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TheTerrible

New Member

Wednesday, June 10th, 2020 9:18 PM

WARNING AS OF 6/2020 - USE OF THE RED RESET BUTTON (HR54-200) MAY DELETE ALL RECORDINGS

I wanted to warn all users with HR54-200 not to use the hardware red reset button. We had an outage of all local channels in my market. As I've been instructed for years by Directv support, "when trouble, do a reset." The button has been apparently reprogrammed to reset to factory defaults. I lost all recordings for the past several years. Classic football and basketball games, my son's favorite DC and Marvel series, and about a season and a half of Westworld that I haven't finished.

Tech support was very polite, but absolutely no help. There's simply nothing in my list and 100% disk availability. Nothing to sort or filter.

I keep hearing about bad things happening with Directv and AT&T, but it didn't happen with me until today. BEWARE!

Question

 • Edited

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shannon02

ACE - Expert

 • 

21.1K Messages

5 years ago

Your hard drive maybe having problems as the red button only removes power to the CPU it doesn't reformat the hard drive.

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Constructive

Employee

 • 

34K Messages

ive reset my box many times and never lost a recording
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While AT&T employees do look at forum posts from time to time, we are here to represent the forum with our experiences as customers and do not represent AT&T in any official capacity with our responses and do so on our own time unpaid and off the clock. As employees we are not rewarded nor compensated to participate in these forums This forum is comprised of regular customers to communicate with other customers to offer advice and share experiences same as any other user Although there is a small team of customer care specialists that monitor the forums the sheer volume of posts are simply too many posts for these agents to respond to each one of them.
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5 years ago

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TheTerrible

New Member

Me too. I've probably reset this box dozens of times in the past few years, but today- little red button = factory reset. The UI, even asked me to set up my remote once rebooted. Very weird and unsatisfactory.

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5 years ago

0

Juniper

ACE - Expert

 • 

22.9K Messages

5 years ago

@TheTerrible

A red button reset does not reset to factory defaults. It is a soft reset only. Pulling power for at least a minute would clear residual memory, which clears guide data, but again does not go to factory defaults. The only way to factory default would be an option in the menu.

Either your recordings are there but hidden (a bug seen in the new GUI), or your hard drive errored out. Go into the recording list and try sorting the list (press 0 on the Genie remote) and see if the missing recordings show up. If not, you will need to call DirecTV and get it warranty replaced.

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TheTerrible

New Member

Thanks for the comments. So if I'm understanding you correctly, If I pulled the power cord out of my battery backup/UPS I would have experienced the same erasure of hundreds of hours of programming and "device wipe" behavior?

As a note, I called support. we ran a short and long HDD diagnostic and both passed. So that means (as I was instructed by the support rep - edited) no issue with my HR54. No need for a warranty replacement. Also sorting by pressing "0" yielded no recordings. I am now getting Showtime for free, hooray?

(edited)

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5 years ago

0

litzdog911

ACE - Sage

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46.4K Messages

Just because the DVR passed its internal drive tests doesn't mean that the drive is OK. As others have stated, the red button reset or pulling the AC power should NOT wipe your hard drive. If that happens, then something "glitched" your DVR's hard drive. I would call DirecTV and request a replacement DVR.

____________________________________
ACEs are customers too, NOT employees. Answers are based on experience. I strive to give honest answers, even if not always appreciated. If you posted personal information, please edit and remove.

For official support call DirecTV Satellite 1-800-531-5000, DirecTV Stream 1-888-429-4023, DirecTV Gemini dedicated 1-888-488-4742, or AT&T 1-800-288-2020. 

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5 years ago

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TheTerrible

New Member

Thanks litzdog911. I'll ask again, but the support agent I spoke with was adamant that the unit was ok and it must be user error or some unknown software glitch, not a hardware related issue. 

 

After searching all menu items for any helpful information, I did find the deleted recordings listed as deleted entries under the Recording History option with the statement - "This episode was deleted because of a problem retaining the program. (2003)"

 

In any event, based on everyone's feedback, I understand what the little red hardware reset button is supposed to do, but I don't think I"ll ever use it again. Looks like cutting the power (as of June 2020) can lead to very unexpected results - like loss of recordings. 

(edited)

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5 years ago

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Juniper

ACE - Expert

 • 

22.9K Messages

Red button reset or power cycle by design does not wipe the hard drive. Either the hard drive is going out or you had a very bad software issue.

 

Like a phone, only a master clear in the menu should reset to defaults and clear recordings. In your case you have an error message that something unusual went wrong. You have as much chance as that happening by turning on the box as resetting it.

 

Hopefully this is the one and only time this happens. However, be aware of anything your box does in the future. Just in case there was a hardware issue and it ends up needing replacing. As a note, there is no way to transfer the recordings from a DVR to the replacement. 

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I am a customer, not an employee. This is a public forum.
For official support call DirecTV 1-800-531-5000, DIRECTV STREAM 1-888-429-4023
www.directv.com 

(AT&T has sold off their share in DirecTV)

Award for Community Excellence Achiever*
*I am not a DIRECTV employee, and the views and opinions expressed on this forum are purely my own. Any product claim, statistic, quote, or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider, or party.

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5 years ago

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