[jhollan2]

I am in Atlanta and we had a pretty rough storm last night. I lost power around 7pm saturday and it came back around 4pm sunday. Upon the return of power all 5 of my boxes displayed "searching for sat 1 and 2" with a 771 error. If I hit "menu" the only options I have are signal strength and repeat sat setup. The signal strength on all transponders is 0 (all boxes).

Needless to say, I'm sure the storm knocked my dish out of allignment. Soooo I called directv protection plan and they set up an appointment... for FRIDAY at 4pm. I cant get to my dish on my own (and wouldnt try), but the thought of no tv for a week is sad! Does anyone have any suggestions on a temporary fix until they can get to me friday???

 

[OverThereTooMuch]

Instead of waiting for the DTV freebie, you could pay someone else to come out sooner and fix it.

Other than that, I don't know what sorts of suggestions you're looking for. You already said you won't try to do it yourself. Maybe you can give a buddy some beer and ask him to do it?

 

[compnurd]

if it is your dish out like that there is nothing you can do until then

 

[jhollan2]

I approached a service guy today and asked him how much he wanted - but he said that he needed a work order (and insurance) to go up to the roof (4 stories up) and fix it.

It was a shot asking around. I guess I'll be buying some rabbit ears for the week!

 

[HDTVsportsfan]

Maybe your multswitch got fried. Can you get to that?

 

[jhollan2]

I looked at it, but it doesnt have a light (its not a plug in model) so I cant tell.

 

[rudeney]

OK, so the multiswitch has no dedicated power supply. In that case, it’s powered by the receivers. It may just need a “reboot” if you had a power surge. To do this, unplug *all* of your receivers from their power cords *and* their coax dish feeds. Leave it this way for five minutes.

Instead of connecting them all back, you might want to try one (and only one) at a time to see if any work. Sometimes a voltage spike can fry a tuner and it can then cause the multiswitch to malfunction for all receivers. This will let you test each receiver independently and eliminate any of them as causing the problems.

At the very least, maybe you can get “something” to work this way until your scheduled service call.

 

[andunn27]

I am in Atlanta and we had a pretty rough storm last night. I lost power around 7pm saturday and it came back around 4pm sunday. Upon the return of power all 5 of my boxes displayed "searching for sat 1 and 2" with a 771 error. If I hit "menu" the only options I have are signal strength and repeat sat setup. The signal strength on all transponders is 0 (all boxes).

Needless to say, I'm sure the storm knocked my dish out of allignment. Soooo I called directv protection plan and they set up an appointment... for FRIDAY at 4pm. I cant get to my dish on my own (and wouldnt try), but the thought of no tv for a week is sad! Does anyone have any suggestions on a temporary fix until they can get to me friday???

The exact thing happened to me. My BBC's got fried. Try unplugging the BBC's from your cables running into your receiver and connecting them directly onto tuner 1 and 2 input. See what happens. If you get a signal (most likely just SD programming with a few HD channels) then you need to swap your BBC's. It's worth a try. If that doesn't work it could be a multiswitch or a dish issue.

 

[jhollan2]

I will go try this - but it will be a major undertaking! The only reason I'm hesitant is because the tivo units are not working either. Would it work if I just climbed into the attic and unplugged the multiswitch itself? That would be MUCH easier than taking all the boxes out of their wall units!

 

[bonscott87]

I will go try this - but it will be a major undertaking! The only reason I'm hesitant is because the tivo units are not working either. Would it work if I just climbed into the attic and unplugged the multiswitch itself? That would be MUCH easier than taking all the boxes out of their wall units!

Sure. Unplug the power to all the receivers. Then go to your multiswitch and unplug all the cables going to the receivers. Wait the 5 minutes or so and then connect the coax to just one of the receivers and go back and plug the power back in and see if it's back from the dead.

 

[jhollan2]

No love... still 771... How can the dish go to 0 on ALL sats? Its still attached and looks ok - I figured it would be down to a low number, but 0???

 

[rudeney]

Well, that does really sound like a dish alignment issue, or, it could be a damaged LNB.

 

[66stang351]

No love... still 771... How can the dish go to 0 on ALL sats? Its still attached and looks ok - I figured it would be down to a low number, but 0???

The dish doesn't have to move very far to get all zeros. Just a few degrees and you get nothing.

 

[bonscott87]

The dish doesn't have to move very far to get all zeros. Just a few degrees and you get nothing.

Heck, it just needs to move a half inch and you'll get all zeros.

 

[jhollan2]

So, as an update - they were supposed to come between 4 and 8 on friday. At 7:50 they called (after I called 2x to confirm earlier in the day) and said that they had "accidentally" scheduled a tech that wasnt on duty that day and would have to resched. Seething... I told them someone would have to be here first thing saturday morning. At 1pm saturday (thats first thing, right) a really nice tech showed up. He went up on the ladder and said that my transponders were fried. He replaced the bar on the front of the dish and voila! TV! He checked the allignment and made a slight modification. All is well... nothing I could have done myself. I'm not even that cranky about taking off work friday afternoon for no reason because its fixed!

Thanks for the help!