problem with fortecstar ultra

[moufakkir]

Yesterday , I did a power scan on one of the satellites ,and when this was done , the settings of some satellites were changed . so, I wanted to go to antenna set up to put these settings back to normal , then I realized That it was not accessible . Any help would be greatly appreciated .

[benny666]

moufakkir ,
Is your receiver acting " NORMAL " now ?
if not, be4 trying anything ... take a look at the satellite dish and see if anything movement of its at all ... maybe the strong wind or rain or anything that made the dish out of its alignment ...

if the dish is still at g00d position then ... try to TURN OFF the receiver , take its power off from the wall ... plug back in after 1 minute later ... and see if you can go into the Menu of Fortec Star receiver ...
Hope it will solve your problem ,,,

g00d lucks , man !!!
:mozilla_wink: Benny :mozilla_smile:

[moufakkir]

I did unplug the receiver so many times with no luck . I think , when I was donig the power scan I overloaded it with more transponders. Now, I can't even access the antenna set up menu to delete some of the transponders. I wasn' t also able to arrow to to last menu to restore it to factory settings . My question now , is there any manual way to do a factory setting.

[moufakkir]

I think Sadoun should warn his customes from surpassing the receiver's capacity of storing transponders , because this could harm their receivers and make them inoperable .

[benny666]

moufakkir ,
l00k at this thread :
http://sadoun.net/viewtopic.php?t=5045

Hope you can fix it ,,,
:mozilla_wink: Benny :mozilla_smile:

[wejones]

I don't have any answers on all this, but am actually getting concerned about my own Ultra, as mine is starting to give the symptoms of losing it's settings between uses. At first it was just occasional, but it is getting more and more frequent. And I got partially locked out of on screen editing once, but was able to remove transponders as others have posted, and that seemed to help for a while. I'd really like to ask Sadoun whether Fortec has had any comment on the cause of such behavior? I wonder if perhaps there might be a memory backup battery that might be going bad or something?
However back to this specific thread, I am wondering if it might not be possible to delete the transponders, and correct any other errors in the data by using the serial computer channel editor program available at the Fortec site? I am planning to do this myself when I get time.
I'm curious what the symptoms are with respect to when you say you can't access the antenna setup page? I assume that you can get to the page where antenna is at the top, and the various scan modes are below, but you can't enter the antenna item??
I think that when you enter that item, that come to a page with the sat you are on selected, and apparently the data for that sat is corrupted. I'm also wondering whether if you go to another working sat before trying to enter that page, that perhaps it would allow you to enter? However it would still probably not be possible to change sats to change the data on the one that is corrupted, so I'm also wondering if you could just delete that satellite in the edit sat/transponder menu? You can then re-create it without any transponders later. Of course the edit TP/Sat menu also requires selection of the satellite to delete it, so you may be locked out of that too. But if that doesn't work, I still think the serial cable thing is an option.
BTW, the weird behavior of my Ultra has gotten into some REALLY weird symptoms. I have noticed that often, when the antenna data gets corrupted, that the LNB mode has a number of options that are not listed in the manual, and were not originally available when I first started using the receiver. When I correct the data and re-save it, those modes go away. Also, the diseqc switch numbers often get set to very high numbers, like 80 or 90 (I'd like to see a 90 port diseqC switch), which I assume wasn't intended to be possible, and it requires using arrow keys to get back to the proper selection, rather than typing in a number, which is annoying.
Anyway, the data on my Ultra, and apparently many other Ultras, has become very unstable. I'm going to start trying to use the channel editor computer program more, but I really hope that Fortec is trying to come up with a solution for these problems.

[pmb1010]

I'd go right to Fortec Canada on your questions.
The guys in Canada were very helpful in getting my HH90 fixed.

I am not having this problem with my Ultra, but if I do it would be nice to find out any resolutions to it.

Fortec Communications Inc.
2780 Skymark Ave. Unit 8
Mississauga, ON
Canada, L4W 5A7
Tel: + 1 905.602.0313
Fax: + 1 905.602.5289
fortecCA@fortecstar.com

[wejones]

Originally Posted by pmb1010

I am not having this problem with my Ultra, but if I do it would be nice to find out any resolutions to it.

