I pressed the stop button at the end of watching a recording and my Topfield just locked up as if on pause.
I had to reboot it to get back to normal operation.
Seems OK now but it this a common thing or is it just mine?
Thanks.

PS: It's not running on Windows 3.1 by any chance is it?

It's very uncommon for things like that to happen.

Do you have any TAPs running? Had you been using any interactive services?

As much information as possible always helps work out what's happening.

Nigel.

Not common at all.

I run my toppy from a filtered socket and have never had it lock up in 3 months of owning it.

No TAPS - Just as it came out of the box.

Interactive turned off.

I'll see how it performs this evening.

I've had some strange things happen...

Recently, part of the 'MyStuff' (4.03) EPG display was stuck in the middle of the screen. The only button that worked on the remote was the off button!

Only happened once. Can't remember the exact key sequence (but I had just finished watching a recording so it might have been the stop playback key as well?).

Only annoyance was that switching off meant that I had to stop the two current recordings and start them again when it had rebooted...

Now on MyStuff 4.5 so I'll keep a weather eye on it.

K
K

Well - It was OK yesterday evening so it must have been just 'one of those things'.

Touch wood!

In the main lockups are caused by 3 things.

1) Signal corruption or noise that the unit fails to handle correctly. Most is displayed as on screen corruption or sound dropout, if it is interpreted as an actual command etc then it can cause a lockup.

2) Noise on the mains supply. This can cause a small spike in the powersupply and cause problems for the CPU. This can cause it to crash or do other weird things if its excessive enough.

3) Poorly written software. Usually combined with problem 1, poorly written software can cause the system to enter an endless loop or just do weird things that cannot be stopped without a power down. Firmware updates are the usual way round this but most are not bug free.


The best things to do to make sure you reduce the chances of lockups are

1) Fit either a filtered plug or use a filtered multi way strip. This reduces mains noise.

2) Make sure your aerial is fitted well and you get a good signal to reduce corruption.

Thanks.
I know that the ariel is fitted fine and the signal is clean.
I will get a filtered mains adaptor.

My locked up twice last week.

First instance, could find no reason as to why.

Second instance was chase-playing a recording (chan4), and the following programme was also set to record, when the second recording started box froze, no resposnse to anything, had to power off/on, box then went into verifying files and folders.

Only tap installed is Jags.

When I get the time I'll try to replicate.

It's amazing the problems noise can cause; not Toppy related, but an example with my washing machine, which started playing up last week - when the motor started turning faster to empty water at the end of each stage, the LCD would show gibberish, with all the segments flickering at random, before, eventually, it would stop, and display error E30, which is motor problems.

I looked inside and it was obvious there was some sparking from the motor, which increased in frequency as it was driven faster.

The solution was simply to remove the brushes from the motor, give them a good scrub with a wire brush, and reinsert them. It's running flawlessly now - but beforehand, it seems that the electrical interference from the sparking was enough to completely confuse the computer circuitry driving the display and interface.

It's amazing how much difficulty a relatively small amount of interference can cause to equipment.

Nigel.

My toppy has been doing some strange things of late!!

It started hanging on mheg screens, so I updated it to the dec firmware, which has curred that problem.

However a few times last week when I switched it on, when changing channel it just cycled through all the channels and would not stop untill I hit another remote key, it kept happening only when changing channels via the remote - but when changing channels from the toppy itself it was fine!!

I removed all the taps first time it happend and still had the problem, so I unplugged it for 10 mins and it has gone away?? I think it may of overheated or maybe something was cached in the memory from the taps?

Anyone else had this problem?

I would guess it is actually something with the remote rather than the Toppy itself, e.g. a key sticking.

unfortunately not as i took the batteries out of the remote - when i couldnt get it to stop!

It is strange....

ISTR someone else had this a while ago but I can't remember the outcome. Try searching the www.toppy.org.uk forums to see if you can find how they resolved it.

Some people have had this sort of behaviour with another remote confusing the Toppy.

I have sorted this now,

But can not be sure of the exact cause... looks to be a combination of MHEG compaitability and a dodgy file but not tap related.

Here are some of the problems encountered and what I did to fix it..

The EPG would keep flashing on and off plus if you changed the channel it would cycle through all channels and wouldnt stop, on trying many fixes including updating firmware and deactivating all my taps it didnt cure the problem, until I was looking through the toppy files on altair and noticed a file with no extension which had been created on the same day - it was 250mb in size and had no information I think it could have been buffered data from timeshift recording. This coincides with the time and date of the file that i had timeslipped before it crashed.

Also on that day I noticed two yoo play lcns one on uhf 47 and the other on 54 everytime I advanced these channels the box crashed and when it came back on it would blink on and off the epg. The remote didnt respond at first and I could only stop the epg problem by using the toppy controls on the front panel as opposed to the remote.

Neadless to say it is now working perfectly after deleting both the file and the yoo play lcns.

Mine locked up yesterday after looking for EPG data on More4 (which didn't exist in EPG navigator or the standard Toppy EPG). When going out of the standard EPG, having channel set to More4, Improbox brought up it's screen which remained on the screen, and then I had no control from the remote other than the power button. I don't think I got four dots.

Given that I think my non-recording holiday was down to a More4 schedule problem, I'm wondering if there is a connection.

I have interactive service turned off.

I think a problem was identified where if a tuner conflict is flagged up while you are using a TAP, the TAP screen stays ontop of the tuner conflict message and it wont let you see the options.

There were 2 ways out of it, one was to let it time out and select the default option itself. The other was that if a recording had started you can press power and the shutdown message appears BUT it may end up cancelling the recording about to start.