Sky q Box Keeps Crashing & Needs Rebooting every 3-4 days

[DR211]

Mine is doing the same thing and Ive had 3 new boxes.  Its only since I got the new 2TB box and mini.

Are all of you that have fixed this saying it's because its wired via ethernet that Im having an issue, but if I switch to wifi it will resolve it?

[Martin+Garside]

I have resolved my issues. The sky stream box's seem to have a life span of about 2 years depending on use. Have had 3 replacements so far in last 3 years due to box failure. Also were I live sky could not supply a wide/fast enough broadband due to the amount of devices I have(23 being tv's x3, iPads x3, iPhone x3, Xbox, several Alexa devices + some visitors logged in. Not sure if that is more than average but kept losing sky to. Solution went back to virgin for 1 gig broadband. No more dropped connection issues.

[Chodley]

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@Martin+Garside wrote:

I have resolved my issues. The sky stream box's seem to have a life span of about 2 years depending on use. Have had 3 replacements so far in last 3 years due to box failure. Also were I live sky could not supply a wide/fast enough broadband due to the amount of devices I have(23 being tv's x3, iPads x3, iPhone x3, Xbox, several Alexa devices + some visitors logged in. Not sure if that is more than average but kept losing sky to. Solution went back to virgin for 1 gig broadband. No more dropped connection issues.

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This thread is not about Stream boxes. No, 23 devices is not an unusually high number.

[RiponRes]

I have had a Sky Q box since 2019.

Until December 2024 I had few issues over the years with  the box crashing then needing rebooting. 

The box is connected to a home cinema system with 2 miniboxes connected to a Sony TV & Samsung TV on the ground floor (2 floors away) by ethernet. The position of the Q box and surrounding equipment has not changed since 2019.

December 26th was when things have gone "pear-shaped". The following is a brief summary of events;

3/4 shutdown/reboots over 2/3 weeks; new Q box issued (all recordings lost, especially UHD movies that were/are no longer available) but not much change in shutdown/reboot; engineer visit plus new box; not much change in.....; 2nd engineers visit May - sky dish misaligned then sorted plus 3rd new box; not much change....; 14/6 started keeping a record of shutdown/reboots - 21 to date, some needing the miniboxes to be reactivated plus a mini box had to be replaced; 4th new SkyQ box installed 29/7 and 2 crashes since.

Talked several times to Sky Tech whilst this has been going on. Engineer booked for Monday. 

The other change that may well be more significant is the change from BT wifi gear to EE wifi gear in November.

A couple of engineer visits around April checking signal from the exchange to our house showed a fault at the exchange which had cleared when he got into our house. He stated that he had had this issue with other users who'd changed from BT equipment to EE  equipment.

A second visit was requested and took place 2/7. Same issue with the signal from the exchange to the house; new EE router installed 8/7.  13 crashes of the 21 since then.

I'm almost at the point of giving up on this and accepting I'll miss the ability to record programs whilst travelling (which is pretty frequent) as well as live football, NFL........

[Sherriden]

I am also having this problem. It started with Netflix randomly opening which freezes the sky box so I was sent a new sky q box. Same thing happened which has now settled but now the box keeps freezing and the fan is going mad. I unplug it and plug it back in and I have to do a reset. This is happening every couple of days.

im on Sky Broadband so I'm completely lost as too what to do. 

[DR211]

Update -  connecting via WiFi instead of ethernet cable to the EE router seems to have resolved the problem. 

I was having the issue daily and since connecting via WiFi I haven't had it happen once in about 9 or 10 days.  

Thanks all for the help and advice. 

[Mattzerox]

Hi, can you check to see if the firmware on the main box is the latest version? Mine is the 2tb HDR version Q320.000.15.00L (62axucc).

There is a way to force the software update. "Switch the Sky Q box off at the mains. Hold down the standby button on the front of the box, then switch it back on at the mains. Keep the standby button held down until you see alternating red and amber lights on the front of the box. This will start a software update."

[DR211]

Thanks for the suggestion. When the engineer came he forced the update and it was still doing it so it does look as if it is related to the ethernet connection to the EE router. Which is a bit naff. 

[Chodley]

Stick a switch between if you want to get back to ethernet speeds.

[RiponRes]

Bit late in replying.

Another 10 crashes since the first note.

Firmware is up to date.

Sky engineers (3 at one point) yesterday to try and identify why so many shutdowns;

factory reset of Q & 2 mini boxes;

swapped sockets based on similarity of a problem one of them encountered a while ago (wiring issue) and if there is no change try a long extension cable from a different socket;

checked & confirmed no electrical cables were touching satellite/TV cables;

Q box hard-wired to EE router with cat8 ethernet cable and mini boxes hard wired with cat 6 cable (the opinion of all 3 is it's the best possible connection)

Summing up - not a Sky problem.

Will see what happens over the next week then it's back to EE ( where I believe the root of this issue is).

[Chodley]

Same (diagnostic at least but maybe biable solution) advice as above. Try a switch between the two. The EE boxes seem to have some electrical interference thing going on.

[Mattzerox]

Hi, the issue will be the hard wiring of the Q box to the router. For some reason, they don't like to talk to each other via the Ethernet port. The only way I managed to resolve this was to connect them wirelessly. One other post mentioned putting an Ethernet switch in between the router and the Q box. I don't recall trying this but it may work.

[RiponRes]

What switch would you suggest?

[Chodley]

Any old cheap 100Mb thing should do. Only needs 2 ports (though minimum is probably 8 these days)

[RiponRes]

Happened to have a 1000Mb 1x2 port switch. Fitted between the EE router & Q box after a crash on the morning of the 16th with 0.5m cat6 ethernet cable. 

Crashed 3 hours later. 

Trying the last thing the Sky guy suggested which is to  try a different plug socket (zero belief that it would work based on > 5 years trouble free operation and no changes to the electrical circuit in this part of the house since then).