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Panasonic DMR-E85H error U99
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DuffM
Suspended due to non-functional email address
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17. July 2007 @ 18:33 |
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Originally posted by cal401:
Originally posted by DuffM:
It gives me a PLEASE WAIT display, then goes into SELF CHECK, then brings up the TV Guide listings which are all blank, and finally shows the U99 on the display.
...
This sounds very similar to the one and only U99 problem that I've had. Does it display the TV channel for a few seconds before the guide shows up? If so, try pressing and releasing the power button on the front panel before the guide comes up. That's what I did and the next time I powered up it was fine.
Let us know.
Cal
Sigh. Nope. The TV channel does come up after the SELF CHECK, and this time I heard whirring. So I powered off, no guide showed but a minute later I got the U99 again.
Thanks for the suggestion. Maybe I need to wait longer to power up?
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cal401
Junior Member
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17. July 2007 @ 19:06 |
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Originally posted by DuffM:
Originally posted by cal401:
This sounds very similar to the one and only U99 problem that I've had. Does it display the TV channel for a few seconds before the guide shows up? If so, try pressing and releasing the power button on the front panel before the guide comes up. ...
Cal
Sigh. Nope. The TV channel does come up after the SELF CHECK, and this time I heard whirring. So I powered off, no guide showed but a minute later I got the U99 again.
Thanks for the suggestion. Maybe I need to wait longer to power up?
I wrote up what happened to me on page 52. You might want to have a look there.
Here's what you do:
- Power down after you see the TV channel display, before guide displays.
- As soon as you hear the drive shut down, you will hear a wheeeee sound, unplug the machine.
- Wait 30 seconds and plug back in.
- Wait until you hear all hard drive activity stop, no harm in waiting 10 minutes or so, then power up.
- As soon as you see the TV channel display, power down again using the front panel button. Don't hold the botton down very long, just press and release.
- Wait until the drive shuts down, then wait some more.
- Power up.
Hopefully when your power up again it will be OK. (That's basically how I broke my machine out of a U99 loop.) If it doesn't work, try everything again. I would do everything above several times before I gave up. Keep careful track of what the display shows and what you hear. There may be something critical in the sequence that I forgot and you can tell us to help the next guy out. The unplug for 30 seconds part seems to be key to resolving U99 problems.
Let us know what you find.
Cal
Cal 8571x
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 18. July 2007 @ 13:32
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REPAIRMAN
Junior Member
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20. July 2007 @ 11:37 |
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Originally posted by Karen2523:
Hi all-
VERY BAD NEWS...... the repair place in my area called back just now.... they told me that it would cost 684.69 to fix my unit. They said that the digital board was bad. The next part made no sense..... the guy said that the hard drive is PROBABLY bad as well- and would need to be replaced. Karen
Hi Karen. I think the price quoted stinks--The digital pcb fot that model is no where near the price quoted even if you take it that in the uk we seem to pay more for items than any where else(we get ripped off big time) and the dollar/pound exchange rate it should be a lot less than quoted. The statement that the hard drive is PROBABLY faulty as well is absolute rubbish and hard drives these days cost peanuts--you do not have to buy them from Panasunic --any good PC shop will sell you a good ide drive to put in your unit for less that $80 It is more likely that that the price quoted was so large to put you off having the unit repaired because the repairer did not know what the problem was and to save face jacked up the quote hoping you would refuse.If you did take up the quote he could afford to send it to someone who knew what they were doing and repair it and then you would pay both the proper engineer and the comedian who gave you this stupid quote. I`ve been an engineer for over 35 years and I`ve seen all the scams
Repairman
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DuffM
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20. July 2007 @ 16:52 |
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Originally posted by cal401:
I wrote up what happened to me on page 52. You might want to have a look there.
Here's what you do:
- Power down after you see the TV channel display, before guide displays.
- As soon as you hear the drive shut down, you will hear a wheeeee sound, unplug the machine.
- Wait 30 seconds and plug back in.
- Wait until you hear all hard drive activity stop, no harm in waiting 10 minutes or so, then power up.
- As soon as you see the TV channel display, power down again using the front panel button. Don't hold the botton down very long, just press and release.
- Wait until the drive shuts down, then wait some more.
- Power up.
