my dads been having problems with freezes on his 2nd hand hummy for the past 3 weeks

he's been switching it off at the mains, rather than the rocker switch, but when it comes back on it freezes again

i live in sheffield he's in devon so i've not been able to have a look at it

it appears that hes almost filled the hard drive up and the machine freezes every time he turns it on within a minute or so regardless of whether hes watching recordings or just the tv

so he can't even get to the menu to do a default before it locks. he had an engineer out to fit his new tv last week, the problem existed before this arrived, and he experienced the same problem upon connecting and testing. dad didn't pre-warn him of this problem

is this just a full hdd type problem or something more sinister?? does anyone think that a default would cure or a reformat??

anyone live near ipplepen that could suggest anything to do or anywhere that could look at it for him please??

cheers

A Default Settings would certainly be a good thing to try if he can get to the menu before the box freezes. I don't think formatting the hard disk will have any effect on this problem.

Turn off; disconnect the aerial; turn on; do a reset to default; turn off; reconnect aerial; do another reset to defaults. If that doesn't resolve it then reformat the disk.

Someone over on AV Forums had the same problem. So far, appears to have been resolved - by disconnecting the HDD before powering up, doing said defaults setting, then powering off and reconnecting HDD.
Bear in mind all caveats about warranty and electrical safety before opening the case..

visited dad this weekend, tried the above and bingo one unlocked hummy!!

he only had 6.9% spare so deleted a load of rubbish that he'd recorded

thanks for advice

Ok having the same problem past week or so with my 9200t but happening every couple of minutes. Tried the suggested fixes but no luck (this a replacement for my original silver Hummy as it had the dreaded 4 dashes failure).
Anything else I can try? (havent disconnnected the HDD as I dont know how) or should I just take it back to Curry's again!?

Take it back; sounds like a hardware problem to me.