AT&T’s Genie 2 is pretty neat. Not only does it take the place of half a dozen other little black boxes, it’s incredibly reliable for most people. Of course, that’s not what you really want to hear if you’re having problems with it. You just want to hear how to fix things.
There’s a simple trick that works with pretty much every DIRECTV device, and Genie 2 is no exception.
It’s called the “double reboot.”
With any AT&T device, you can fix a lot of common problems with a “double reboot.” By rebooting twice within 30 minutes, the device knows that you’re trying to clear things out. A lot of extra “temporary” files get deleted and some extra file checks take place. Your To-Do list gets rebuilt from scratch and your recordings are checked for integrity. Here’s how you do it on a Genie 2. It’s super easy.
Step 1: Find the red button.
There is a big red button toward the back of the Genie 2. You can see it in the photo at top. Really, it’s pretty hard to miss if you’re looking at the Genie 2.
Make sure no one is watching TV and nothing is recording.
Rebooting the Genie 2 will stop signal to all your devices and will also stop all recordings. So, take a minute to make sure no one is watching and nothing is recording. Otherwise, sooner or later someone’s going to complain.
Now, press that button and wait.
You won’t get a lot of information about what the Genie 2 is doing. A light will flash here or there but there’s not a lot to watch. Eventually you will see two solid green lights on the front, which indicates that the Genie 2 is up and running.
Now, do it again.
Press that red button again and wait until you see the two green lights again. All told this is going to take less than 45 minutes. It could take a lot less, but really you should budget 45 minutes so that there’s time for everything to happen. The second reboot could take a few minutes longer than the first, especially if there are some internal repairs that need to happen.
If you’re not back to two green lights after an hour then there is something else wrong. You can try connecting using a Genie client but most of the time you won’t get any information. Luckily, this is extremely, extremely rare.
What you should expect right after this
When you turn on the clients for the first time after doing the double reboot, you should expect that they take a few seconds more to connect. The wireless clients may take up to 30 seconds more to connect. This is normal and everything should return to its normal speed within 24 hours.
If you are the sort of person who really monitors the guide and to-do list, you’ll notice that you probably don’t have any information past the next 6-12 hours. All of this information will be rebuilt in plenty of time to catch upcoming recordings, don’t worry. When you look at things again the following day, everything should be perfect,
Hopefully whatever weird problem you were having will also go away. Although weird problems are rare with DIRECTV equipment, this double-reboot process fixes almost all of them. If it’s a really really odd problem like a setting that doesn’t stick, try changing it a few times to make sure it’s been fixed.