Hopefully when your power up again it will be OK. (That's basically how I broke my machine out of a U99 loop.) If it doesn't work, try everything again. I would do everything above several times before I gave up. Keep careful track of what the display shows and what you hear. There may be something critical in the sequence that I forgot and you can tell us to help the next guy out. The unplug for 30 seconds part seems to be key to resolving U99 problems.
Let us know what you find.
Cal
Still no luck :(
Someone suggested I replace the hard drive myself - since the warranty is expired, I might as well try. But I have no idea what hard drive to use. Is there a certain type I need?
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REPAIRMAN
Junior Member
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21. July 2007 @ 02:41 |
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Originally posted by DuffM:
Originally posted by cal401:
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Someone suggested I replace the hard drive myself - since the warranty is expired, I might as well try. But I have no idea what hard drive to use. Is there a certain type I need?
Hi DuffM, take the top off the machine and read the capacity of the drive from the label and go to your nearest pc shop or go online and get a drive of the same or larger capacity than the one fitted--do not get a Maxtor brand drive as a replacement as in my experience in fixing these units the Maxtor hates the high tempreatures and will fail sooner tham other drives. You must get an IDE drive and not a SATA drive then set the jumper on the back to exactly the same as on your existing drive--either slave on most machines or master on some machines--this is important as if the jumper settings are wrong you machine will not initialise properley and you will be left with PLEASE WAIT.The capacity of the drive can be larger but due to the firmware you may not get any increase in recording time
REPAIRMAN
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vulcanusa
Member
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21. July 2007 @ 09:32 |
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DUFFM,
Even though drives are relatively cheap these days, before you replace the drive you might consider testing the drive yourself. I extracted the 120 GB Samsung drive from my DMR-E85H and installed it into a 1999 Windows based machine as a slave drive. That PC's disk controller and drive are EIDE technology, so they were compatible. I FDISK'ed the drive and formatted it. The PC recognized it fine. I then downloaded a test program from the Samsung website and ran it against the drive. The drive tested fine. I imagine the test program only detects the most obvious problems and perhaps not those which might occur with statistical rarity.
I tested the drive about 1 1/2 years ago, but I believe at the time I was also able to download a small manual for the drive that explained the jumper settings and specs.
If you have access to a PC with IDE or EIDE drive disk controller technology, it might be worth a try. Any hardware device is eventually going to fail. Drives certainly fail, but my bet would be on one of the power component problems mentioned by REPAIRMAN and others.
There is a product called spinrite that can recover drives from what the author calls early hard drive death. There is information that is written onto the drive when it is formatted in the factory that is never normally re-written in the life of a drive. If the drive heads drift a bit over time (which they do) and/or if the magnitude of the magnetic field of this data weakens over time, then the drive begins to display access problems. spinrite reads/writes the data that is normally never re-written. It may not be able to accomplish this task for every drive technology. It worked beautifully for an old MFM drive I had. The guy who wrote spinrite really knows his stuff. I highly recommend it to keep drives in shape. The last time I downloaded it on-line (several years back) it was $90.
By the way, that Samsung drive is advertised as "super-quiet" - and it certainly is compared to my circa 1999 PC's C: drive. I could barely tell the Samsung drive was spinning, even with my PC case open, without placing my hand on the drive's case. I'm not sure if all drives are "super-quiet" these days, but I imagine you'll notice when watching a recorded program with a low-volume audio scene if a newly installed drive is not as quiet as the original Samsung drive.
Good luck.
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 21. July 2007 @ 09:37
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DuffM
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29. July 2007 @ 04:16 |
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You've all been so helpful with my U99 - thanks!! Hubby is planning on taking the unit in to Panasonic to have it looked at and then will consider the hard drive swap.
In the meantime, my mother-in-law has lent us her DVR - a Panasonic DMR-EH50. We set it up, downloaded the TV Guide listings and only get about 12 channels. We don't have a cable box and never had a problem getting the listings with the other DVR. Is there something else we should be doing in setting this up?
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lovemydvr
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29. July 2007 @ 14:20 |
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new to the forum. the power supply on my e85h has failed. can anyone tell me where to order a new one for under $100? My repairman toll me a new one cost $300 with a rebate of $150 return of old power supply.
