Power went out. Now I'm not picking up the satellite. What gives?

[aikigreg]

Hello there. For my maiden post, here's a question I hope someone can answer.

Whenever our power goes out, our Directv receiver usually forgets our pre-set channels or does something else equally screwy. A few months ago, the power went out and we weren't receiving a signal at all. So we called customer service and they put me through a series of steps that got the system back up and running in just a few minutes.

Today we cut the power off to do some work in the house, turned the system back on, and it's not receiving a signal. No big deal, except that I can't remember exactly what steps the company told me last time.

So I call the company and they tell me a slightly different sequence of events (unplug the power cable for 15 secs, then plug back in, try unplugging the coax to the dish and rubbing the needle to remove static, hit reset). None of these things are fixing the problem and the only further suggestion offered by the computer prompts these folks are reading is to call a service guy out for $70.

I'm hoping someone here can save me that call. Any help you can offer would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[jcrandall]

Try running satellite setup (menu, setup, satellite, repeat setup)

Then when done see if the signal strength is back.

You'll need to know what kind of dish you have, it will ask you, and you can ignore the aiming instuctions after entering the zip code.

 

[aikigreg]

Thanks masterdeals. I tried that, and no effect. Any other suggestions?

 

[gbertler]

Do you have a multi-switch which requires a power supply that maybe got unplugged, or do the cables from the receiver go straight to the dish?
Greg

 

[aikigreg]

We only have the one receiver, so as far as I know, the cable runs directly to the satellite without a multi-switch.

 

[jdc20006]

Box might have got fried. I seen that a lot. The D11 receivers are crap in my opinion. Thats the model it happened to most often. When the area had a bad lighting storm the next week the techs were constantly replacing them. I did notice that all the bad receivers were located at homes which the system was not grounded.

 

[msufan]

The surge of re-powering your house might have fried the box. Another thing you can check is if the box went to a multi sat dish set-up and you have a round dish. It would be looking for 110 and 119 sats as well as 101 which a round 18' dish can't bring in. It happen to me one time right after I got my system when ice cut our power one time. You have to go into the sat setup to check that.

 

[aikigreg]

The system is set for multi-sat and that's the type of dish we have. I checked last night when I was doing the sat setup masterdeals suggested. It sounds like I'm going to have to break down and make that service call. Fark.

 

[HDinCincy]

Box might have got fried. I seen that a lot. The D11 receivers are crap in my opinion. Thats the model it happened to most often. When the area had a bad lighting storm the next week the techs were constantly replacing them. I did notice that all the bad receivers were located at homes which the system was not grounded.

This sounds really odd. Particularly the idea that it's happened before and D* walked you through a solution. I use a D11 from one of my bedrooms in my tailgating set up. It requires NO setup at all. I simply make sure that the RF in from the dish is attached before I power up (you didn't disconnect that so yours should be connected) and then I plug in the D11. It gives you a blue power light for about 2 seconds and then it goes off and does it's auto diagnostic setup. As long as your dish is properly aligned it'll reset itself. In fact, I use the D11 to fine tune my dish alignment. Simply plugging in the unit (or in your case recovering from a power outage) should not affect your unit. Now, a surge is a different story but mine has not been babied, using generator power and even DC to AC converter. It's always been fine. Why don't you at least try unplugging the D11, disconnecting the RG6 RF cable, then reconnect it and plug the unit in. DO NOT turn it on from the remote for at least 4 minutes. Worth a shot. HTH

 

[dtv_tech1]

Another thing that may be a possibility here is the LNB. I have seen this happen during power cycles more often then a reciver getting fried. And as far as the type of dish setting getting changed due to power loss or cycling , it does'nt matter if it does or not because the default is always 101 and any reciever will pull the 101 no matter what. If your last resort is the service call , a-lot of times what dtv will do is if u are willing to sign up for the protection plan , they will let you off with half price on the service call. And the protection plan takes one billing cycle to go into effect. If you have a mutimeter and are somewhat familiar with the laws of OHM , you should be able to test that power is getting to the lnb anyway. Unfortunately there is no way to tell if the LNB is actually switching or not.