With monotonous irregularity, my 9200 corrupts its directory of recorded programmes. It happens about once every other month. The symptom is that several recordings (including many that were OK before the corruption occurred) are displayed with the same programme name/broadcast time combination. If you try to play these, some work (but not always showing the programme listed) and some just show a black screen for a few seconds.

Curiously, humaxrw seems able to display the directory of recordings OK - so if the correct list is there on the disk, how come the Hummy shows a corrupt list?

Is this anywhere on Humax's radar to fix? Is there anything I can do, or avoid doing, to reduce the chances of being hit by this problem?

Have you formatted the HDD? This usually fixes any such corruption, at the expense of all currently stored programmes.

Try plugging it into the mains through a surge protector and make sure that there's enough space above, below and around it to make sure that its not overheating at all. (I've had good results with several bits of AV equipment by increasing the airgap underneath the device - at the moment my 9200 is sitting on 4 empty CD cases with nothing above it.)

Many times - but the problem always (eventually) returns

Have you tried formatting it ina PC and then using chkdsk to see if there any bad sectors reported? If there are the disk is on its way out and should be replaced.

Well that a positive indication of an hardware issue ... did it start before your 2 year warranty ran out ...

Some one on hummy.org.uk has suggested that disk corruption is much more likely if the box is left on continually. Does yours get put into standby regularly?

I've not actually tried that, but I did replace the disk recently because I was getting occasional disk errors with the original. Hopefully the new disk (I think less than a year old) is still OK but it's an interesting suggestion for the future.

No. I've had the box for ages. I think I got mine soon after the 9200 first came out - maybe four or five years back.

I don't believe this problem happened when I first got it so I did wonder if it was associated with some firmware update.

Now that is interesting. No. I have to confess that the box rarely, if ever, gets turned off or put into standby. I know that's not very ecologically sound. It's partly due to laziness and partly due to being too impatient to wait for the EPG to repopulate each time I use it. Leaving it on all the time solves the latter problem.

However, I have just stood it down now and I shall plan to do so more regularly in future. I presume that it will always wake itself up from standby, when necessary, for scheduled recordings (and return to standby after recording? I'm sure it must but it's not something I've ever relied upon in the past..

I've had mine 5 years or so and never had a directory corruption... it's set to standby when not in active use.

Mine was made in NI and it's fan is silent and runs continuously.

Could you have received one of the first Polish machines where the fan stops in standby ...

But with the latest software the EPG is cached and the EPG is fully populated in much less than a minute from coming out of standby. Have you considered using the auto off and auto on function to switch the box off in the middle of the night and to wake it up before your first use of the day?

Yes provided the time is being displayed on the front panel it will wake up when required.

So it does. Never spotted that. I've not really been aware of the auto on/off feature but I shall certainly consider it.


When I put the machine into standby and the front panel displays four dashes. Is that OK? I guess I need to try some experiments with recordings that don't matter.

I just tried the experiment. I set a scheduled recording for about 10 minutes into the future and stood the machine down (power button top right of remote). The display switched to four dashes and the machine slept through the scheduled recording.

Have I forgotten something? It's a long time since I read the manual. Is there a less severe sort of standby from which the machine will awake when required to record?

No it isn't; your clock board isn't working properly. See the sticky thread at the top of this forum by big_les for instructions on how to fix it.

Just to clarify for others reading this the four dashes you mention should be on the right of the display and have a colon separator like this --:-- if it's the clock board fault. With software version .23 four dashes without a colon separator appear on the left of the display while the 9200 shuts down to STANDBY.