HR24 -500 sudden intermittent weirdness

By "rebooted countless times", was that just red button reset, or did you unplug power from the box for a minute or two allowing it to clear any cached memory? If you haven't done that full power cycle, be aware that it normally clears the guide data which then has to download again from the satellites. Usually fully loaded within 24 hours.

Is it just the one box having problems, or are others (if you have any) experiencing it as well? Working or not, what are the models of any other boxes you have? And is this with recordings from satellite, internet (On Demand), or both?

I would verify the coax to the box is finger tight, as might affect authorizations. Check that access card is fully seated as that goes along with that.

Since it can cause unusual issues with DirecTV boxes, I would makes sure the HDMI-CEC on the TV (if it has it) is turned off. On that same note, make sure they are not plugged into a "smart" power strip.

Hopefully the above suggestions will get it working correctly. Might only fix it going forward but not what is already recorded. If that doesn't fix it, could be your hard drive is starting to have issues. Be aware that a warranty replacement may no longer be available as regular HDDVRs (HR24 being the last one) haven't been made in years.

I just disabled CEC on the TV so maybe that will fix it. I'm doing reboot by selecting restart through the menus, I'll try a power off like you suggest if CEC doesn't fix it.

I don't have any other receivers, and only having this issue with sat recordings - but I don't often do on demand from the internet so can't say for sure it's not affected.

All the entertainment center is plugged into 2 basic UPS (TV, surround sound receiver, sat box, ps4, xbox and 2 PCs), never had any power issues but definitely worth testing that piece as well. 

I appreciate your suggestions very much, I was frustrated yesterday bc trying to watch football and it kept bugging out. All your ideas were good ones and hopefully will get me going. Thanks!!

Disabling CEC did not fix it, pulled the power cord to do a full cold start.

When I'm watching something and hit 10 sec rewind it goes to the beginning of the buffer (way further back than 10 seconds) but freezes. Any ff or rewind switches between beginning and end of buffer but screen stays black. I use channel up/down a few times and it eventually picks back up live play.

Is it possible to pull the hdd and clone it to a new drive, and put new drive in the box?

Sounds like a good time to upgrade to a Genie. You will have twice as much recording space and 5 tuners instead of 2.  It may require a new contract though.

An "upgrade" is certainly an option. Keep in mind unlike a warranty replacement, it comes with a 24-month service agreement. The Genie adds the $3 Whole Home DVR service (assuming you don't already have it).

However, if you already have a Genie (HR34, HR44, HR54) along with your HR24 then you cannot have another. Only one Genie per account is allowed.

If you end up doing a warranty replacement or an upgrade, the recordings do not transfer to the new box.

It sounds to me like it is most likely your hard drive is getting ready to go.  I know on some models you can buy drives to put in them but I would make sure your receiver is considered not returnable before trying to buy a new drive to put in it as you would technically be tampering with Directv Owned Equipment if you change the drive since you do not own it. Just some food for thought!

There is a company called weaknees.com that can replace the internal drive with a larger one and they can transfer the setting and programs if the hard drive is still working enough to do it.

Tons of research later - I replaced the hdd, 500Gb to 1Tb. I used gparted live 0.18.0 burned to USB stick (from https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=341064) and it (seems to have) copied my old recordings intact.

I only have 1 TV so not into Genie, I'm not exactly against it but it seems overkill for my situation. I see lots of people recommending streaming but with 5MB down (thanks, att dsl!) I'm not sure that's an option. 

Overall, I transferred my recordings and gained a few more months/years for my HR24. Thank you forums for your help!

@John706 

Nice you were able to use GParted to copy those recordings from one drive to the other. It always comes in handy especially for the DIY’ers. I’ve tried GParted in the past for a couple receivers and it does indeed work great when you put the image onto a USB drive. I think I used a version similar to you.

Yup I tried a newer version of the gparted live at first but it wouldn't work (problem reading superblock). Downloaded an old version but needed to build from source. That was also a no go. Finally stumbled on that thread where buddy used an older live version - presto magic! 

I learned a lot, probably useless knowledge but I've got some of that already :-) 

The depth of knowledge available on the internet is really amazing. Online forums have taught me countless things over the years, but sometimes it's tough trying to duplicate things from just 10-15 years ago lol

There are so many forums for so many things. Thanks to all you guys for participating and sharing your experiences.

@John706 That's very interesting, you should make a tutorial on how to do it. With so many HR24s reaching end of life due to hard drive failure you could probably have a side hustle of replacing hard drives for people.

@Good4u 

There already is one on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/qJL1iT1HyTk

This method works on essentially any HDDVR, even the Genies. They all have the same XFS partition.

@detuch254 Thanks, I'll check it out.

I greatly wish that DirecTV would come out with a SWM-only HDDVR to compliment the Genies again.

@Juniper 

Agreed. Maybe an HR25.