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gchu
Newbie
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31. July 2007 @ 05:32 |
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Originally posted by lovemydvr:
new to the forum. the power supply on my e85h has failed. can anyone tell me where to order a new one for under $100? My repairman toll me a new one cost $300 with a rebate of $150 return of old power supply.
How did you know the power supply failed? What were your symptoms?
I don't get the U99 and can watch all of my shows that are on the HDD. The issue I have is that when I try to use Navigator, Setup or TV Guide, the unit locks up. I can't delete anything either. I am able to watch the shows only by doing the following:
1. Power up using the open/close button on the unit and it goes through the self check. This does not work when I power up with the power button on the unit.
2. Switch from HDD to DVD back to HDD
3. Press play on the unit
4. Press the << and >> to reverse/fast forward through 1 show.
5. Then magically, the index buttons the remote start working so I can switch back and forth to different shows saved on the HDD.
If I try to hit the erase button, everything locks up - I've tried just letting is sit, in case it was slow, but even overnite it doesn't do anything. Same with the Navigator and TV Guide button. The really odd part is when I press the setup button, the screen goes black, but if I press the open/close button on the unit, I see the screen for a split second.
I am thinking the power supply or corrupt ram. I just updated the firmware from a CD I got from Panasonic and that didn't fix the problem either. I also can not get it to reset by holding the channel up and down buttons at the same time. Very frustrating.....
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wre46
Newbie
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31. July 2007 @ 10:29 |
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OK, got a call from the repair center, and they said the new hard drive I sent them may not work. (He can't get it to recongize it)I replaced the origianl HD with the exact same size, just a different brand. (western Digital) Any advice i can give this tech to get it to work?
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vulcanusa
Member
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31. July 2007 @ 10:45 |
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wre46,
I thought the last time we heard from you that you were going to have the Digital Module replaced??? Perhaps I missed a post from you.
I presume every "tech" would know about proper hard drive jumper settings and such.
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wre46
Newbie
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31. July 2007 @ 12:30 |
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OH, it is still there for the DM replacement. But He cannot get the BRAND NEW hard drive to work. He is giving me a bunch of BS about panasonic will not support anything but what they sell. So looking for "EXACT" setting to send this guy so I can get my unit back after 11 weeks of "we are waiting on parts". I may just pay them the $50 check out fee and sell the unit on ebay as "needs work"
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lovemydvr
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31. July 2007 @ 13:14 |
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I had a panasonic service authorized tech look at it and said that my power supply was missing some voltages. My unit after a power outage would only power up and go through a self check ,then display the time and channel. remote would change channels and nothing else worked. Repairman said that a drop in voltage would cause numerous problems including u99,dvd won't play,hard drive won't record or play and so on depending on which voltage output had been effected.
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lovemydvr
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31. July 2007 @ 13:21 |
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P.S. I forgot to say that Panasonic has done all owners of the DMR-e85h a wonderful service by discontinuing the biggest problem with DMR-e85h they have. "THE POWER SUPPLY BOARD FOR IT"
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Karen2523
Newbie
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31. July 2007 @ 21:42 |
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Hi all-
I will be sending my unit unto Panasonic for repair...... after wasting 42.00 at an "authorized local repair place" and being told that it would cost over 700.00 to repair. I now will send it to Panasonic and pay the flat fee of 130.00 for repair. The crazy part of all of this is that different costomer service people at Panasonic told me different stories...... The first time I called in, I was told that I would pay the 130.00 PLUS parts........ I called again recently and was told by another person that the 130.00 charge is a FLAT fee and includes ALL needed parts............ I questioned this and was told that "sometimes they make out, sometimes the lose.... but it all evens out".... (by charging a FLAT fee)........... I made sure I wrote down the name and direct phone # of the person who gave me this info!!!!
The problem with my unit may be a partial power supply failure per the experts on this site......... Gee- I am worried now---- especially after reading the last post that Panasonic discontinued the power supply boards!!! I am now wondering what will occur if I send it in......... (will I waste 130.00)..............
Cal mentioned another Panny unit that would make a good replacement, but, unfortunately, it seems to be sold out everywhere. I ended up getting the Phillips unit from Wal Mart that was mentioned earlier as a "back up"........ Have not taken it out of box yet-- (I am still trying to figure out if there is anything better out there)..... Hey- atleast I have it..... these units are also disappearing........
