No info available in guide

[packerfan31]

Has anyone experienced this. I keep getting no info available in guide. Then I would chat with custemer service and they would fix the problem and then a few weeks later it would happen again.

[harsh]

Do you often power down your receiver or do a lot of check switches?

The typical cause of this problem (aside from not subscribing to locals) is not letting the guide build up.

[MattG@DISH Network]

Has anyone experienced this. I keep getting no info available in guide. Then I would chat with custemer service and they would fix the problem and then a few weeks later it would happen again.

What receiver model do you have? A check switch test does force the guide info to redownload, but it shouldn't be happening all the time.

I've seen it before where a customer changed their nightly update time to an hour later and the problem stopped occurring.

[Blowgun]

It's been said that it's a sign of a failing hard drive. However, I don't believe that to be 100 percent correct. My 508 has been doing that for years and if it was a failing hard drive it would have failed by now. In my experience, here are the three most common scenarios.

One, using too many screens without closing previous ones. What I mean is and this is only to convey the point and not the actual steps, lets say you are watching Live TV and bring up the Guide. From the Guide you go to Search. From the Search you go to Schedule. From Schedule you check a Timer. From a Timer you go back to Live. From Live you check the Guide. Now you only see the current Guide information supplied directly from the Satellite. Advancing past the 2 hour mark and the Guide information is no longer available.

Two, you make a lot of changes to timers, similar to item one. The timer screens and the way that the receiver updates by going back and forth. Sometimes the receiver will go back and it will land on a fake screen, because it has no path back to anything real. Sometimes the total amount of events listed for all timers exceeds the available memory and leaks into places it has no business being in, resulting in displaying past, none related, information or plain garbage. Later when the Guide is checked, the Guide information is no longer available.

Three, a failed Guide update. I update the guide manually, so when the Guide update finishes, it's lost. What I mean is that the receiver goes through all the motions -- 5 minute wait and the progression gauge reaching 100 percent, but the download failed. Or, the update takes too long and the receiver times out before the guide can be completely downloaded. In either case, the old Guide information is no longer available.

Typically to "fix" these you need to restart the receiver. By restart I mean powering "off" the receiver with the remote, wait a few seconds and then back on again or by holding down the power button on the receiver to do a soft reset. Which is probably the only thing that was necessary during your chat with customer service to "fix" the problem. The restart allows the receiver to acquaint itself with the Guide information again. It's a bug in the software and I listed it as one of the 30 annoying bugs with this receiver. It's been like that, well, for years. :mad: