V2 problems

[AWTM]

Hi,

I hope I'm not asking in the wrong place but as the Beyonwiz forum is now long gone I'm hoping to find some sagely advice here.

I guess I must first confess my sins and admit I paid for an Amazon subscription a while back and started a life of binge watching that left my V2 not getting much use. I had left a couple of regular recording presets on which kept on keeping on and filled my attached HDD. The other day I decided to turn on the V2 and watch some of the recorded shows, but unfortunately in doing so I seemed to have opened Pandora's box and have had nothing but frustration since then in my efforts to get things to work.

The initial problem was that on turning on the V2 my screen filled with a static of green/pink/white ants.

Thinking maybe the V2 had died I removed the USB HDD and took it to my computer in the hope that I could at least salvage the recording on it, but the HDD won't load on my computer. The computer shows no evidence of the drive being loaded except when I click on the "Safely Remove Hardware" button. The drive is there, but it hasn't been allocated a drive letter.

Assuming the HDD was dead I tried it in my Samsung TV and it worked fine!

I tried a second USB HDD in the V2 to also only get the coloured ants on my screen.

I had also had problems getting the V2 to Boot and found the only 100% sure way to boot it was to totally remove any USB connections from it. With the USB HDD nothing would happen, the best would be that it would get to 100% Boot then turn off. When I removed the USB tuner as well the V2 booted fine and worked as expected.

If I try to attach the USB HDD after I successfully boot the V2, the V2 just completely turn off and only a hard off/on at the switch will fix it.

To add insult to injury I did manage to get everything to work properly with all USB devices attached. But that was short lived as and now it seems worse than before.

My uneducated thoughts are that the V2 power supply is on the fritz and when it needs to send power to the USB plugs it has a hissy fit and dies. But doesn't explain why my USB HDD will only work with my TV and not my computer?

So I'm left with a V2 that works fine as a media player from my NAS still, but can't be used to record shows. Although I guess I could still time shift as the flash memory is still working. And a USB drive that only works to play the contained files if plugged into my TV.

If anyone has any thoughts I'd be most appreciative. Especially as to why my computer (I also tried a 2nd computer, both were windows) won't load (let alone read) the HDD.

Cheers,
Anthony
 

[blip]

It sounds like the HDD was formatted with the ext4 file system by the V2 and Windows can't read ext4 without some extra drivers.

A failing power supply could be causing the other problems but you would need to measure its output or swap it for a known good power supply to be sure.

[AWTM]

Thanks for the reply.

I had been assuming the V2 used FAT32. I've managed to find some software that can now read the USB drive so I can recover the shows I'd recorded. I'll need to then find something that can hopefully reformat the drive so I can keep using it.... (or finally get around to trying Linux!!)

My V2 will have to just be my media player until it finally crashes and burns..... The Wiz had long been the prized bit of tech in my house for years. (sad days)

[prl]

I hope I'm not asking in the wrong place but as the Beyonwiz forum is now long gone I'm hoping to find some sagely advice here.

There are Beyonwiz topics, including a Beyonwiz V2 one, in the Whirlpool PVR area:
https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum/126?g=184
However, I don't think that anyone at IceTV minds posts about Beyonwiz problems here. I'll answer (if I can) in either place.

It sounds like the HDD was formatted with the ext4 file system by the V2 and Windows can't read ext4 without some extra drivers.

That is correct. If you format a drive on the V2, it will be formatted as ext4. That is also usually the case if the drive came pre-formatted with the V2.

I understand that Windows Subsystem for Linux will allow you to read ext4 formatted drives under Windows, but I have never used it. More information about it can be found here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/about. There may be more convenient ways of doing the same thing.

A power supply issue might be the cause, but that's not simple to diagnose. The V2 has a single 12V external power supply, but it also has several power regulators on the mainboard that provide the various voltages actually used by the circuitry.

You mention that you can still use the V2 as a media player - but does it also work as a simple set-top box to receive broadcast TV and send it to your TV via HDMI?

[AWTM]

Hi Peter,

thanks for the reply. Yes the V2 seems to work fine without any attached USB devices. But I haven't really tested it yet for any length of time I must admit. With the external drive I managed to get it working with "MiniTool Partition Wizard" and reformat it to FAT32. I also managed to use another 3rd party app to read and save all my movie files from the disk to my computer.

