IR.EXE Safety

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IR.exe is the program that is going to read and write information from the remote. IR will only read and write the E2/EEPROM area of the remote where the user data is stored. IR does not access the ROM area.

All sorts of safe guards are built in to stop the user from making mistakes, but there are times when things don't always go as planned. A best practice is to always start your work by downloading from your remote. I thought that would insure that I was getting all the information out of the remote, but I was wrong. Sometimes IR can make silent changes to the data you download. So a cautious user should start with a RAW DOWNLOAD of a new remote. A RAW DOWNLOAD is the safest way to make sure you have a good .ir file to fall back on in case things get really messed up. We will show you how to make an IR backup file in after we've gotten your remote connected in Chapter 2.

If something does go wrong, the best way to repair the E2/EEPROM area is to upload your backup image to get things back to normal. This is especially important if you are using an OEM remote, because the OEM may have added special settings in the remote after the remote was manufactured. If a good backup is not available, a full manufacturer’s reset is usually the next step. The problem with a manufacturer's reset is that for OEM remotes, you will lose special settings and you may lose access to special functions for the OEM .

There are many reasons the remote might misbehave. Sometimes just removing and replacing the batteries might clear up the problem. If bad information in the E2/EEPROM area is causing the problem, removing and replacing the batteries is not going to help. There must be an active "write" to change anything in the E2/EEPROM area of the remote. The E2/EEPROM area retains its information even when there is no power supplied!

If you installed a stay resident extender you'll need to check your extender documentation to see how to do a recovery, the steps that follow are not appropriate for these JP1.3 stay-resident extenders.