YouView box stuck Waking Up

Hi all, hope someone can be of assistance with a problem we have had since Sunday morning with our TalkTalk YouView tv box. It was working fine on Saturday, we went to bed, came down on Sunday morning and turn it on using the remote and it wouldn't boot up - just stuck on the Waking Up screen and making whirring noises.

We tried again on Sunday night and the same thing was happening so we left it again until this evening. Same thing today too

I took a video of it and posted on youtube - this is turning the box on, see the lights lighting up, screen all working, etc. Stuck on Waking Up screen. I went close up to the box and you can hear it whirring and making strange noises as though it's trying to do something. The remote does absolutely nothing whilst it's in this state.

It's a Huawei box and the instruction manual says that to factory reset you have to use the TalkTalk button to get into the main menu, but I can't even get off the Waking Up screen and into any types of menu, it just seizes up and makes noises.

We phoned TalkTalk this evening and the rep on the phone was pretty useless, asking if we had the box turned on, were the leads connected, was our tv working, did the remote have batteries in it, had we damaged the box, etc.
Eventually they said they would book us an engineer but we may be charged £75 for this call out and could end up having to buy a new box for another £299 if it was deemed that we had broken it! We haven't done anything at all to it, it just stopped working.

Has anyone else experienced this type of problem with their box, is there a way to reset it, will I likely be charged for it?

In reply to a post by piratewolf:

I took a video of it and posted on youtube - this is turning the box on, see the lights lighting up, screen all working, etc. Stuck on Waking Up screen. I went close up to the box and you can hear it whirring and making strange noises as though it's trying to do something.

Towards the end of the video, when you move the camera near the box, you hear the characteristic noise of a dead hard disk. It's trying to spin up, failing, and trying again. The remote won't work as the box isn't able to boot.

I'd talk to TalkTalk again and say that you believe your YouView box has a faulty hard disk and won't boot. Hopefully they'll then sort you out with a new box. If they don't, considering how new YouView is, you can assert your legal rights on the grounds that the box is not of satisfactory quality - whilst it is accepted that hard disks fail, this one can only be a few months old. Assuming you're in England or Wales, it's section 14(2) of the Sale of Goods Act 1979 if you bought the box outright, section 4(2) of the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 if the box becomes your property as part of your TalkTalk contract or section 9(2) of the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 if the box is hired to you as part of your TalkTalk contract.

Thanks for your advice, what you say makes sense about it being a hard drive failure. We only had it installed at the end of November so it's barely 2 months old.

When I searched on google on Sunday for this issue, someone else had posted about theirs being stuck on the Waking Up screen on the same morning that we had issues, so I thought it might have been network issues or something at the time. I wonder if there's a faulty batch or something. Hopefully they'll replace it free of charge - and we shouldn't have to pay engineer cost if it is their hardware failure.

In reply to a post by piratewolf:

I wonder if there's a faulty batch or something. Hopefully they'll replace it free of charge - and we shouldn't have to pay engineer cost if it is their hardware failure.

Certainly not. Perhaps make sure you get something in writing from the engineer that the box was proven to be faulty, before he leaves.

HDDs have a mean failure rate that is quite high (many years) but this is an average and doesn't preclude a drive failing within 30 seconds let alone two months.

The drive is either dead, or there is a power supply problem where the drive doesn't get enough power to start up (and therefore resets and tries again)

Either way, it's a YouView box internal hardware failure so unless they can prove you did something like drop it while powered on or spill fluids then it should be replaced.

Also, considering they are late to the market (I've had this functionality for almost 6 years now) and are on a drive to market this, they probably don't want lots of press about hardware failures not being remedied. Be prepared to say you will contact consumer protection media if you don't get satisfaction

I don't think this is an isolated problem, although Humax YouView boxes seem more prone to self-immolation. There is a firmware upgrade going on, so it could be that the upgrade didn't complete properly.

You may be able to find more help and things to try on the YouView comnunity forum Here

http://community.youview.com/youview

It definitely sounds as if it is a problem with the box, not you, so Talk Talk shouldn't charge for fixing it.

I have a BT supplied Humax YouView box, and they replaced it last week because it wouldn't connect to the internet and wouldn't boot into maintenance mode.

Hi guys. I know it has been a while since you posted so talk talk have probably dealt with your issue, but I thought i would post a solution that worked for me as this is the first hit on google for the above problem.

If you watch the video played in the origional post, and your box is making the whirring noise that piratewolf's was at the end, then this solution should help.

The below steps will not work if your disk is still whirring. To stop this, you must give the box a sharp whack on the top to shake the hard drive disk (I am not talking about a hammer smash, but a sharp thud with the flat of your hand).

There is a possibility that this alone will solve your problem, if not try the steps below which should work, but MAKE SURE THE DRIVE IS NOT WHIRRING!

1. Ensure the YouView Box is switched off and is currently connected to the router (the YouView Box will require an internet connection).
2. Power on YouView using button at the back of YouView Box.
3. Start YouView using the power button on the YouView Box front panel, and then quickly press and hold both the + and – buttons on the front panel. If you haven’t pressed the buttons together by the time “YouView Waking Up” is displayed, or you see the “YouView please wait…” message then try again.
4. Let go of the + and – buttons once the “Huawei – Mainenance Mode menu” is displayed.
5. The + and – buttons on the front panel will navigate the menu. Keep pressing the – button until “Internet/USB Recovery, keep recordings” option is highlighted. If you go past the option, simply press the + button to navigate back to the option.
6. Press the power button on the YouView Box front panel to select the option. This will bring up some information and ask “Do you want to proceed?”. Press the power button again to confirm.
7. The YouView Box will now show a progress bar as it downloads software from the internet and installs on the YouView Box. This may take several minutes. Once complete, the YouView Box will restart.
8. Once the YouView Box restarts, the YouView Box will show the initial setup wizard. You will need to run through the setup wizard including tunning the channels.
9. Once complete, this should now resolve your issue.

Hope this helped.

I had a similar problem to this, please don't take it that my solution will fix your issue, I just think this solution should be put out there for people who experience similar problems.

My YouView box would get to the 'Nearly There' stage and then the TV screen would go blank. I tried all the fixes to no avail. A TalkTalk engineer visited me and he discovered my problem. My TV being a bit old, a 7 year old LG 32", couldn't cope with the default 1080p HDMI output of the YouView box. The solution, connect the YouView box to your TV with a SCART cable, in the settings menu change the output from 1080p to 1080i, then use the HDMI cable once more.

I hope other people with similar problems benefit from this

Cheers

Had the same waking up problem and yes it was a 2 month old hard drive calling it a day. Engineer swapped it straight out with no cost to me as it is quite common failure on the HW boxes The blank screen is not a waking up problem its a connection between box and tv problem similar to setting graphics card to wrong settings for monitor. Except on monitor you get a chance to correct as graphic card reverts to previous setting unless confirm change. Pity they didn't do that for tv box.

Very similar problem. New TV working for a few weeks. My YouView Box just won't initiate any more. Tried ever kind of reset.
Is the HDD just dead or can I replace it? I do not know how to manually install the software.

Edited by revgreen (Fri 31-Jan-14 12:19:25)

Sorry to say there are a lot of posts on the TalkTalk forum about their box being very poor.
As a TT user I could get it for free but after reading about the many problems decided not to bother!