Has anyone heard any info on whether there are any "class action lawsuits" brewing about the probs with our machines? This situation worked in my favor in the past with a Canon Powershot camera that started to erase all the images on my memory card after taking a new picture.... I learned on the web that this was a common problem with this camera..... and also noticed several class action lawsuits brewing..... Canon denied this and denied that there was a common problem with this camera...... They did have a record of my complaint... they also requested my name, address and phone #...... I ended up buying a new camera.... Luckily for me, a few months later, I learned that Canon was repairing this issue free of charge......... My camera was repaired at their cost..... The funny thing was-- they HAD my name and address-- gee they NEVER contacted me to tell me that they would address this issue! Thank goodness I found this out on my own !! I'd be willing to bet that some of the same Law Offices that started the class action suit against Canon would LOVE to hear about the common probs. with all of our units!!!
Have a good night all--
Karen
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lovemydvr
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1. August 2007 @ 06:55 |
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This is for Karen. I just talked to Panasonic and they said they have no flat rate repair. Can you send me the name and phone number of the person you talked to by email. I do want my DMR-e85H back in service as nothing else seems to have the features it has.
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Z06guy
Newbie
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5. August 2007 @ 00:04 |
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Originally posted by webscape:
Hi all,I don't know if this is the exact problem people were having,but similar.I returned from vacation to find my unit sitting in please wait & nothing I did got it past that point.After close inspection of the power circuit board,I found two 680 microfarad capacitors that were bubbled up at the top.I replaced these with two 1000 caps,best I could find,for a total cost of $3.00.My unit is now up & running & hard drive still intact.I did price that board in case anybody doesnt want to deal with soldering in the new caps.It was around $75.00 & fairly easy to replace.Hope this helps someone out there.
Worked like a charm. I had the same please wait problem, I found the two burnt capacitors and replaced them 1000 farad caps and restarted the system and everything works and it retained my football games I had recorded. I also installed the new firmware and 'voila' it works like new, divides title and everything. Thanks alot for the advice..you saved me the 300 to buy a new machine! Thanks again.
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tomwilmet
Newbie
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8. August 2007 @ 09:33 |
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My DMR-E85 has been getting flaky and finally gave up (please wait message) I have built a few computers over the years so I decided to crack it open and take a look and what I found did not surprise me.
There are a couple of swollen capacitors on the main board. This makes sense since the unit was manufactured about the same time as the world was importing cheap components that were later found to be defective (IBM was the primary user of these components) I lost 2 computers and 8 cash registers at work, and 1 motherboard at home due to the same problem.
In my case the only way to solve the problem is to replace the board which I was told by a local service center will cost me $250 plus diagnostics charge.
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gchu
Newbie
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8. August 2007 @ 17:32 |
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What do you folks consider the main board - the board under the harddrive or the one on the left of the DVD Drive (when looking at it from the top)?
I opened mine up and examined the board under the hardrive - the one with the black AC power connector on it - and did not find any bubbled up caps.
Can someone be more specific and give me an idea (or a pic) of where to look?
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Z06guy
Newbie
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8. August 2007 @ 19:42 |
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Originally posted by tomwilmet:
My DMR-E85 has been getting flaky and finally gave up (please wait message) I have built a few computers over the years so I decided to crack it open and take a look and what I found did not surprise me.
There are a couple of swollen capacitors on the main board. This makes sense since the unit was manufactured about the same time as the world was importing cheap components that were later found to be defective (IBM was the primary user of these components) I lost 2 computers and 8 cash registers at work, and 1 motherboard at home due to the same problem.
In my case the only way to solve the problem is to replace the board which I was told by a local service center will cost me $250 plus diagnostics charge.
You don't have to replace the board, just replace the 2 caps that are bad, that's what i did and problem solved. The machine is opearting like its susposed to. Right after I replaced the caps, I downloaded the upgrade to the firmware, works great. The caps dont look obviously bad, but upon close inspection the 2 in the middle of the board (board under the hard drive) had bulged a little on the top, replace them and it should work fine.
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yankee10
Newbie
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11. August 2007 @ 19:39 |
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I have recently fixed a DMR-E85H problem and wanted to post the process. I live in the United States and also bought my DMR-E85H there. The power supply unit (PSU) uses an MR1521 as the switching IC.
