer service reps/techline folks were helpful and didn't make me repeat what had already been tried from one call to another. Besides the reset button, they explained how to make the DVR do a reformat (really a chkdsk routine, I think), and another method to make it do a full reboot - neither worked, of course, so the solution is to replace my receiver - at no cost to me, and I'll get a credit for the time my service was unavailable.
Although I'd tried to cancel the protection plan that costs $6 a month, now I'm glad I have it - I'd have been covered under warranty for another month, but after that, I'd have been on my own.
AndyYankee17
June 09, 2010 at 11:56am
the software update was for 3D. I have no idea why they didn't push it at 3 AM
FrancesTheMute
June 09, 2010 at 11:46am
I'm not sure if any of our STBs got screwed up, but I did notice that they were all turned on when I got home from work, they're generally left in stand-by mode when they are not in use. I'm guessing DirecTV sent out a system wide push to fix whatever issue they were having.