The strange thing is that if I set a mount letter with MTPW the drive seems to work fine. But when I then unplug the drive and plug it back in, Windows still refuses to mount it automatically. So I know it's in a format Windows can read, I know it can be mounted via a 3rd party app, but it is essentially still useless as it won't auto load like a portable drive should.

Other USB drives function and mount properly so I'd assume it's not Windows. I tried a different cable with no change. My only thought was that being plugged into the V2 for so long, it has somehow become corrupted? But when plugged into my Samsung TV it worked perfectly! It's also strange that MTPW can find and read it, but Windows Disk Manager has no idea it's there. Being reformatted a couple of times now, there couldn't be any Linux code left on the disk to stop Windows reading it properly should there???

My next step is to try and get the V2 to boot with the newly formatted drive plugged in. One question, there really shouldn't be an issue with plugging the drive into the V2 after it has booted should there? I'm assuming it should be just like any other computer? Doing so previously just turned the V2 off and a hard power off/on was then needed to get it to do anything.

Once again thanks for any help.

Cheers,
Anthony

[prl]

With the external drive I managed to get it working with "MiniTool Partition Wizard" and reformat it to FAT32.

FAT32 isn't really a good file format to use for a Beyonwiz recording drive, because FAT32 with the default cluster size only supports files up to 4GB and it doesn't support U*ix-style hard links, which are used for some (though not commonly used) operations.

My next step is to try and get the V2 to boot with the newly formatted drive plugged in.

While it's worth trying, from what you've previously posted, I doubt that it will succeed.

One question, there really shouldn't be an issue with plugging the drive into the V2 after it has booted should there?

No, not normally, though it may not be mounted in the correct place for recording to. But for simple "does it crash the box" testing, it should be fine.

I'm assuming it should be just like any other computer?

It is just "any other computer", just with some tuners and A/V hardware to help make it a PVR. It runs Linux, and the PVR function is mostly provided by a single application started as the boot process finishes.

Windows Disk Manager has no idea it's there

When it's formatted with ext4, that's not a format that Windows knows how to deal with, and Windows can't mount it as a file system, and has no native tools to deal with it in any way, apart from reformatting it to something that Windows can deal with.

I'm beginning to think that it's an issue with the USB part of the V2, whether its power supply or something else, and that it will need a trip off to Nasa Electronics for repairs.

Another possible test of the USB system would be to try to re-install the V2's firmware from a USB thumb drive.

[AWTM]

Thanks again for the input Peter,

The reformat to FAT 32 was an attempt to get my computer to read the HDD. Which unfortunately it didn't. If I got it to work, the idea was to reformat the drive from the V2 again.

Good news, I managed to get the V2 with the USB HDD attached to boot successfully... bad news is it only lasted for about 15 seconds before it turned off and tried to reboot itself.

The V2 was also having trouble booting without any attached USB devices now as well. And after I finally got it to boot I tried playing some media files. Although searching my NAS and locating the files wasn't a problem, when trying to play some of them, the V2 crashed. Others it played fine. This happened on both audio and video files.

So I'm thinking now my V2 definitely has a power related issue. I tried searching for Nasa Electronics, but the website is down. So maybe he's out of the game as well?

I think last ditch effort now is to see if I can factory reset the V2 after getting it to boot. Although I'm hesitant to do it as getting the V2 to talk to my WD NAS was quite an effort and took a lot of help from the generous folk on the Beyonwiz forum.

[prl]

I agree that it could be a power supply problem. You could try getting a replacement external power supply with the same specs (or the same voltage, but higher DC current specs), but if the power issue is one of the on-board regulators rather than the external power supply, or if it's not a power supply issue after all, that won't help.

I tried searching for Nasa Electronics, but the website is down.

I just tried using the link saved in my browser (https://www.nasaelectronics.com.au/), and that failed, too. The domain name no longer seems to be in DNS (I checked using nslookup).

So maybe he's out of the game as well?

That sounds like it might be the case. It might be worth trying again in  a few days, but if the domain name has gone, it may mean the end of the line.

I don't know of anyone else who does Beyonwiz repairs.