my sky plus box has lost all its + features (recording, pausing, watching things I have already recorded)

Called Sky last night and the nice lady guided me through a few steps to try and save it but nothing seemed to work – got an engineer booked to look at it next week (65 quid call out cost)

I'm guessing the hard drive has died. Anyone else had this happen – is this fixable? I'm out of waranty

Thanks

Tim

Replacing the disk is very straightforward – lots of info on the net on how to do it. Look at avforums.com or google.

Price of replacement disk will be less than the initial callout charge so worth having a go imo. Chances are sky will try and charge you for a new box.

Call them back & tell them that's it's not really worth fixing at that price & you think you'll just cancel your subscription & move to cable instead.

they may call your bluff, but probably not

Call them back & tell them that's it's not really worth fixing at that price & you think you'll just cancel your subscription & move to cable instead.

And if they do call your bluff, you could get a S/H box from Ebay for around £50.

Did you try the full reset which wipes the drive? That often works.

When this happened to me a month ago I bought a cable to connect the drive to my computer, then copied the files over, formatted the drive and copied the files back, and it has worked perfect since.

You could probably buy and fit a new drive for less than the callout charge, or if you didnt fancy that a lot of people say they are going to cancel their sky package and then get offered the engineer callout for free.

Try this page for info, or look on avforums.

oh and problem number 2 – the power ligh now stays green (rather than turing red) when I switch the box off.

I fear this might be a sign of a more dramatic fault with the box – and that its only a matter of time before all telly is lost (I have no aerial) 😥

rich – yes the lady on the phone tried the full reset, made no difference

I will try the threat to leave – we use them for phone and broadband as well. If I say I'm going to buy a freesat box instead they might go for that.

I'll call tonight

When mine goes mad I just unplug it completely (so no green light could possibly be on as there is now power to the box) and leave it for 10 minutes. I then plug it back in and *leave it for another 5 minutes* before trying to make it restart which can take a while to do as it boots back up.

Its worth a try telling sky that you are going to cancel but in my experience they are happy to let you go.

I have sky+ mutli room & the box in the kitchen started doing the same as yours – i ended up cancelling the multi room part as they wouldn't send an engineer out for free.

My other box is now starting to fail 😡

mastiles – we did the unplug too. She made me wait 3 minutes (she had a timer) before she would let me switch it back on

I've got one sitting spare since I cancelled my Sky. It's the Thomson 160GB version. Make me an offer if you want it.

When mine died out of warranty – threatened to cancel and they called my bluff, so I went went through with cancellation.

Happily it just started working again all by itself a few days before the signal was due to go off. I stopped the cancellation and it'd been ok ever since! (about 12 months) 😆

I would have a go at the internet guide if it went again, always my 1st course of action for anything that breaks these days.

thanks all – a few things to try

swayndo – might just do that if I get no joy

Thanks

Tim

I think you will find the £65 call out gets you a new box if the old one is bust. I just replaced mine that way, 3rd box in 6yrs. They get tired I reckon……I love my Sky+, I'm not leaving.

Before you wipe the drive, download a copy of copy+. You can use this to (attempt) to salvage and programs that were on the disk before your box died.

If you're not too bothered about saving the recordings, just buy a new disk and do it yourself.

I did mine; it's straight forward as long as you use the correct disk. I upgraded it from 40Gb to 500Gb.

See here or here for more info.