HR23 no response to remote or front panel, 3 blue ring lights flashing, scan disks 100% pass but DVR never starts all the way

HR23 response to input progressively slower eventually does not respond to the remote or front panel buttons, eventually resets with three of the blue ring lights flashing. several reboot result in scan disks with result of 100% pass, but DVR never successfully starts all the way.

Failed HR21 replaced with new HR23 a few days ago. Runnig fine first day. Updated itsef to ver 0x3a8 on day two. Later on day 2 started noticing issues.

guide and menu screens got progressively slower to respond via remote and front panel buttons.

DVR eventually quit responding to any input, including power button.

Next morning found the DVR in a state where 3 of the blue ring lights were flashing and DVR would not display anything on the TV, would not respond to input including power button.

Disconnected the power for 5 minutes, installed brand new HDMI cable, and restarted DVR. While booting got blue screen stating problem dected in your hard drive, followed by a 1.5 hour scan of the disk, which resulted in "pass" and no erros found.  DVR stayed on scan complete screen for about an hour and never went any further.

Pushed reset to reboot DVR, it ran 1.5 hr scan disk again. This time it continued on after scan completion and hung on step 1 or 2, for over an hour.

Pushed reset again, scanned disk for another 1.5 hours, after which it came to a blue screen, stating "A problem has been detected In the storage device" ... "Diagnostic Code: 15-227" ... "Reboot"

Push seclet to reboot, while booting get a blue screen stating "a problem has been detected with your hard drive", another 1.5 hour scan disk followed by "100% PASSED" ... "Reboot"

Disconnected power, swapped input cables from dish, and powered back on. Stuck on step 1 of 2 for about an hour now.  Out of patients, giving up...

Note:I don't think temp is an issue. I have the DVR on an open shelf with nothing stacked and plenty of air flow, I've monitored the temp of the HR21 (usually about 116) and once for the HR23 (about same) from settings and never seemed high.

Additional Details:
After noticing the guide, menus, and other screens getting very slow to respond, I tired a suggestion from another forum thread (regarding veryslow guide and menu responsiveness) where I set the HDTV resolution in settings to "only" 1080i (which is what my tv supports, and ensured "native" was off). This initally resolved the issue with slow guide responsiveness, but it slowed down again latter in the day and the HDTV settings appeared to have lost my 1080i resolution setting, and was back to 480p. The responsiveness of the screens continued to degrade even after rebooting.  After spending about 15 minutes trying to navigate back to the HDTV settings screen I was having difficulty checking any of the boxes due to erratic behavior of the checkboxes (i.e. boxes highligting but not checking, and checkboxes even dissapearing). After another restart I found the resolution selection screen missing most of the check boxes (I think only 480 was left), and would not accept any input from remote or front panel.

Sort of coincidental... a few days before my HR21 (about 2yrs old) died completey it began having the slowing input responsiveness, and a few days later started rebooting during live tv, eventually failing to ever reboot due to disk problems detected by the system during reboots (I could actually hear some bad physical disk noise). It had done a self update a few weeks prior. I'm not sure if was the same 0x3a8 that this new HR23 got.

going on 2 weeks now of enduring technical support calls, forums, many hours of troubleshooting, and missing those important shows (e.g. last couple episodes of a 4 years run of Lost, ouch!).  Very frustrated and trying to stay cool...