Boxee unusable after update / stuck in loop

[Zulan]

Hi,

after the update I am unable to use my Boxee Box at all:
This is my startup
1) The Blocks animation shows up with the starting sound
2) Video flickers (my TV shows short blue screen indicating no input from HDMI)
3) Static Boxee Logo screen
4) Loading animation (circle)
5) After a few seconds (maybe ~3), back to 2)

During 4) I can actually get into the menu using the remote, It shows that I am logged in and it has some suggested videos. However again after a very short time I get back to 2).

Any Ideas what causes this?
Any similar experiences?

[darcilicious]

Try this first:

Power off the Box, remove power cord, wait 15s or so, reconnect power cord, and then power up the Box.

[Zulan]

Try this first:

Power off the Box, remove power cord, wait 15s or so, reconnect power cord, and then power up the Box.

I have already tried that, and tried it again - unfortunately no success

[Elram]

I have exactly the same problem. It boots up to the home screen and I see some featured movies and I'm logged in, but after a few seconds it reboots, over and over again....

The box is useless as it is now. This must be fixed immediately!

Thanks!
/E

[intrfear]

You just made my usefull box a complete doorstop.
Stop forcing upgrades or I will switch and stop using your products.
In an infinite loop now. How do I revert back to a the last stable release?

[Ronald]

You just made my usefull box a complete doorstop.
Stop forcing upgrades or I will switch and stop using your products.
In an infinite loop now. How do I revert back to a the last stable release?

Hopefully the infinite loop only affects attempts to boot normally.
If so, then you should still be able to make it boot into the recovery menu.

This is done by a long pressing of the power button on the box itself, from full shutdown mode. The period you need to press the button before releasing it is appx 6-8 seconds. Too short and it will try to boot normally instead, and too long pressing will cause a temporary error state (harmless). So if you fail simply try again. When booting into recovery menu the same 'Loading' screen is shown as for a normal boot, but after that there is a big difference, as you reach a very simple menu and the box skips all the online stuff it would do for a normal boot (and which probably is involved in the looping).

The commands in that menu include one to perform a factory restore, which is mandatory when downgrading from v1.5 to older firmwares (due to incompatible database structures). This factory restore will also reactivate the original factory installed firmware v0.9

After the factory restore you should again turn the box off and reboot the recovery menu again, this time to use the command to install the firmware you want from a USB drive. To prepare for that you should format a USB stick to FAT32 and store the needed firmware on it using the precise name "boxee.iso", and then have that USB stick plugged into the box before using the install command.

If you don't have a backed up firmware file to use, you can download the latest stable one preceding v1.5 using this URL.

You can also download other firmware versions simply by replacing the substring "1.2.2.20482" in that URL with the complete and valid version code of any other stable firmware (doesn't work for betas never released as stable).

You'll also need to look into the blocking of future automatic updates, which I think is best done by blocking access to the URL "app.boxee.tv/chkupd/dlink.dsm380" in your router, though some others prefer other ways. This has been discussed lots of times before in this forum so you can easily find out more if you want.

Best regards: Ronald

[Zulan]

Thank you Ronald.

I have done a factory reset and a update to the current version - now it appears to be running fine. (Will see how the current Version turns out).

[Elram]

Yes!

I also did a factory reset and reinstalled the 1.5 version again and it seems to be running fine here as well now

Thanks!

[Ronald]

I'm glad to hear that you guys are back on track with current firmware.

This further confirms my opinion that the new firmware really needs a factory restore before it can be installed safely on a box that was using older firmware.

And that of course makes it impossible to install safely as a forced update over internet, since such an update will only occur when the running firmware is older, and will never include a factory restore.

Best regards: Ronald

[flipper2010]

I have the same problem but how i got there is a little different.

I was using Beta 1.5 from a few weeks ago and there was so many crashes i decided to go back to the release so i did a full reset and uppgraded and it was ok. Now i got the message to upgrade and it went thru but after the initial Boxee logo (in space theme) the busy (the blue circle spinning) would keep doing back to BLANK, then Boxxee in space, then blue circle spinning. I also unplugged and reset the network etc. but didnt work. I didnt do a reset yet but from what im reading that seems to have fixed it. I hope this resolves the problem where EVERY night with the beta's the box crashes (and reboots without needed to hold the power button, which is nice) but.