PSR-800 Reformat/Config trouble

[triomphedesnark]

My apologies in advance if this has been covered - I have looked high and low, and am becoming more upset and confused by he minute.

I bought this scanner in October - this one because it is EZ and I knew nothnig about programming scanners prior to buying it. Took it out of the box and manually set it up, because it looked like the software would be a bear to learn. I tried a few times, but gave up in defeat.

Recently I have been getting a few gltiches and error messages, but they seem to resolves themselves. Today I got a fatal error message when trying to use the browse objects feature. It did not go away. I called GRE and immediately got a tech support person who was begrudgingly willing to help me reformat/reconfigure, but informed me that the software is straightforward and I shouldn't have any problem using it. Each time I tried to explain my difficulties, he simply went silent. Once the reformat/config was underway, he told me that once it was finished, I should set it back to factory settings and voila it would be like out of the box.

I have now done this 3 times, and each time all is restored, but not the scanlist menu [manually on the scanner]. I try to program a scanlist and the scanlist page is empty except for check marks - it doesnt say "Scanlist 001", etc, its just blank. Any ideas what I have done or is the SD card bad?

I realize I sould like a silly noobie, but I am nanoseconds away from selling this one on Ebay and buying the Radio Shack 106 - at least they are down the street and I would have someone still in business to talk to.

thank you so much for any help!
liz

[bfletcher]

I doubt I am much help; I'm only 3 weeks into my own PSR-800 but I would be curious to look at the EZ Scan software "scanlist control" table (in the general settings tab - middle section) to see if the alpha tags are populated in that section, rather than being blank. I assume that since you formatted your card you at least used the software at some minimal extent.

As a side note, it is my personal experience that by reading the manuals (both for the scanner and its software) and highlighting notable areas this is a relatively simple system to use, at least at its basic level. Good luck.

[bkantor]

"I realize I sould like a silly noobie, but I am nanoseconds away from selling this one on Ebay and buying the Radio Shack 106 - at least they are down the street and I would have someone still in business to talk to. "
Hang in there Liz - I own both scanners, and once you get the PSR800 software, it is a great radio. As much as I like my Pro-106, it is not as easy to program and frankly I would not depend on anyone at Radio Shack knowing anything about the scanners they sell unless you get VERY lucky. There are alot of good people on here willing to help.

Good luck,
Bob

[troymail]

Originally Posted by bkantor

frankly I would not depend on anyone at Radio Shack knowing anything about the scanners they sell unless you get VERY lucky.

Ditto (see my sig below).

Liz - you may not want to hear this but - you may want to go acquire a new SD card and load that up. A fresh card may get you going quickly and it's a good idea to have a 2nd one ready to go anyway...

After that, you may want to consider a low-level reformat (there are instructions floating around here on RR somewhere) of the original card. Sounds like it may have gotten corrupted (not completely unusual - we've all had similar problems).

We'll help --

[themadman364]

Originally Posted by triomphedesnark

My apologies in advance if this has been covered - I have looked high and low, and am becoming more upset and confused by he minute.

I bought this scanner in October - this one because it is EZ and I knew nothnig about programming scanners prior to buying it. Took it out of the box and manually set it up, because it looked like the software would be a bear to learn. I tried a few times, but gave up in defeat.

Recently I have been getting a few gltiches and error messages, but they seem to resolves themselves. Today I got a fatal error message when trying to use the browse objects feature. It did not go away. I called GRE and immediately got a tech support person who was begrudgingly willing to help me reformat/reconfigure, but informed me that the software is straightforward and I shouldn't have any problem using it. Each time I tried to explain my difficulties, he simply went silent. Once the reformat/config was underway, he told me that once it was finished, I should set it back to factory settings and voila it would be like out of the box.

I have now done this 3 times, and each time all is restored, but not the scanlist menu [manually on the scanner]. I try to program a scanlist and the scanlist page is empty except for check marks - it doesnt say "Scanlist 001", etc, its just blank. Any ideas what I have done or is the SD card bad?

I realize I sould like a silly noobie, but I am nanoseconds away from selling this one on Ebay and buying the Radio Shack 106 - at least they are down the street and I would have someone still in business to talk to.

thank you so much for any help!
liz

If you have formatted the SD card, then you have NOTHING on the SD card to load from. Thus you will have no scanlists or even a database to load from.

You have a software based scanner, you pretty much have to use the software on a computer to fix it.

Load the EZscan software, do a full check for updates, it will grab a new database from RadioReference, new firmware, etc, and a new location Database and reload your scanner with ALL the information back to FACTORY settings, and then you can do a location selection on the scanner; OR even better, use the EZscan software to configure the scanner to personalize your scanning.

It's not that hard of software, it's actually too basic for most of us. If you're going to be in this hobby, you need to learn how trunking and software works, cause it's only going to get worse from here on...

[triomphedesnark]

Thank you all SO much for your advice and encouragement! Shortly after I wrote this post, I was able to figure out what I had been doing wrong - and, in the process, I FINALLY got the software through my thick head!

It feels really great to know there is such a friendly group of people here willing to help - I love scanning but, from fancy battery chargers [I like to buy what you pros recommend so I bought a mahac9000 and some eneloops] to software to knowing all the frequency lingo, etc, there is MUCH to learn!

Thanks all again,
Liz

[troymail]

We're all here to help!

Patience is the biggest need... once over the learning curve and getting comfortable, the next challenge is what works and what doesn't when it comes to all these systems and constant changes in technology....