After repeatedly rebooting for more than a week, the PVR is working again.

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Kevin2020

New Member
My HDR-FOX T2 (with customised firmware) has had problems thru repeatedly rebooting after displaying the first HUMAX screen. So I leave it powered up.

Anyway, about ten days ago the device rebooted itself and started repeatedly rebooting.

I left it ooping, but last night it successfully started: passed the rebooting phase and is working again - but I dare not power it down.

After studying its log files, I can not sense/recognise anything going wrong from the logged messages.

Does anyone know what to suspect is dodgy within the device?
 
Kevin2020 said:
....Does anyone know what to suspect is dodgy within the device?
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Did you try anything to resolve the issue? Eg a search for 'reboot loop' returns

HDR-FOX T2 Boot Loop Resurrection

My infrequently-used second HDR-FOX recently developed a boot loop. Time to visit hummy.tv! I was able to use Telnet to initiate maintenance mode and run fixdisk. The machine doggedly insisted on reverting to the seemingly endless loop. Black Hole's post...
hummy.tv hummy.tv

Steps for Resolving HDR-FOX Crash/Reboot Issues (and other hardware problems)

Steps for Resolving HDR-FOX Crash/Reboot Issues (and other hardware problems) NB: This post may be updated in the light of future developments. Subsequent relevant discussion in this topic will be rolled into this first post. Last updated April 2024. A variety of factors can result in the...
hummy.tv hummy.tv

Kevin2020 said:
....I left it ooping, but last night it successfully started: passed the rebooting phase and is working again - but I dare not power it down.
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So it recovered by itself without any intervention?
 
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Have you deleted some older recordings having watched them? Sometimes its a corrupted file that causes issues and once deleted the problems go away,
 
Yes it recovered. Perhaps something (some hardware) is indicating a failure during booting up that sporadically, after a number of reboot attempts, comes good - indicates OK. (If I now power down the device then I would expect a number of reboot attempts before it successfully starts up.)

So what items of hardware are checked during the initial booting of a HDR-FOX T2? (i.e. state of power supply? hard disk?)
Note: the hard disk reports - via smartctl - bad blocks, which I can later bad block fix.
 
MymsMan said:
Have you deleted some older recordings having watched them? Sometimes its a corrupted file that causes issues and once deleted the problems go away,
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Thanks for your response. But this has not been a one off issue. The booting has been problematic for months. And I've used the diagnostic tools to cure disk issues.
 
Kevin2020 said:
Yes it recovered. Perhaps something (some hardware) is indicating a failure during booting up that sporadically, after a number of reboot attempts, comes good - indicates OK. (If I now power down the device then I would expect a number of reboot attempts before it successfully starts up.)

So what items of hardware are checked during the initial booting of a HDR-FOX T2? (i.e. state of power supply? hard disk?)
Note: the hard disk reports - via smartctl - bad blocks, which I can later bad block fix.
Click to expand...
Are you saying
you use to have bad blocks - but are now fixed? Or
you use to have bad blocks and still have them - but intend to fix them later?

Also how did you determine you have bad blocks? How did you fix them?
 
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Yesterday I gave up on letting my HDR-FOX T2 try to successfully complete booting in to use.

Opening the unit and from experimentation I found after disconnecting the power lead to the internal hard drive that the boot-up successfully completed, but with no drive/disk running/powered. Then the unit, after reconnecting the drive's power, was able to manipulate the drive/disk-volumes as normal.

So what does disconnecting the drive's power imply is the issue with the unit that causes its booting to keep failing/repeating?
(Note: I also temporarily connected a different SATA hard disk - without reformatting it - in to the unit, but boot repeating continued.)
 
Thanks for the information. I will plan for having those board components replaced. But for now will keep with my interim solution: the unit's cover will stay partially off with a SATA 22-pin connector extension cable introduced between the normal 22-pin connector and drive. Then every time the unit needs rebooting I will temporarily disconnect the extension cable until booting completes.

This HDR-FOX T2 is to be kept permanently powered up, so rebooting should be infrequent.
 
You only need to replace the capacitor. The other component was just damaged somehow during the investigation.
 
I added the relevant information to the Crash/Reboot thread in December, which post-dates this thread, and now revised it to read:

Black Hole said:
3Ba: We have become aware of a common fault developing on ageing HDR-FOXes where the unit won't boot with the HDD connected but will boot without it. While this might seem to indicate a faulty HDD, in some instances it has been shown to be a deeper problem on the main board (not the PSU). The main diagnostic symptom is that the boot process continually restarts the moment "start system" (or the custom firmware announcement, if installed) disappears from the VFD (front-panel display), which is when the HDD gets powered up (but before it has had chance to be accessed). If the restart occurs later than this, it is more likely to be a HDD fault (see 3Bb). Diagnosis is confirmed if the problem remains when a different (known working) HDD is fitted, or the original HDD is shown to work in a different HDR-FOX (or when tested on a PC). Repair might be effected by the relatively simple replacement of a capacitor on the main board. For more information see https://hummy.tv/forum/threads/start-up-fails-when-hdd-connected.10164/.
Click to expand...
 
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