And Then A Fix...

Monday morning, up bright and early and after the usual early glower at each other, got ourselves booted and spurred and headed off out. After a tootle round the countryside and a spot of lunch we returned home and her first job was to turn on the TV and satellite box. This was the point at which things went downhill somewhat.

The TV screen presented us with a message to the effect that the box was still initializing and to drop by again later... This we did to be greeted with the same message.

Wot to do? Same as always when presented with a problem; have a quick Google to relax and get in the right frame of mind for the job to hand and then search the Web-a-Net.

Of the ‘fixes’ I found and tried repeatedly, none worked. Wot to do? Call the satellite box help line? Okay, this I did and was soon in conversation with a nice Pakanasty fellow with whom I was soon on the two way familial of Pak an’ Mac. He basically talked me through the ‘fixes’ I’d already tried along with a few extra tweaks. Nothing, and the response times regarding actions and any result were getting longer and longer. Box dying? 

Short story long, an engineer was booked for this Thursday so we’re stuck with ten{?} TV channels ‘till then. No big deal as there’s nothing worth a watch however many channels you have but the thing is, with the satellite, she has hundreds of channels to flip through and by the time realisation dawns that there’s ‘nothing on’, it’s time for bed. Ten{?} channels are quickly checked thus leaving a gaping empty chasm in her evening. Not really, but it sounded good in my head.

Thus we sat in the red glow of the BBC, clutching our knees to our bosoms, rocking gently back and forth and quietly sobbing. Then I thought, am I going to let a little black plastic box beat me? Hell no, so I set to work.

It took about two hours of powering off and back on and trying to trap the correct button pushes before the system froze up but do it I eventually did and made it to Services and Reset. After it had done wot it needed to do all was working as before with just the loss of previously recorded programs.

And the original cause of the stuck initializing screen? Best I can find is the Deleted ‘folder’ of the Planner. Seems the best advice out there is to keep that ‘folder’ trim or empty as if too much deleted stuff is in there, the software gets confused between free space and deleted items space and confuses itself into a blue screen failure to initialize lockdown. Who knew Microsoft did the software side of satellite boxes eh?

Engineer cancelled and her along the sofa now be happy. Sadly after all that, there’s still nothing to watch...

Quote;  Stephen Wright.

“One night I came home and fell asleep in somebody’s satellite dish. My dreams were showing up on TVs all over the world.”