Thread: DVR Wiped My Recordings Again

This is with an SA Explorer 8240 DVR.

OK so here's the story: Last night I set up a show to recording while I was asleep so I could watch it this morning. I also had several other shows still on the recorded list that I hadn't watched or deleted yet (Simpsons Halloween special, The last episode of the Cleveland show, a thing on Japanese Ninjas from ID (Ch104), among several other things). I set it up for the recording, no problems there. However, instead of waking up to seeing the clock on the display, I see what seems to be the dreaded(in my opinion) "r###" thing with the hexadecimal numbers.

At that point I started to hope that this time it would keep the recordings like it used to do back when I first got it. But it didn't. Once I finally got the box to boot back up (a big enough hassle in itself after the updates), all my recordings were nowhere to be found, even the one I set last night. That really makes me angry. I pay for these things for a reason, not for them to just go off and wipe my recordings all the time just because of an update that shouldn't even have to mess with them.

I've already had this happen several times before, and every time they push an update to the box, it fails miserably and throws all sorts of differrent numbered errors. It then continually reboots and retries the update, sometimes taking many hours and 20 or more attempts before it even gets to the point of being usable again.

In this particular case, apparently it had been doing it overnight and was still failing when I woke up. I unplugged the box, waited, plugged it back in, and it still failed with error 31 (I think that was the one) 3 more times before successfully getting the update. After that I was able to turn the TV on once the display went blank, and got the usual blue boot screen. It then went to black after a couple minutes and showed channel 94 on the display. I turned it off and back on, and still 94 with no picture after the blue screen. I then unplug the power and plug it back in, and after about 5 more minutes, it finally works, but I lost all my recordings.

On a side note, the HD DVR seems to be unaffected. Either its already done its update and didn't wipe itself, or it hasn't gotten it yet.

I go through this crap every time an update gets pushed to my DVRs. Anyone else ever have this sort of thing happen to theirs after an update? Its starting to make me very angry that I can't keep shows recorded without knowing that there's a good chance they won't be there when I wake up the next morning. Is there a way I can keep the updates from wiping everything in the future?

EDIT: All my recordings were set to save until I erase them myself, and I clearly didn't tell it to erase them.

Well I went through a similar update process last night. Cox was updating the On Demand system up until 6AM CST (that's what it said when I tried to access the service). My box was pretty unusable throughout the night as I couldn't access the DVR or even the channel guide at times. All-in-all my box rebooted itself about five times, though I think each reboot was a separate update. Thankfully I didn't lose any recordings but I have lost recordings in the past due to an update. I have a Motorola 6416III box. If your DVR kept throwing errors when it was trying to receive the update it could be a bad DVR??

I think you can exchange those boxes at a local Cox office...you can here. Just walk in and take a number...wait to be called and explain your situation..hand them your old box and they'll give you a different one...thats how it works here anyway. Since you lost all of your recordings I doubt it'd be an issue.?