Infinite loop of reseting after factory restore?

I am not a Windows user at all or I guess this type of behavior I might already be used to!! haha. Not sure why it worked for me, but maybe I was lucky. 🙂 It is very very weird what ever it is. Glad I came to this forum and read your solution. I had a feeling it had to do with DHCP in someway. Thanks for posting!

Hey, your welcome! Like you I thought it was just a DHCP issue but there is something else in there as well. Maybe one of the Apple products (after recent updates) uses UPnP to open one of the ports in the router which "confuses" the ATV....who knows!!! This is why I suggested turning the router off BUT there is still an amount of guessing going on. I hope I can help the poor users out there who are just about to throw it out. The interesting thing is that it only occurs on ATV's with firmware prior to v2.00 ie ATV's that are over 12 months old, so you can't even RMA them!!! Perhaps its a plot to get all the long time users to upgrade!!! 🙂

Has anybody tried the workaround I suggested above with any success yet? Needless to say, I am very interested to know.

Will try again tonight. I think my Apple TV's restraining order on me has expired at this point. 😉

Thanks for this instruction set, but unfortunately it's not really helping if the only connection to the AppleTV is a ceiling mounted beamer/projector. So now I have to disconnect my Apple TV and Beamer and carry it to another floor where my Router lives as I can no longer connect through WiFi?!

Come on Apple, this is just plain embarrassing. I've just wasted two hours with this crap and am ready to chuck the AppleBox out the window.

My Apple TV was one of the first ones and so my firmware is pre-2.0, and I've got all the wonderful blinking menu/Apple Logo/menu/Apple Logo stuff happening.

I might try the way described, but oh dear what an unnecessary way to do things....

I am most certainly NOT going to buy anything from the iTunes Music Store for a few weeks because of this!

PLEASE TEST things Apple... nobody needed iTunes9 if it wasn't ready to work with YOUR UNHACKED AppleTVs!

WELL, I went through the whole bla bla twice and nothing, nada. Besides the incredible fun of entering 255.255.255.0 etc. five times tonight via the Apple Remote, I've got a totally useless AppleTV now.

Unfortunately, switching off all my Wireless networks does nothing, as I (or, rather, the AppleTV) receives at least three more networks from neighbours, and goes into its little screen-dance. Shielding it under a thick rug got rid of one wifi, but not the otehr too, i.e. not helpful/working in my case.

Now waiting for iTunes 9.0.1 and not buying anything until this works smoothly.

I sometimes wish they hadn't bothered with the AppleTV until 2010 or so. It's been a constant source of annoyance really. Very un-like Apple :-/

"Now waiting for iTunes 9.0.1 and not buying anything until this works smoothly."

Between iPhone 3.1 ruining my wife's 3g iPhone with a known problem Apple hasn't deemed worthwhile to fix (wifi), Time Capsule collapsing under the weight of Snow Leopard and now AppleTV being turned into a brick thanks to iTunes 9.0, it will be a cold day in **** before I spend another cent on an Apple product. That's coming from someone who bought his first Mac SE back in the late 1980's. To have three products rendered unusable within a week it the ultimate trifecta. Is ridiculous.

These are my notes (based on crhendo1's steps) that will hopefully help others in the same predicament. I was able to get the Apple TV updated from the 1.0 restore to the latest 2.4 software this time 'round. It only took one good update.

crhendo1 wrote:
I think we all agree now that the "ATV Loop" is some sort of Network problem. The thing that confuses me, however, is why can I run through my process (as mentioned above) and fix the problem and yet many of you can't. Well, I have another theory. I now believe that Apple is using another port on our routers whenever iTunes 9 (or any other background process like Bonjour etc)loads and this is confusing the ATV. To this end I would like to change my instructions to those of you who still can't make it work and I would be keen if one of you could give it a try. I have tried this on my cousins's ATV and it seems to do the trick.

1. You need to close down (or disconnect from the router) every device on your network. The only thing that should now be connected to the router (via an ethernet cable)is the affected ATV which is in a factory reset state (ie no IP has been allocated) and is turned off.

Did this. Only my router and Apple TV were still connected, inline, to the Internet. The Apple TV was off, +but the network cable was plugged in+.

2. Switch off wireless on your router (or access point).
3. Turn off your router at the power supply, wait a few seconds and then turn it on again.

I did these two steps at the beginning. Order, apparently, does not matter for these steps. I believe the intent was to clear the DHCP cache on the router. I also manually removed the DHCP entry in the table on my router; but, others may or may not have this advanced functionality (and, it's probably overkill).

4. Before you start the ATV determine which address range on your router is NOT used by DHCP and write down one of those addresses to be used later.

I just chose a random address of 192.168.1.167, within my router's pre-configured range.

