HD300 Network Connectivity Problems (Again!)

[hackzaw]

I've now got a problem with my 1 and only HD300, which is crippling my family's TV viewing experience.

For 9 months, I've had a working system. Originally, when I first got my HD300, I had similar issues to what I'm now facing. I cannot get a network connection on the HD300.

Here's my setup. I have SageTV running as a service on my PC. My PC is connected to a D-Link switch. I also have a Belkin router that the switch is plugged into. I have the HD300 plugged into the D-Link switch, along with two HDHomeRun's. Everything worked great up until two days ago.

First symptom of problem was powering on the HD300, we usually hit the "Home" key rather than the "Power" key, and it loads the last configuration faster. When hitting the "Home" key, it sits at "Sending Wake On Lan" to try to wake up the PC where the SageTV server is, only problem is the PC is awake and the service is running (and running SageTV on the PC works fine).

Going into Stand alone mode, under Network connections, it doesn't show any networks. Then I notice on the back of the HD300, where the network cable plugs in, that there's no LED lights on. Correspondingly, on the switch, the port where the HD300 is plugged in didn't have any LED's either. So basically, it doesn't have a connection to my network.

A lot of fiddling later, trying different ports on both the switch and the router, and trying different network cables (tried using the HDHomeRun cable, as it is identified on the PC as working), I was finally able to get both the green and orange LED on the back of the HD300 to come on. But still no network connection.

Going to the PC, in the Belkin router configuration, I go into the DHCP client list (everything is setup DHCP), I only see my two HDHomeRun's where the router has assigned IP's. No HD300 listed. Power cycling the HD300 doesn't fix anything. Back when I first had problems 9 months ago, a power cycle seemed to fix the networking problem, but not now.

I've power cycled everything many times, including the router, switch, computer, SageTV service, Network Adapter on PC, HD300, to no avail.

I can't 100% rule out a hardware issue on the router or switch, but it would be a super long shot. On both of these devices, I've got some bad ports which I avoid. I did try plugging the HD300 into one of the ports where the HDHomeRun was plugged in and working, but still no identification of the HD300.

I'm about to do a factory reset on the HD300, and see if that has any impact.

Any other ideas?

[enthilzha]

Without knowing your whole setup, a few other things you could try:

1. Do you know what the HD300's IP address was? I'd disconnect it from the network and see if you can still ping the old address. It is possible something else might be causing a duplicate MAC address error.

2. Can you try to statically assign an IP to the HD300 from the GUI instead of relying on DHCP? This would at least rule out a DHCP / device arp cache issue.

3. Performing a hardware reset probably isn't a bad idea. I've got four HD300s and I had one start to randomly drop off the network. After resetting it and reflashing to the latest firmware it has been rock solid for about 2 months.

4. If you're still stuck do you have a spare NIC on a a Windows PC you could direct wire the HD300 into? You could connect the PC and HD300 using a crossover cable and install Wireshark (free packet capture software) on the Windows box. From there you can look at the capture to see if you're seeing a DHCP request coming from the HD300 to see if it is actually functioning correctly.

If it gets all the way to #4 PM me and I can help you get the capture setup and read it.

Cheers!

[hackzaw]

Thanks for taking the time to respond enthilzha. Let's see:

1) I think I knew what the last IP was (or close enough anyways), so pinged from 192.168.2.x from 1 to 10 and only got ping results from ports that were connected with other devices.

2) I've tried statically setting up the IP on the HD300, just that I don't know for certain that I'm setting it up correctly (Gateway, subnet mask, DNS). And furthermore, I'm not 100% sure what to do on the PC side. I did try by turing off DHCP in the router config, and enabling static IP in the HD300, but the network config got a timed out error. In either case, there are no LED lights "on" in back of the HD300.

3) I tried to do a factory reset last night, but can only do it "from USB" as I don't have a connection, and when I try, from the internet, it fails. The problem with the factory reset is downloading the two files from the Sage download setion I was able to download the stp300.bin file, but the stp300.ver file just opened as text in my browser. It didn't actually download any "file" so to speak.

Can someone please email me both files, or at least the .ver file.

4) I don't have a spare NIC on the PC. About the only thing I could comment on in a similar fashion is that my newly purchased Netgear switch came with some software which allows you to monitor activity on any specific port. Well, the port (and I've tried different ones) for Sage is showing 0 bytes sent or received. Plus on the Netgear switch, there are no LED lights showing any connection.