I'm curious how many transponders you have saved?
Due to this thread, I finally decided to edit the satellites, transponders and channels with the channel editor program.
When I ran the program, and "uploaded" data "from" the Ultra, I looked at the box near the bottom that indicates how many transponders were saved.
It said TPCNT=1366/1300 !!! Ie the maximum was supposed to be 1300, but I had 1366. Anyway, I deleted a bunch of unused satellites, and deleted a bunch of unnecessary transponders, many of which were from multiple scans of IA6-ku, and got the transponder count down to about 700. Up until this point I had been doing all this with my Windows 98 computer, ie "uploading" and editing.
However, then I tried to "Download" the data "TO" the Ultra, still using Win98. The Download said that it was sucessful, however when I tried using the Ultra, the channels were all messed up. I suspected that I had downloaded using the wrong STB Type. It should be type 2, and it said that it WAS, however I tried to go to the Options menu to make sure, and it turns out that that is one of the few menu items that you can't get to when running the program in Win98.
Anyway, I went downstairs to my Win 2000 computer, and hooked up to the Ultra, and downloaded the same file I had just created. This time it worked fine. All the sats, transponders and channels seem fine, including the lnb settings, etc.
Anyway, I'll keep an eye on this receiver, and will post in a few days to indicate whether it retains it's settings OK.
BTW, when I downloaded the data from Win98, after finishing, it did NOT re-boot or re-set in any way, however, when I downloaded via Win2k, the receiver seemed to reset, ie not just like a power on reboot, but a full reset, because it came up on the first satellite in my list. So I'm wondering if it is also possible that if I had reset to factory defaults or something like that, it might have worked from Win98.

[Admin]

wejones

The channel editor must be used in Win2K or XP. It does not work with Win98.

The symptoms you have mentioned happen when the receiver's memory becomes full from multiple scan, etc.

The solution would be to delete all the transponders except for on or two per satellite. Then re-scan again.

Better yet is to do a fatory reset (use 1668 for password).

Of course with either options above you will lose all the channels. Once the scan is completed, you will have to reorganize the channels and favorite lists.

[TOCKCC]

I have had this problem before so I regularly delete all transponders but one on each satellite and have had no more problem. Doing this does not cause you to loose any channels you have stored it just clears out the transponders. You do not have to rescan any channels you have stored except when you do a master reset.

Tom

[pmb1010]

Originally Posted by wejones

I'm curious how many transponders you have saved?

Not that many I guess. Trees block a lot of satellites for me, so I can only "see" from AMC6, to about AMC15. So I miss out on a lot of stuff.

[moufakkir]

I always had problems with my receiver. Whenever, I do a power scan, it messes up all the info stored in the receiver .I always had to go to each satellite in the menu , and fix everything (loc, lnb, tp ect....) . So , I stopped using power scan for a while . The reason I like to use it,because I was getting more channels than regular scanning. The other day I wanted to try it again . then, this time it really messed up the receiver in such a way that I couldn't access the antenna set up menu to delete the unnecessary tronsponders . I had to do a factory setting using code 1668 . Everything went back to normal , but now the receiver doesn't power or command the motor. I 've had it with this receiver , I am getting a coolsat this time . I heard that they are good .

[wejones]

Originally Posted by Admin

wejones

The channel editor must be used in Win2K or XP. It does not work with Win98.

I was aware that Fortec says it is only for Win2K or XP, but there have been a few posts in the past where we discussed the fact that it can be used with Win98, except that some of the menus that aren't visible in Win98 have to be accessed by right clicking on the various windows in the program. I've used it for "uploading" from the receiver to the computer for a long time without any problem, but until yesterday hadn't tried sending data back to the receiver (I just uploaded to get a list of my channels). However there was someone else involved in the previous discussion who I'm pretty sure was sucessfully "downloading". So I'm not sure if i just had a bad download (I used a long home-made serial cable), or perhaps the other person in the discussion may have been using a regular Lifetime, and not the Ultra. My real suspicion is that the program basically works, but since you can't get into the options window, you can't get it properly into the Type 2 STB mode needed for the Ultra. But in any event, the program works fine in Win98 for getting data FROM the receiver, it's just getting data back TO the receiver that is questionable.

Originally Posted by Admin

The symptoms you have mentioned happen when the receiver's memory becomes full from multiple scan, etc.

The solution would be to delete all the transponders except for on or two per satellite. Then re-scan again.

Better yet is to do a fatory reset (use 1668 for password).

The question is what is the best way to remove the transponders. I've only used a factory reset after upgrading firmware, so I'm curious.... when doing the factory reset, does it put satellites (and transponders) that you have deleted back into the memory, the way they were prior to use of the receiver? If so, then I don't think this is a very useful way to do it, since in my case about half the transponders found in the factory condition were ones that I would want to delete. However, if the reset keeps the satellite and transponder list and just deletes the channels, then I'd agree that that would be the simplest way to do it.
It's too bad that there doesn't seem to be a way to do a delete all transponders on a satellite like you can do with the channels, because deleting the transponders one by one is quite time consuming.
Using the GTools program seems to be the easiest option, provided that you have a conveniently located computer. I have several Win2k/WinXP computers, but my conveniently located one is a Win98, which is why I'm trying to get it to work on Win98.

BTW, I mentioned in previous post that one of the weird symptoms I've been getting due to the memory over-run is that in the "LNB Type" setting has about 3 extra options. Ie usually the options are Universal 1, Universal 2, Single SL, Single SH, and Standard. Well on my Ultra, when I had too many transponders, I was getting a few other options there. I should have written them down, but one of them was "Code", one was something like "Frequency Range", and there were one or two more that I can't remember. It makes me wonder if these other options are hidden commands that might have some utility?