IR Blaster - Occasionally stops working

[cwineman]

As the title says, on the DVR I put together, the IR blaster stops working sometimes. My parents use the DVR as a VCR and normally use the Comcast box to watch TV. Sometimes when they click back to the DVR, the remote doesn't work because the IR receiver has stopped working for some reason. To get it working again, they can pull out and replace the USB plug. That has worked every time so far, but it's an annoyance.

Does anyone know of some reason why the IR receiver would stop working? I'm pretty sure the DVR isn't going into sleep mode. At least, when they switch the input to the TV from the Comcast box to the DVR, the blue Media Center screen is always up.

Any ideas?

-cwineman

[Miller]

I don't have anything for you. I know this happens to me sometimes with usb devices in general (usually hard drives). But I've just done the same thing you have and unplugged it and plugged it back in. I'll look into it more...

[cwineman]

I haven't looked into the problem very hard yet. I was hoping that this was something common that might have a fairly easy fix. In my experience, USB has always been screwy. I'm not sure if this problem is DVR related, or just a general USB thing.

Also, I'm curious. You say you have USB hard drives flaking out. Do you use them with your DVR?

[cwineman]

I just did a quick seach on my USB problem and I saw this link. If you skip to the "Stops Working" section, you can see something about how WinXP USB devices might turn off to save power. One of the reasons why this might happen (in addition to things like the computer going into standby) is computer inactivity. This might explain what my parents are experiencing.

As soon as I can, I'll get my parents to turn off this USB power save "feature" and see if this solves their problem. 

[Miller]

That's a good find! To answer your other question, I just use my usb drive for backups. So basically it's not a time critical thing so it doesn't bother me. I didn't like the non-reliability to feel like I could use it for a recording drive.