No Signal to Receiver

[lbeck]

We had a downpour yesterday – but no lightning reported by my wife (I was at work). When I returned the receiver had the familiar “searching for satellite” screen. I tried menu 6-1-1 and sure enough there was no signal on either tuner. I went to the dish location and there were no obstructions. I reset the receiver and still no help. I did the switch check and the checks confirmed no signal. On resetting the receiver again I got the 502 error:

http://beckda46.freeservers.com/llbpages/622%20error%20-%20small.jpg

I tried removing the connections to each leg of the receiver independantly (with the other connected) and still no joy.

I’m at the end of my tricks and called the DISH help line, where they asked me to go through all of the checks that I already have done. I have called for a technician to come out but fortunately or unfortunately the first available appointment isn’t until this weekend. I’d love to be able to fix this myself – not just to save money but for the feeling of satisfaction.

I like tinkering with these things.

[Ken Green]

Try....disconnect both SAT inputs to the 622; unplug the 622; restart the switch; plug in the 622 (SAT feeds still disconnected); run check-switch...it will fail; unplug the 622; reconnect both SAT feeds; Plug the 622 in.

[ChuckA]

Remove both dish input cables and run a check switch. This should reset the switch. Then plug them both back in and run another check switch.

[AVJohnnie]

If your setup includes a DPP44, make sure to power-cycle its pwr-inserter block as well.

[lbeck]

Thanks for all the good suggestions. I'm *almost* disappointed that the problem resolved itself. The system was out for right at 24 hours. I got home this evening and turned it on, and still no signal. But when I tried menu 6-1-1 I got an intermittant signal on tuner 1 input, but zero on tuner 2. I decided to do a check switch again and the results came back AOK. So I tried the signal strength again and both tuners were up. At no time (even when they were coming up) did I have a reduced signal strength - just an intermittant one. I now have everything operating as it should.

I'm thinking that moisture may have entered a fitting or a cable. Or it could be unrelated to the rain and something may be going bad. I should find out as time progresses.

I will call off the technician appointment since this apparently is an intermittant problem and I know that these can be hard to diagnose. If the problem returns , then at least I may have some variables to correlate.

I appreciate the suggestions, which I'll print out and save to try if it happens again.

This is a great forum!

[Lincoln6Echo]

Thanks for all the good suggestions. I'm *almost* disappointed that the problem resolved itself. The system was out for right at 24 hours. I got home this evening and turned it on, and still no signal. But when I tried menu 6-1-1 I got an intermittant signal on tuner 1 input, but zero on tuner 2. I decided to do a check switch again and the results came back AOK. So I tried the signal strength again and both tuners were up. At no time (even when they were coming up) did I have a reduced signal strength - just an intermittant one. I now have everything operating as it should.

I'm thinking that moisture may have entered a fitting or a cable. Or it could be unrelated to the rain and something may be going bad. I should find out as time progresses.

I will call off the technician appointment since this apparently is an intermittant problem and I know that these can be hard to diagnose. If the problem returns , then at least I may have some variables to correlate.

I appreciate the suggestions, which I'll print out and save to try if it happens again.

This is a great forum!

I had almost this same problem Saturday morning.

I got up, turned on the receiver and no signal. Ran the 6-1-1 menu. Receiver couldn't lock into a signal to save its life. One would come up briefly and then it'd lose it. Then the bottom "Satellite Locked" bar would say "Spoof Network".

I ran check switch several times over the next couple hours and it finally started working again with a successful Test (of 4) on both Inputs.

However, Sunday it started doing strange things again. Even Monday and Tuesday had problems (losing signal between channel switching). But today, it's been working just fine.


I'm having a tech come out on Friday and a complete reinstall may be in order anyway. Dish relocation and new wiring. I think one of our trees has grown up into the path of the dish since initial installation 10 years ago.

[EVAC41]

I had a little bit of the same problem too.. Due to a very heavy thunderstorm that went thru my area around 3:00 am then brought the high winds at about 5 am that topped 75 mph at the airport.. Trees and powerlines down whole town a mess with branches and powerlines in the strees.

When I turned on my reciever. No signal to any satellites was showing up. Did a check switch and nothing. Went outside to see if any of the dish had blown away. Lucky it was still on the roof. Then just unpluged it and pluged it back in. Did a check switch and everything showed up...

[Lincoln6Echo]

I had a little bit of the same problem too.. Due to a very heavy thunderstorm that went thru my area around 3:00 am then brought the high winds at about 5 am that topped 75 mph at the airport.. Trees and powerlines down whole town a mess with branches and powerlines in the strees.

When I turned on my reciever. No signal to any satellites was showing up. Did a check switch and nothing. Went outside to see if any of the dish had blown away. Lucky it was still on the roof. Then just unpluged it and pluged it back in. Did a check switch and everything showed up...

Yeah, I guess I spoke too soon from my last post above. Because last night at 10 o'clock, I had a auto-tune timer set up to switch to ESPN2-HD for a boxing match and at the same time, I switched to Fox News and whalla...my reception was gone. Went to 6-1-1, and no signal. Did a switch test and got only one (of 38) test.

So I tried the hard reboot and disconnected the two input feeds.

1) I unplugged the receiver and the satellite input wires.
2) Plugged receiver back in.
3) Ran switch test. Got congruently running tests (of 38). No reception of course.
4) Unplugged receiver.
5) Reconnected the inputs.
6) Plugged receiver back in.
7) Ran switch test. Got congruently running tests (of 4). Successful reception on all satellites.
8) Unit started to download program guide and apparently hung up (before it even started). I hit 'Select' to stop. (All I had was the "What's on Dish 1000" channel.)
9) Got it to do another program guide download and it did it quickly. Only got HD channels though.
10) Did another switch test. Again, successful tests (of 4).
11) Unit downloaded new program guide, this time successfully.


However, all of these problems seem to occur for no good reason. No bad weather or nothing. It's been really good weather here for about a week now.


I'd also like to know if this DPP44 switch box thing is a required piece of equipment, if so, I don't have one.

[shakes]

Same exact problem here. It started yesterday. Have tried all above procedures numerous times. I still get a single switch test of 1 of 38 on input 1 and nothing input 2. Input 1 has verified reception on all satellites and nothing on input 2.

Also, I tried to bypass the separator and plugged the straight sat. feed directly into input 1 and I can't get any satellites to show at all. This is very strange. No weather here. I also find it strange that we all started having the same problem yesterday. Called dish and they want to send a tech out at my expense to troubleshoot. Wish I could get this thing to work myself, but I am running out of ideas.

Jamie

[Lincoln6Echo]

Well, had the tech come out today, which just happens to be one of my school classmates that I've know since Kindergarden, (he's been out a couple times before over the last few weeks). Anyway, we finally got up in the attic to check the wiring. Well, guess what? By accident, we found that the wire going down to my receiver was lose from the barrel coupler. In other words, the little screw tip on the end of the coaxial came off the black wire. So we replaced that coupler and we also removed a short extension that we had coming out of the wall to the receiver.

Apparently the less "extensions" you have from your dish, the better the signal strength. In other words, if you can go from your dish with one wire directly to your receiver, the better you'll be. The way we have it now is just one extension up in the attic right near my room. We also replaced the splitter thing going into Input 1 and 2, just to make sure that wasn't a problem as well.

It works good for now. Hopefully we got the problem solved. It's been 3 weeks since initial HD installation, so I was getting very frustrated. Hopefully this wiring thing was the problem.