Sky+ help please

I kept this separate from kwak's thread cos it's more of a tech help request, hope that's ok.

I'm house-sitting for some friends at the moment & their Sky+ box has just died! I was settling down to watch the TT coverage on ITV4 and the picture went off and the box turned itself to standby & won't turn back on.

I've unplugged at the mains & plugged back in after a few mins but still no joy. My Virgin+ box does a similar thing sometimes if it gets too hot but my mates' Sky box is on a shelf with plenty of ventilation - doesn't feel particularly hot to touch either.

Any ideas please? I haven't got the number to ring Sky and I doubt they'd deal with me anyway as I'm not their customer (data protection and all that ).

I hope it's not goosed cos i'm house-sitting until the end of the week - just imagine no telly for the rest of the week!! AAAAARRGH!!

Thanks guys

My Sky+ box did it not long ago.

Try soft-resetting it (press & hold the standby button on the remote for 10 seconds). The red light on the box will flash a couple of times, then it comes back to life (if it worked). When it comes on it will have to re-search for the channels etc, but it'll sort itself out.

I'm told it happens when they send out a bad update to the box, the box rejects it & refuses to operate. Great roll out scheme eh?

Cheers Baph, I think that's done the job.

Missed most of the TT highlights though, bugger

oh please dont tel me sky have problems with their + box

Originally Posted by kwak zzr

oh please dont tel me sky have problems with their + box

Nah, the above issue happens on all their boxes. It doesn't matter if you have the basic one, Sky+, or the HD compatible box.

It's all essentially the same equipment, with a PCI board inside for the add-on's, and each one in a different case to accomodate the flashing lights & buttons.

I'm told that what basically happens is that when they send a "critical" update to the box, if the update is interrupted, the box is "unusable." This was a serious flaw in the design a few years back, as an "interruption" could be using the remote!! (Why do you think they now have a flashing light to say "update in progress").

Back then, an "unusable" box was just that, you needed a new one. They sorted that out quickly though by patching it to keep a last known good setup. That's what the soft-reset does, it over-writes the setup with the last known good.

To perform the soft-reset takes all of 60 seconds, and in all honesty, it happens so infrequently I'm supprised that Sky don't sing from the roof tops about it. They could say they have a known issue, and this is the fix for it. They'd gain a lot of brownie points from us geeks.

*a critical update is defined as one that alters the core operating system.

Originally Posted by kwak zzr

oh please dont tel me sky have problems with their + box

Had problems with my sky+ box for the first few months I had it, had to wipe it 2 or 3 times to get it running, There is a maintenance menu which I think is either 01 or 10 but I cant remember which menu you have to be in to access it

Originally Posted by the_runt69

There is a maintenance menu which I think is either 01 or 10 but I cant remember which menu you have to be in to access it

Services (release), 4, 0, 1, Select (release). Then it's option 7 to re-partition/format the disk.

my parents normal sky box used to just freeze, normally around 5-6pm.

nobody knew why

hasnt done it for a while though