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Navigator needs reactivation!!

Started by somehuman, Thursday Nov 13, 2008, 07:27:13 PM

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somehuman

So I turn on the TV tonite and a message tells me that my TW digital cable box is not activated. I call the 800 number on the screen and it is automatically re-activated.

But... I have lost all the recordings that I had set up to record during the time it was deactivated!!!! I am ****ed! the wife is livid...

I call TW customer service and ask why my box was deactivated, and I'm told that they are updating cable boxes and sometimes they get stuck causing them to lose service and forcing a reactivation. Why am I paying for a DVR that doesn't realiably record??

One more reason I will be looking for a dish...

Are other people having the same problem.

-= SomeHuman =-

LoadStar

If the TWC DVRs are anything like TiVo, and I think they are, there are basically two copies of the operating system stored on the hard drive, and two copies of the main database that stores all sorts of critical information for operating the DVR.

The first copy is the one that is in use at all times. The second copy is offline, which allows them to send updates in the background; once the offline copy is updated, they can then copy over any of the settings from the "live" database into the "offline" database, then reboot to the newly updated copy, minimizing downtime.

What I'd guess happened is TWC sent down an update to the offline copy... but then something happened during that second step, the cloning of the data from the live database to the newly updated offline database. The system then rebooted to the new version - but since that copy of the data was interrupted, it behaved like an unactivated cable box.

I've seen weird things happen when a DVR has to fail over to the offline database... sometimes its almost as if the cable box goes back in time, as old deleted programs come back to life and newly recorded programs disappear.

(By the way - D* and E* aren't immune to stuff like this happening, you know...)

Jack 1000

Quote from: somehuman;49149So I turn on the TV tonight and a message tells me that my TW digital cable box is not activated. I call the 800 number on the screen and it is automatically re-activated.

But... I have lost all the recordings that I had set up to record during the time it was deactivated!!!! I am ****ed! the wife is livid...

I call TW customer service and ask why my box was deactivated, and I'm told that they are updating cable boxes and sometimes they get stuck causing them to lose service and forcing a reactivation. Why am I paying for a DVR that doesn't reliably record??

One more reason I will be looking for a dish...

Are other people having the same problem.

-= SomeHuman =-

SomeHuman,

Did you lose EVERYTHING on the DVR or just the scheduled recordings list is empty?  If only scheduled recordings are gone, the best thing to do would be to reprogram what you can remember being scheduled to record.  When you called that number to reboot, how long was the boot process?

Were there any other messages on the screen?

Everyone,

I am trying to figure out if TWC updated SomeHuman's box exclusively, or if we all have an update coming.

Jack
Cisco 9865 DVR with Navigator Guide