Must replace cablecard. Will that affect my guide?

[AnneM]

It's been years since I had to replace my cablecard but mine is failing to get all signals from Cablevision, so I must. Also, I now have EPG123 guide and have moved channels to different numbers like crazy within WMC as well...extensive setup but awesome guide!

I'm wondering if I will be able to activate a new card without affecting my lineup setup from epg123 and my channel reorder in WMC? I really don't want to go through all my guide setup new again!

Is there a method of activating the new card that keeps that all intact? Like once I get to the activation page in WMC where they tell me to call Cablevision to activate the card, should I just exit out of the activation after calling them, or keep going through to next page?

[unclebun]

Considering that I periodically get a message on a restart that a new CableCard has been detected and I need to set it up, and that if I choose to go through the setup by just clicking next and next and so on, and afterwards everything else is unchanged, I would guess that actually getting a new CableCard makes no difference.

[stuartm]

You should not need to do anything in terms of re-setup I believe. The WMC/EPG setup is for your tuner and that is not changing. All you should have to do is go thru the re-pairing steps with your cable company that associates the new cable card with your tuner and validates it. You should NOT have to do any re-setup of the guide or tuners in WMC. NOTE: the main problem you may face is that depending on the competency of the cable CO in setting up the cable card, if they don't get your subscribed packages loaded completely/properly and the card validated you may find you need to iterate with them.

[Space]

Note also that when I switched cable providers (swapped one CableCard for another) I only used my HDHomeRun Prime to troubleshoot the CableCard with the technician. In other words, I just refreshed the page on the Prime itself until it looked good (after the tech had them do whatever tweak they needed to do each time), there was no need to do things in WMC over and over again while troubleshooting (which would have been more of a hassle).

Once the CableCard was working on the Prime, I didn't have to go through any lengthy setup within WMC (I don't remember what I did, but it was nothing difficult).

I believe this is the page on the Prime I used to make sure all was working before the tech left (Card Authentication and Card Validation should both be "success"). Note that I have older firmware in my Prime, so it may not look the same as yours:

CableCARD Status
Card Manufacturer Motorola
Card Authentication success
Card Validation success
3DES encryption supported
OOB Frequency 75.250 MHz
OOB Lock 2.048 Mbps
Signal Strength 100% (0.9 dBmV)
Signal Quality 100% (36.4 dB)
Channel List cablecard-oob

Of course if you have something other than a Prime, you would not be able to do this, but there may be an equivalent for your tuner.

[AnneM]

Thanks all for your advice. Happy about that! (I have a ceton tuner card btw.)

Unfortunately the tech got an error communicating with the new cablecard I picked up as well, and the store is now closed until tomorrow. We just set up a service appointment at this point because it's the 2nd card to have issues. It could still be two bad cards of course, but the squirrels also eat our cable lines here, and they need to replaced now and then. So maybe my signal is just poor again, therefore it will be good that they check the lines out anyway.