I found a source that sells individual Panasonic parts via the Internet (UED--Union Electronic Distribution at http://www.ued.net). They also sell whole Panasonic circuit boards (if they are still stocked). I also found an online source for downloading a service manual for the DMR-E85H (http://www.servicemanuals.net) for about $24 US. The shop manual is very good, with full schematic sets, PCB layouts, parts lists, and voltage check points. The Panasonic part numbers listed there are directly orderable from the UED website.
Inspecting the PSU board revealed no sign of heat damage, but I noticed that the two filter capacitors (C1270, C1271) on the +12vdc rectifier circuit were bulging. Electrolytic capacitors are notorius for being among the shorter-lived components in a power circuit. However, while probing the PSU, my probe slipped and I drew a spark?which blew the fuse and, as it turned out, shorted the diode (D1151) for the tickler circuit feeding the MR1521 (IC1150). This circuit is required for kick-starting the MR1521 oscillator which drives the transformer that feeds all of the power supply rectifiers. After ordering parts and replacing the fuse, the rectifier, and MR1521, the circuit returned to the condition it was in before I started my ill-fated probing.
Then I replaced the two bulging capacitors and EVERYTHING started working again. All of the HDD recorded programs (about 280 of them) were still there and even the program setup was intact. The DMR is back in its rightful place and has been functioning normally for over a week. It appears that the only problem was that the +12vdc circuit that feeds the disk drives was not filtered well (due to the bad capacitors) and the voltage jumped all over the place between about 8 and 9 volts (as measured on a DVM--I never had a chance to scope it). The good news was that this did not allow the disk to operate and damage its contents. Even temporarily replacing it with another hard disk drive while troubleshooting did not trigger a reformat requirement.
As it happened, I had downloaded the latest (?) firmware (per Roger Amidon?s article ?The Great DMR-E85H Snafu? on http://www.dxcc.com/dmr-e85h.htm) and had it on a CD sitting in the open DVD tray. When the unit first turned on after replacing the capacitors, the CD sucked in and proceeded to update the firmware.
It would appear that the only thing wrong with the unit was the bad capacitors. A $4 repair saved a $460 unit?although what with multiple shipping charges, spare parts, and the shop manual I spent about $70 on the repair effort.
An observation: the bad capacitors were rated at 16v?being used in a 12v circuit. That strikes me as a bit of a thin margin. I would have used 25v capacitors. That may be why they died as early as they did (I have been using the DMR-E85H for 2 ½ years).
I really like this unit and am very happy to have it back in operation. A survey of available DMR units did not turn up a plethora of similar new units. I think the Tivos--which are largely throw-away units according to users that I know--and upcoming HDTV mandates put us in a transitional period where an investment is not being made in this particular niche. Fortunately, I will not have to verify any of that for awhile yet?now that I am functional again.
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cal401
Junior Member
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12. August 2007 @ 11:28 |
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Thanks for sharing that. Very helpful!
Cal
Cal 8571x
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dksmall
Junior Member
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13. August 2007 @ 07:32 |
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That brings up the issue of what happens in a few years (in the USA anyway) when we're switch to all digital feeds. Yes we can get a converter box that will convert digital back into NTSC, but will the TGOS feed still be transmitted and will it get through these converter boxes so our DVR's will still get guide data? Or do we all go to manual recordings after the switch over? Anyone know??
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Coyote24
Junior Member
1 product review
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14. August 2007 @ 09:46 |
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dksmall: I've been wondering the same things, and am expecting the direction of this thread to move in that direction as 2009 approaches. (see signature below for my specs). When the switch happens, I'll probably just rent a HD recorder from my cable provider until consumer units stabilize in price and quality.
Yankee10 and others: Thanks for the info on the caps. I've had only the U99 problem (not for 2 years or more now) and otherwise the unit has worked fine since purchase, (extrememe luck, I suppose) but if it ever fails, I'll know where to start looking.
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dksmall
Junior Member
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14. August 2007 @ 10:34 |
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Coyote,
I'm thinking the same thing. Will have to rent a cable DVR, but hoping to hang on the the EH-85S for DVD burning and home movie editing, etc.
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