Australian Topfield 7170 freezes up

[Josh81]

Hello, i'm Australian, so only english please.

Bought Topfield TRF-7170 about 11 weeks ago. It now freezes up.
I turn it on, and it says "checking HDD" for about 1 minute. When finished checking, the unit will display whatever channel it's on, but no buttons will work.
The unit's LED display will blink whenever i press a button on the remote, but nothing will happen.
A red triangle will be showing on the LED display.
The only control that will work, is the power button, and when i turn it off the blue light around the power button will not be on (when i should be, for a passive turn off).

Whenever i take the unit back to the store, the problem does not happen!
And then i take it home, and it locks up after about 5min.

I suspect it has something to do with the tap SmartEPG, as i go into this when i get the unit home. Has anyone had the same problem with SmartEPG?

I've removed smartEPG from the autostart folder now. I will test the unit to see if the freezing still happens.

Thanks for any comments.

[FireBird]

Welcome on board. If you're using TAPs, the first test is usually to hold the 0 button while the Toppy boots because this will suppress autostarting the TAPs. Does that mean the SmartEPG already worked or did you change something before the freeze started? I’ve heard that there are some Australian firmwares out there, which have problems with TAPs in general. But don’t ask me about any details (which model, which version).

[DeltaMikeCharlie]

Yes, there are some Australian firmware versions that prevent TAPs from working. My 7160 was shipped with such a version and I had to downgrade. Go into Menu | Info | System Status to find your firmware version. Check it against this list:

http://oztoppy.wikidot.com/firmware-list

I also recall some problems in the past with PowerDVD. If you have that installed on a PC on your network, it can also cause the PVR to behave badly.

[Josh81]

Hey guys, thanks for your replies.

I have the latest firmware installed on my 7170, which is compatible with TAPs. It's Nov 18th 2013 firmware.

Do not have the unit networked yet.

I had been using the unit with SmartEPG installed, for nearly 2mths.

The first time the problem happened, i took it in to the store, and they said it was the power supply, so they replaced it. But as soon as i got the unit back home and started using SmartEPG, it froze up again.

Also, just tonight i noticed that the "red triangle" was showing up whenever i press on the information button whilst a recording was highlighted. So i'll bring up more information about that recorded show, and the red triangle would be on the front display, during that. This is after i've deactivated SmartEPG by the way.
Not sure if that's normal, but it's the same red triangle that appears when the unit freezes.

Anyway, trialling unit with SmartEPG disabled, to see how that goes.
SmartEPG is a HUGE positive in using the topfield. It's a big problem without it.
I'll try using the newest version of SmartEPG (6.0b), but there's nothing mentioned about it fixing problems.

[DeltaMikeCharlie]

Are you running any other TAPs apart from SmartEPG?

You say that SmartEPG worked fine for 2 months. Have you tried deleting SmartEPG, and all of its configuration files, and then reinstalling? (FireBird will have to help with that one). Perhaps you have a corrupt file somewhere.

It may be a bit drastic, but have you tried a factory reset and reinstalling your current firmware?

If your PVR is not networked, what method did you use to install SmartEPG? Perhaps there was a misconfiguration somewhere.

Are you in an area that had to retune for the SBS frequency change recently? If so, did the problem start soon after?

[Josh81]

Haven't tried uninstalling SmartEPG and all its components, I simply disabled It. Not enough?

Installed via usb stick.

If I factory reset and reinstall firmware, would I have to backup hard drive first? What a pain.

Don't know about the SBS retune, unsure.

Only other tap I've got in autostart is return play or something like that. I've got a couple of others in the tap folder, but don't use them yet. Can't remember what they are, tms scheduler maybe, jdaskip.

[DeltaMikeCharlie]

Please try FireBird's first suggestion. Start the PVR holding the "0" key on the remote control unit until it has started. This will stop all TAPs from loading automatically.

If your unit is still unstable, then no TAP is to blame. If your unit is stable, try reintroducing your TAPs 1 by 1 until your symptoms return.

I have reinstalled firmware a number of times on both of my TMS PVRs and I have not lost my recordings.

[Josh81]

Hi thanks for the reply.
I just removed SmartEPG from autostart, that's essentially the same as holding down 0 while booting, right?
The unit had been working previously with SmartEPG, so i would think it can work in future. Maybe it is the HDD. Another guy suggested i try HDD error checking TAP. I will try this.
Then i will factory reset, reinstall firmware, and install new version of SmartEPG.
Cheers.

[Josh81]

Here is the result from HDDinfo. I don't know what the information means though. Anyone know what we're looking at? Does the HDD have errors?

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/1024x7 ... 4/at86.jpg
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/1024x7 ... 9/o3js.jpg

Thanks.

[JayTee]

No errors, looks good.

[Josh81]

Oh ok. Bummer, was hoping it would be the hard drive, and not SmartEPG.

I just re-installed the firmware, factory reset, and then installed the latest version of SmartEPG.
I didn't reset/format the hard drive, because i didn't want to have to backup 700gb of data, and don't really have free space for it.
It locked up as it was doing the intial EPG scan. Had to turn the unit off (no blue standby light), turned it back on and the unit worked (because SmartEPG wasn't in startup TAP's yet). Put SmartEPG in the auto startup folder, and turned unit off (blue standby light). Turned back on, and unit froze again. Turned off (no blue standby light), and turned back on whilst holding down "0", and unit worked. Removed SmartEPG from auto startup folder.
So it appears the problem does lie with SmartEPG!!

This Toppy was bought for my mum by the way, and the lack of SmartEPG is a deal breaker.

Options:-
Try other EPG TAP's to see if they compare.
Sell TRF-7170, and buy a different Topfield model.
Beg "The 5" to fix SmartEPG.

[FireBird]

I’ve received some reports that V6.1 has some issues with Australian Toppies but V6.0b (the one before) is working fine. So far I do not know what is going on with 6.1.

[Josh81]

It was V6.0b that i had installed. Doesn't work with our 7170.

[FireBird]

Are you sure? Your description matches the ones I've got for V6.1.

[Josh81]

Yes. SmartEPG v6b. Downloaded on the 22/3/14.

Was 6.1 even out then? I downloaded it from http://oztoppy.wikidot.com/smartepg, so they might not have been up to date at the time.

I think i'll tell my mum to sell the 7170, and get a different unit. Not that she can afford it. But using the default EPG is very painful for her.