I Need Help Please, This is WEIRD

[PABoxster]

Ok, so it took me forever to find the signal but with help from a friend we finally got her after months of on and off tinkering. Anyhow, here is the one million dollar problem. If I go to the "Antenna Setup" screen, and move it to one of my sats I have programmed, I get great signal level/quality. Check another sat, same thing, great level/sig. Now, when I am actually watching the channels and moving to another channel, it looks like it is moving the sat, then when it gets there, No Signal. Now, if I go into the menu, antenna and go to that sat, "example: AMC4" then after a few seconds, the signal is back up to normal. Then I get out of all the menu's and there is the channel back up and viewable. I tried changing cables, putting a sat booster. No go. It's almost like the motor is not moving when I am changing channels, but when you go into the "antenna menu" it will move it. It almost seems like it only happens on the 101 sat. Hope someone can help or have any ideas. I know how to do it, but I set this up for my parents to watch the Vietnamese channels. By the way, I could only find 2 of them. Anyone know of any other ones on any sats? Thanks in advance!

[elgemcdlf]

What type of receiver?

[wejones]

What type of receiver?

Sounds like an Ultra. If it's weird, it's an ULTRA.

If it's NOT an Ultra, ignore the following.

If it IS an Ultra, hook up a serial cable and run the Gtools program, upload the channel data from the receiver and check along the left side to see the TP count. I'll bet you have like 1500 transponders saved. The limit is about 1300, and if you've been working with the thing for "months", it's pretty likely that you're over the limit.

The only other thing that comes to mind is that you might have SAVED the channels using one LNB type (LO FREQ), but then changed the LO FREQ, and when you go to the channel, the freq for that channel is out of range, however when you go back to the Antenna Setup page, the receiver tunes in your transponder, then when you go back to the channel, the settings are still wrong, but it uses what it was last set on. I have seen this happen on one of my receivers.

The strange thing though, is the several second delay after going to the Antenna setup page. This does make it sound like when changing channels, your motor isn't getting commands to go to the proper satellite, but when you go to the Antenna page, the dish DOES go to the proper satellite.
Again, I would recommend getting the channel editor program for your receiver (again if it's an ultra or another Fortec, it's usually a program called Gtools, but for other receivers, whatever they have), and check the channel data to see if there is anything unusual for the channels that are giving you trouble.
Perhaps a simpler thing to do would be to just delete and re-scan these channels, because it looks to me like the channel data is corrupted.

[PABoxster]

Yes, you hit the nail on the head. It is a Fortec Lifetime Ultra. I have tried to delete all the channels and rescan. But maybe I will try it again or try the gtools or channel editor program. Whats the newest bin for the unit? Maybe I need to flash it? Thanks for your help!

[PABoxster]

Can I use channel master to accomplish this task or do I need gtools? I haven't had the time to try channel master yet, but just in case it doesn't work. Do you have a link to gtools by any chance? Thanks!

[wejones]

Originally Posted by PABoxster

Yes, you hit the nail on the head. It is a Fortec Lifetime Ultra. I have tried to delete all the channels and rescan. But maybe I will try it again or try the gtools or channel editor program. Whats the newest bin for the unit? Maybe I need to flash it? Thanks for your help!

I'm not positive, but from what others have posted, it's not the # of channels that does it, but the number of transponders, and they are harder to delete manually. I think you have to do it one at a time, and when I had problems, I had about 200 too many. Re what firmware is newest, you'd have to check at the Fortec web page. I'm using 2.64, Feb 2005 . I originally had an older version that had a problem whereby the remote would be deactivated every time you encountered an HD channel. If this doesn't happen to you, you're probably OK firmware wise.
When I had problems, I used Gtools to save my channels just in case, then reset the receiver to factory defaults, because I thought that the memory was probably corrupted. I then used Gtools to delete all the satellites and channels that I had no interest in. In my case, since I'm slaving off a big dish, I had no need to reprogram satellites or anything, so I just re-scanned the transponders I was interested in. Process took my number of transponders down from 1500 to around 500.

Originally Posted by PABoxster

Can I use channel master to accomplish this task or do I need gtools?

I would recommend that you get Gtools, and you need to get the version that is listed under the Ultra at the Fortec web page, because Gtools for other Fortec receivers are different. It will ask you something about whether you have 2000 channels or 2001. I think 2001 is correct.

[Iceberg]

yep. Transponder overload

you have to delete transponders. The channels won't be deleted but you need to start nuking some TP's in the unit. My Pansat 1500 does the same thing.

Went through and nuked most TP's and all was well