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FVP4000T cycling through reboot

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    typonaut

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    Joined: Jul '17
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    My FVP4000T was constantly cycling through reboot: red status light, Humax logo on screen, blue status light, logo disappears (seemingly HDMI signal to TV lost), red status light…

    When this first started I took out the hard drive. This had the effect that the FVP4000T then booted ok, showing channels, guide, live TV, etc, but obviously unable to record.

    I thought this probably indicated that the disk had failed - but I mounted the partitions on my computer with no problems. On the largest partition all the expected recordings were shown (unable to play back due to encryption).

    Even though the disk seemed ok, I put a different, unformatted drive in the FVP4000T. This resulted in the constant reboot cycling again.

    I took that drive out and checked that the FVP4000T would reboot without the drive (it did). So I formatted the replacement drive as a Linux drive with a single partition.

    This time the FVP4000T booted, and I went through the system settings to do a factory reset with HDD format. However, that just seemed to result in the reboot cycling again.

    I took the hard disk out again, but unfortunately doing the factory reset seems to have put the system into the constant reboot cycle - it will not boot at all now.

    Is there some magic way to fix this, or is the FVP4000T now dead?

    Thanks

    | Sun 24 Sep 2023 2:40:56 #1 |
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    typonaut

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    I think I forgot my first rule of "little tech boxes", which is: "the fault is most probably the external power supply".

    This morning I thought I'd plug the box in and try it again. I was surprised that it booted and showed the initial setup screens. Magic! So I powered it down and plugged the disk in, and then it started the boot cycle again. Took the disk out, same thing, continuous loops of boot cycles.

    Then I recalled the "first rule", and given the behaviour I am fairly sure that the problem is the power supply, so I am going to find, or buy, a new one, and keep my fingers crossed.

    For those doubting that it is the power supply - because there is obviously power to the box - I'll explain further. Quite often, with these external power supplies, you'll get the "correct" voltage (and be able to test that with a voltmeter), so you get a device that is seemingly working. However, the device exhibits problems, such as not seeing the hard disk, not writing to the hard disk, not booting properly, crashing, etc… This is because, although the power supply is giving the correct voltage, it is faulty and is not supplying enough ampage.

    Thus, the initial, odd symptom with my box, in that it was abe to boot without the disk, but not with it. This is (probably) because the disk is drawing that bit extra power that is causing the rest of the system to be underpowered. It is probably the case, with a device like the FVP4000T, that the disk drive is probably the largest current draw in the box (at least on initial boot).

    As an example, a couple of days ago I had a networking problem. All the the devices seemed like they were working, so I thought it was my internet router not connecting to my ISP. After some messing around, it realised that this wasn't the case - there was an internet connection - and worked backwards from there. Well the next device was a firewall/router, which had all of its power lights showing - but no blinking on the ethernet ports. Fortunately I found a matching power supply, plugged that in, and everything working!

    So, although the firewall/router looked like it was powered on properly, the power supply was faulty in some way, and a replacement power supply fixed the problem.

    Whenever I replace power supplies, if I have the option, I usually get a higher rated replacement - eg, if I needed a 12v/2.5amp power supply, I would try to get something that was 12v/5amps, or even a bit more.

    | Sun 24 Sep 2023 22:01:03 #2 |

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