5. Start the ATV (with the router still in DHCP mode) and let the ATV run all the way through to the main menu (ie bypass the "paring screen" buy pushing the menu key.

First off, my network cable was plugged in (from step 1). I did not get the pairing screen, as I did not have any open Macs/PCs on and running iTunes (I assume). Regardless, I got to the main menu.

6. For some networks (inluding mine) that I have tested on, the loop does not happen any more and it is just a matter of making your way to the software update page and apply the update

Mine immediately started to loop again. So, I removed the network cable and went to the next step.

7. For all of you others out there, when the loop starts, pull the network plug out of the back of the ATV. After a few more loops, the looping should stop. At this point go to the network screen, select the DHCP mode (which is under the Configure Wireless option) and change it to manual. Enter in the IP address you wrote down above, the subnet mask (usually 255.255.255.0), the router address and the DNS address (which is usually the router address).
8. Plug the network cable back in and HOPEFULLY the looping won't start again so you can update the software for the ATV.

If it does start looping then I really have no idea why and simply can't afford to put any more time into it.

After the looping stopped, I was able to select the TCP/IP configuration in the menu. Mind you, these are the wireless settings, not the wired settings, though. They should have no affect on the Ethernet cable connection. In my case, they had no effect; plugging the network cable back in made no difference (loop started again). +So, I unplugged the network cable again.+

This time, I just went to the Software Update entry in the menu, _but didn't select it yet_. I plugged the network cable back in and quickly (within 1/2 sec) pressed the select button (play/pause button) on the remote. This started the software update immediately, and once it started, the loop did not come back. I was prompted to choose whether to download the update. And, then I was prompted to install the update. SUCCESS!! :-D

Thanks so much to crhendo1's steps -- I finally have a working Apple TV again!

One further note: this doesn't apparently have anything to do with the iTunes 9 update. I still have iTunes 8.2.1 installed on both my Macs and my PC.

Congratulations on your working ATV. I know exactly how it feels when the update screen appears and the download starts. Finally the "brick" turns back into gold! 🙂

Your are right of course re clearing the DHCP Cache by turning off the router. The trouble is I don't think this was enough. Also, like you, I don't think it has anything to do with the version of iTunes that is running but I a still suspect that Apple is opening another conflicting port using UPnP and iTunes, as the client (regardless of version), is performing this service.

The reason I picked the address outside the DHCP allocation is that I discovered that if the wireless piece of the ATV (on the second MAC address) did not have any IP allocation at the time AND the wired piece did then the forced IP address would be pushed onto the "wired" side (for firmware 1.0 that is) thus preventing the loop from starting again when the cable was plugged back in. I proved this was the case by incorporating a second router in the network on a different range, typing in an address on the ATV within the new range and then switching off the first router. Still, the solutions appear to be different from ATV to ATV.

I must be getting old but I was never fast enough to do your next step and plug in the cable at exactly the right time for the firmware upgrade. WELL DONE!

I don't know why you didn't get the pairing screen because it has nothing to do with iTunes running anywhere on the network.

The good news is that we are all making progress and I am sure we will have a permanent solution just in time for Apple to fix the problem.

Keep trying everyone. If nothing else we have proven that we don't own bricks!

Has anyone an idea on how to prevent the AppleTV from just getting a DHCP address from a nearby Wireless network (neighbours, coffee shops etc.)?

This might sound silly, but would it work to wrap the whole thing in aluminium foil? 🙂

What's the worst material for WiFi signals? I have a feeling i need to block it from getting anywhere near a WiFi - without asking my neighbors to shut down their WiFi's for 30 minutes... :-D

Message was edited by: JonasLondon DHCP DCPH DHPC ...

Message was edited by: JonasLondon

JonasLondon wrote:
Has anyone an idea on how to prevent the AppleTV from just getting a DHCP address from a nearby Wireless network (neighbours, coffee shops etc.)?

Does it not do the same thing by setting a manual address of 0.0.0.0

Not sure about your case in particular. But, if you have already done the factory restore, you could always hit Menu and the "-" key on the remote to take you to the diagnostics screen. Then, factory restore again. This will wipe all DHCP addresses. Now, if your neighbors have completely insecure wireless networks, I'd guess the ATV would hop right on again. In that case, short of opening up the ATV and disconnecting one of the antenna wires, I'm not sure what else you could do. That is, unless you can take the ATV somewhere else (i.e., work) to try from there.

Or, you could always tell your neighbors that they should require security on their routers. 🙂

Hi, interesting point... the networks are secured actually, it just seems like the AppleTV 1.0 (=after factory resets) gets all hippy if there is ANY WiFi around - unless you plug the ethernet cable in its back.

phew, really lost the will to try anymore of this and await a fix. This must have Apple's attention by now...