I just don't think there's any valid connection going on. I know on the HD300 the ethernet LED lights work because when I plug the AC power adapter into it, the lights momentariliy blink once, and that's it.

I have an RMA from google to return the unit, so that's what I'll do today. I wish I could have done the factory reset, and see if that fixes the issue, but I've got to get the unit sent off and a replacement back asap.

[bialio]

This happens to me occasionally - I can always recover by unplugging (from power) the HD300 for 2 or 3 minutes and then plugging it back in. YMMV.

btl.

[PiX64]

Originally Posted by bialio

This happens to me occasionally - I can always recover by unplugging (from power) the HD300 for 2 or 3 minutes and then plugging it back in. YMMV.

btl.

+1 this always works for me too. It works so well actually i have stopped messing around with any other debugging of the situation.

[hackzaw]

I was really hoping unplugging and powering the HD300 back up would re-establish the network connection, but I've probably done it at least 30-40 times in the last couple days.

9 months ago, I had this same problem, but power cycling fixed it then.

No love for Hackzaw.

[macsupergeek]

If you have no lights on the HD300 and no lights on the switch then IP addresses and all the rest won't help you must first have the link lights lit (try and say that 3 times fast). So first you must get those lights, when you have connectivity then you can go forward with either a DHCP or static IP setup. I think in one of your previous posts you mentioned trying a different ethernet cable if so good -- so I would go for factory reset of the unit and hopefully is software knocking out hardware -- otherwise if in fact the enet port is dead maybe you can get a wireless adapter for it on ebay.

[bialio]

Do you leave it un-powered for a while? A quick power-cycle has never worked for me, although again YMMV.

[hackzaw]

Most of the power cycles are short ones (5-10 seconds), but I did do a variety of longer ones (a few minutes, and just last night I had it unplugged for many hours). Still no connection.

I did try a different ethernet cable with a known working cable, and still no connection.

In all these circumstances, there were no lights on either the ethernet port on the HD300 or the switch.

I couldn't waste any more time, so I sent it in the post to Google. I wish I could have tried to do a factory reset, but you need the following two files:

http://download.sage.tv/firmware/stp300.bin
http://download.sage.tv/firmware/stp300.ver

Could someone here try and download the stp300.ver file. When I click on it, I get the following in my browser:

810883b9321f2233cf2a054bf5e300f6 stp300.bin
20101007-0

I got the bin file okay. I'd like to have these files on hand anyways, (probably anybody with an HD300 should get these files because come the day you NEED them, there may not be a sage.tv server to GET them)

[bialio]

You have to right click and 'save target as' or whatever similar option your browser gives you.

[KJake]

Originally Posted by bialio

This happens to me occasionally - I can always recover by unplugging (from power) the HD300 for 2 or 3 minutes and then plugging it back in. YMMV.

btl.

+1 this happened to me today, for the first time, on my oldest unit.

[hackzaw]

Originally Posted by bialio

You have to right click and 'save target as' or whatever similar option your browser gives you.

Well I wouldn't have thought of that. Thanks! Especially, when clicking first link prompts to Save a file, whereas the clicking on the second link just opens text in the browser.

Got it now. Too bad my HD300 has packed it's bags and is ready to go... I'm leaving... on a jet plane..... don't know when I'll be back again...

All together now!

[ttiell]

i had this happen recently too. the hd300 wouldn't connect to the internet. the green and orange lights on the back of the hd300 were also flashing. I wrote to tech help and they gave me an rma ticket. they replaced it pretty fast with a refurb. there were no questions asked so this may be the fate of a lot of these as google tires of replacing these things.

[hackzaw]

I wanted to post a follow up with my HD300 issue.

I contacted the hardware support, and they supplied me with an RMA to return the unit, so off to California it went.

I just got my HD300 back yesterday. With shipping from Canada (expedited delivery still took 4 days), assessment at Google, and return shipping, I was out approx. 2 weeks.

It looks like a new unit. I only sent them the actual HD300 box, and power adaptor, so they only returned the same. I didn't get a complete box with remote, video cable, etc. Only the HD300 and power adaptor, which is all I sent them.

Plugged the unit in, and within 2 minutes, I was watching TV again. No problems whatsoever. I suppose there never was anything wrong with my network, then (didn't think so anyways)

So peace has once again returned to the universe.

[IVB]

interesting. I'm guessing you're very thankful Google is sitting on all those unsold HD300's right about now :-)