I've had the Foxsat for about 3 weeks and so far been really chuffed with it. Particularly as I had sky before and am now getting HD with no subs.

My problem is this after the first week of having the box I filled up the HD up to about 14 percent and one morning I noticed a strange noise coming from the box (a sort of hd noise) , the light was red and the display had just 1080i illuminated.

I turned it on and it seemed to work oK. It did this the day after when I again tried to record something - next morning same thing!

Then two days after, I turned it on only to find the only message on the dispay was `reformat hard drive` I turned it off at the mains but again when it had booted up I was just left with this message. There was no `cancel` option or anything else.
So I was forced to reformat thus losing everything. That was 2 weeks ago and it did the funny noise thing again last night. The drive is about 15 percent full now.
I only have one cable connected into the LNB 1 hole to a sky disk.

Should I sent it back or is there something I could try or have done wrong?

You don't have the dish connected properly, but it's hard to see how that would cause the problem you describe.

You can use the HDR with a single feed from the dish connected to LNB1 IN, but you also need to connect LNB1 OUT to LNB2 IN. I suggest you try this and return the box as faulty if the problem continues.

Edit: Just noticed this is your first post. Welcome to the forum.

Thanks, what would i need to ask for to connect LNB1 OUT to LNB2 IN?

I'm not very technical!

You need a satelllite coax cable about 20cm long with a male F-Connector at both ends. It can be longer without causing any problem other than the cosmetic one of trailing leads. If you have a local independent satellite installer near you and tell him what you want it for, he'll know what to give you. It really is worth getting this. Even though it may not solve your problem, you will need it for the replacement to work properly. Either that, or have your dish upgraded to give you two feeds to the HDR, which will also realise the full potential of the HDR.

When you fit it you will need to do a first time install (factory reset) so that the HDR with configure itself properly. You will lose the recording schedule but not recordings.

I'm now going to take a great big breath and make a suggestion that I really ought to be shot for . Looking at how close LNB1 OUT and LNB2 IN are to each other, I have wondered whether you can connect them together with a bent paper clip between the centres of the two connectors making sure that you don't short the paper clip to the outer part of either connector. There's a good chance that this will work after a fashion, although it may be prone to picking up interference. Not a permanent solution but, if your problem is due to not having LNB1 OUT connected to LNB2 IN, you might find that out. If you are brave enough to try this, disconnect the HDR from the mains while making the connection and do a factory reset after switching on. Be aware that I haven't tried this myself as I have two feeds from my dish (but I would have done if I hadn't). Don't blame me if it goes wrong .

Think Humax could do better on this topic. It would be much better for them to supply a loop through connector lead and not a SCART lead IMHO. Not many people need a SCART lead these days, and if you do they are easily available or you can nick one from the video recorder.
When I first got mine I gave it a road test using just a connection to LNB 1 at a mate's house. No loop through available and it worked. However I just tried a quick 5 minute recording of BBC HD so I didn't give it much work to do!
Again welcome to the Forum geezercdg. Keep us updated with your progress. If you go down the paper clip route I would suggest you do it with the power totally off and don't do it in the morning if you have been on the lash the night before

How do i do a factory reset?

Not sure about the paper clips - think I'll check out a local type shop!

press menu then ▼ down to setup then ► then ▼ down to factory reset press ok select yes press ok again then enter the password (number) 0000 (unless you've changed it)

If you have a problem, this will do the job. Get the 1.5m. It's a bit long but, as I said earlier, that's not a problem as long as you can hide it.

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=9376

Thanks for that. Have you ever come across the wierd `format drive ` message before, as that was all i could do at one point.

No, but other people have done. It happens if the HDR can't read the hard disk. If that's your problem, you should get a replacement. But it's possible that the software has got screwed up because of your misconfiguration and only thinks it can't read the hard disk. There's another thread in which it was discovered that a bad LNB connection caused the software to get screwed up. This might be happenning to you, albeit with different symptoms. Hence my suggestion that you try it with the LNB loop-through before taking it back. You are going to need it one way or another anyway.