I have a Wharfdale 250dtrhdmi Vestel T825 variant. It has suffered most of the many firmware glitches over the years but now will not come out of standby. When the standby button is pressed (or when power is switched on) I get the STARTING message, the disc is accessed, the STARTING message disappears, the disc continues to be accessed, eventually the WAIT message appears and then goes out and then the whole processes starts again. I have tried several power cycles but nothing seems to work. Any ideas before I get a new Humax?

Possibly a faulty HDD - that's the first thing I'd look at. If you're ok with opening the box up, it may be worth disconnecting both the power and data cables from the HDD to see if it then boots up to live tv - if so, that would go some way to confirming the HDD has died. Connecting the HDD to a PC and running the Western Digital Lifeguard diagnostic tests on the drive would also help confirm this (assuming the drive is a Western Digital one - usually they are).

The other option is a failed PSU board, and more specifically most likely a dodgy/blown capacitor, which can easily and cheaply be replaced if you are handy with a soldering iron.

Top man. I had just opened up the box and checked the caps on the PSU and couldn't find any 'domed' ones and I had disconnected the power to the HDD which made no difference and was just contemplating what to do next so your post was very timely. IF cable off and box booted to TV, many thanks, I will let you know how I get on.

Does sound like the HDD is most likely at fault. If you can connect up to a PC, as I say, a diagnostics check would probably confirm that. Whether it makes sense financially to replace the HDD is debatable, unless you happen to have a spare lying around. If the HDD just has some bad sectors, then you may be able to get aware with running LifeGuard's zero test on it which will erase everything on the drive, but also mark off any bad sectors so they are not used - it may then work fine for a long time, but equally it might last only a few days. That said, it's probably worth a try if you have a PC with a spare IDE connection.

That is just what I did do thanks. Seems that I only had a few bad sectors as I ran the 'write' utility and then reformatted the disc in the 250DTR. All working for the moment! Thanks again for the help