My first 9200T was replaced (some 2-3 years ago) by John Lewis because the unit could not pull in the programme guide fully in under an hour. The new unit was no better and Humax told JL they were working on an upgrade. My unit has been switched on or on standby ever since and despite Humax upgrades has never got any better. Today is digital switchover day for Sandy Heath and guess what - the unit is no better. It still freezes occasionally so is very difficult to program recordings. Although a pensioner who cannot throw his money about, I got fed up and stupidly bought a Humax freesat unit which now corrupts files so that it is impossible to delete them. Humax told John Lewis technical that the only way to get rid of these files is to do a factory reset - yes, but you then lose all other recordings. Anybody got any suggestions please.

Robin Welch, St Ives, Cambs, April 2011

There are a number of points in your question.

You do not confirm which version of the 9200T software you are using.
The latest version is 1.00.23. With this version starting from an empty programme guide the 9200T (and 9150/9300) will take two hours to populate most of the guide and up to another four hours for the rest. Version 1.00.23 (for all 9200/9150/9300) does cache the guide when the unit is switched to standby. This caching means that population of the guide for those cached days occurs within a minute of switching the 9200t/9150/9300 on. Selecting either the Default Settings or an Auto-retune will empty the programme guide.
Previous to version 1.00.23 the software design should have resulted in the guide being populated after 9 minutes providing the 9200t was tuned into one of the main BBC tv channels.
For all versions of software taking longer than the above times suggests that the stored channels are from more than 1 transmitter. There are other reasons but the solution is the same. The correction for this is to wipe all stored channels and then action a manual retune for each of the 5 or 6 UHF channels frequencies from just one transmitter.

For a 9200T on 1.00.23 (and any version of 9150/9300) the easiest and most efficient method to delete all stored channels is to start an auto-retune and then immediately cancel it. For a 9200t on a version prior to 1.00.23 the most efficient way to clear stored channels is to remove the aerial while the power is off, action a default setting, and then reconnect the aerial with power off.

For manual tuning the UHF channels from Sandy Heath are:
....... 24, 27, 40, 43 and 67 until 31st August 2011
then 24, 27, 31, 40 and 67 until 14th September 2011
then 24, 27, 31, 48 and 67 until 23rd November 2011
then 24, 27, 31, 48 and 52 until 18th April 2012
then 24, 27, 48, 51 and 52.
For uptodate details I suggest http://www.digitaluk.co.uk/postcodechecker/main/trade/PE27+5AL/NA/0/NA.

The UHF channels 24 and 27 contain all BBC channels and the main commercial channels. If these are adequate for your needs then instead of retuning 5 times you could just retune to 24 and 27 and forget about the other channels.
For details about what tv channel is on which Sandy Heath UHF channel I suggest http://www.ukfree.tv/txdetail.php?a=TL204494

My suggestion for the foxsat is to archive the programmes to an external disk before fixing the issue.
Providing you have a spare external disk the foxsat HDR makes it very easy to archive recordings to that disk. This is covered in the user guide.

You have been misinformed about what the factory reset does. The factory reset will reset everything apart from the hard disk drive. To reset the HDD there is an option to reformat it. It is a quick reformat and only takes seconds but it is by far the easiest way to get rid of your current file issue and unfortunately will result in loss of all of your previous recordings unless you archive then to an external disk.

To fully resolve your foxsat issue you may have to action both a Factory Reset and a disk format.

NS, April 2011