Hey all
I’ve been having a strange problem with my Live Hub (which I love) but is making it very difficult to use. I’ve been on the boat since the original WD TV Live and haven’t ever encountered a problem like this before, and it just started recently where it was working perfectly fine for nearly 6 months. So here’s the problem. After I turn the unit on, (regardless of whether I unplug and plug in the power or use the power button on the remote), the unit completely freezes within 5 minutes. It’s completely unresponsive, the power button on the remote doesn’t do anything, the power button on the front doesn’t do anything (both if I just press it and if I hold it for an extended time) and this last time I tried, even the hard-reset button on the bottom didn’t do anything (also, both when I press it and when I hold it for 10-30 seconds). The only way for anything to happen is for me to unplug the power from the back, wait at least 10 seconds, then plug it back in. This will result in the unit rebooting and once it is fully booted up again, within 5 minutes, it freezes again. The first time this happened, it was compiling the media library because I had unplugged the power and plugged it back in, and after a few minutes the unit froze but the white light stayed on blinking in the front, the same way it usually indicates that it’s compiling the media library. I left this for about an hour thinking that it might start working after it finished compiling, but no: it was still frozen and the light still blinking after over an hour.
The next logical thing to do was to try to disable the Media Library function in the hope that it was the reason the unit was freezing, so I had to unplug the power, wait a bit, and plug it back in, wait for the unit to boot up fully and then quickly go into setup and turn off Media Library. Still, almost 5 minutes after I turned off the Media Library and cleared all library data, the unit froze again. I’ve experimented with various things that should have helped to narrow the problem down by unplugging the power and plugging it back in to give me those 5 minutes where the unit is working. I tried to do a full factory reset through the software options, and that didn’t help at all. I did a hard reset with the button on the bottom right after booting, and that didn’t make any difference. I tried holding the power button on the front of the unit down and that still didn’t help at all. Every time, it would reset or whatever the intended result was, but it would just freeze again after 5 minutes. This issue is prevalent in all usage situations: when I’m just playing around in the UI without using any media, when I’m watching a movie or ISO, when I’m listening to music, and when looking at pictures. Also, it happens when using Netflix and Facebook and everything else.
I think it might be a hardware issue but I just wanted to bring it here and see if you guys had any input that might help before I call WD to see if I can get a replacement. I really love this item, same as I’ve loved its predecessors, and I hope that we can find a way to fix this. A couple things I should mention: First, the Hub will sometimes show up in the Network folder on my PC when this is happening, but I can’t access it both within the 5 minutes its working and after; I get a network access error from all my PC’s. Second, this problem did happen once before but I fixed it quickly and easily by doing a factory reset through the software of the unit itself, and it was fine for almost 2 months now before the problem reappeared yesterday, and the reset isn’t fixing it.
I would be much obliged if someone could shed some light on this issue, if anybody’s ever experienced something similar and knows the cause or solution for the problem. Sorry for the lengthy text!
Thank you all so much.
I’ll report back if anybody suggests anything.
