All I know is that when my receiver was unplugged from the sat IN feed, it wouldn't do nearly anything for me ... and I only had my 722k unplugged from the satellite feeds for about 15 to 20 minutes. And it completely reverted as if it wasn't authorized for anything.
Once I put the sat feed back in, it didn't come to life right away, and even then it had reverted to looking for 110/119 when I'm on the Eastern Arc, and when I did check switch and got all ok's and then tried, it was still not happy, I had to rerun check switch, let it sit for more than 5 minutes on the right satellite & transponder before it would let me out of the install screen without another error / alert message. ... all totaled the first time more than 40 minutes of futzing... the second time ... just hooking up and immediately doing check switch/waiting .. was about 15 minutes.
maybe I had the bum 722k ... but I'd recommend others try it ... just simply unplug your sat in feeds for 30 minutes.. see how easily you get access to any DVR feature.
And as was already pointed out, hooking to your friends "dish" if dish (not directv) would allow your receiver to re-auth rather than sitting on channel 100/101.
Its also possible that not having any sat feed signal is different than storm blocking the signal ... since when the signal is blocked, your receiver still sees its connected to the switch and LNB's and can make the intelligent decision its in bad signal rather than no satfeed at all.