DVD Recorder frozen - please wait on display

I actually had 5 bad oozing capacitors on my unit:

C1260 and C1261: Originally 680 microF, 10V - replaced with Radio Shack 1000 microF, 35V
C1270 and C1271: Originally 680 microF, 16V - replaced with Radio Shack 1000 microF, 35V
C1272: Originally 220 microF, 25V - replaced with Radio Shack 220 microF, 35V

Changed them all and now all is well!

Thanks!

Phil

I cant find C0270 and C0271 in the service manual and also I cant find 2 680uf capacitors under the hard drive too.

The Problem is that my DMR e85h not start up. No picture on TV screen, the only thing I see is a black screen . No reaction by pushing a button in the front.

The stripes in the display of the DMR e85h
(display look like : IIIIII 0:00 IIIIII )

are going up and down, step by step, nothing else. Pls help what can I do to get my Panasonic working again.

THX
Michael

Ps. Sorry for my bad english, I'am German......8x)

Two 680uF 16V capacitors where clearly leaking under the hard drive in mine.  I'm not sure I memorized it right, but I think they were C0270 and C0271.  

I bought replacement capacitors at Radio Shack of better specs 1000uF and 35V for $1.59 each.  

Took just under 2 hours to take it apart de-solder the two capacitors put the new ones and and put it all back together again. We worked slow. It wasn't hard, but if you have never done any soldering work and don't know someone to help you, I'm not sure you could do it alone.  Make sure you get the polarization correct too, but the board is clearly marked + and  -.  

Just wanted to supplement DC's solution with photos for those who would like to see the project before attempting. For the record this fix worked perfectly and my unit is back to perfect working order with all my recordings intact. 
Start by removing the top cover of the unit.
Working from the back of the unit you'll see the hard drive on the left. 

Remove the two screws indicated by the red circles in the picture above. Then slide the cover plate forward and remove.


Two cables are connected to the hard drive. Left side is power and the black ribbon is the data connector. Both come off pretty easily. After removing cables lift out hard drive. Here's what you get. 


Better view of cables after removing the drive. Remove plastic drive liner.


Remove the four screws indicated by the red circles in the picture above. Note the one at the top. (I missed this one for a few moments while putting it back together.) Remove drive mount.



Viola! You now see the burned out capacitors. Also circled are the four screw holes you just removed screws from and a cable that must be disconnected. (see next pic)


Gently pry up on the black plastic part of the cable mounted on the power board. You can see in this picture how I've just started to get it off a bit. You may have to pull on the latch in the center of the mounting. I did but I don't know if it was necessary. 


On the back of the unit remove one screw just above the power plug. Then rock and twist and hold your tongue just right to get the power supply board out.


You'll see the capacitor numbers labeled on the circuit board on the front and...


on the back. Use a soldering gun to melt the solder on these four spots rocking the capacitors out of the holes as you do so. Just don't get solder over to any adjacent circuits.


You end up with nicely marked pos/neg info on the board.


Get your new capacitors from Radio Shack or other electronics store.


The ones suggested by DC are more heavy duty so they are bigger. I chose to lay them on their side so as to not raise the height of the board components. There is plenty of room to do so making my decision to do so a no brainer.


I leave the leads on the capacitors long until the capacitors are positioned and soldered in good shape. 


Then clip the extra lead down to the solder with a wire cutter.
Thats it. reverse the directions to re-assemble the unit. 
Hope the pictures helped. They always seem to help me prepare for such an adventure.

I had the same exact problem. However, My failed capacitors were of the 10V variety and smaller than the 16V ones indicated by hiker-DC. The only difference was that my DMR display was also completely dead. Just replaced the bad capacitors this weekend and it is now working great.
Bad capacitors should be visually evident (leaky tops and swollen canisters).

but I think they were C0270 and C0271.

Correction: C1270 and C1271

Thanks so much RandyChev for posting the detailed pictures and hiker_DC for the initial fix. I just followed the instructions to fix my long dead unit (gathering dust for months while I decided what to do to it). I decided that even though I've never soldered before in my life, it couldn't get any more broken than it was.

I went to Radio Shack and bought the capacitors and soldering equipment. It was a slow night and I think the guys were bored, so I talked them in to soldering it for me. Got it back home and put it back together and it works!!!! Very cool. Thanks again.

Cool. Mine's stuck in 'Please Wait'. Blew out the dust, removed/reconnected various cables....this and that and no avail. Please Wait. Did some snooping on the internet, found this post re capacitors 1270/1271, took off my drive and yepper, they are bulging. Will try replacing them tomorrow. Very nice, thanks for the suggestion!

One more round of applause for hiker_DC.
Panasonic Tech Support says the "PLEASE WAIT" means the E85H is too sick to get to SELF-CHECK. Per hiker_DC's note, I replaced the bulging/ splitting/leaking C1270 and C1271 capacitors on the circuit board under the hard drive and "Voila!". Everything works.
Thanks!

Just wanted to say I used hiker_DC's solution on my DMR E85H. I'm a newbie, never tried to do anything like this before, never soldered anything, etc. Plugged the thing in, not expecting much, and it worked perfectly!!! Thanks you, hiker_DC.

Thanks to all of your suggestions I was able to fix my DVR. I just want to add that the Radio Shack Radial capacitors polarity is shown by the arrows pointing to the minus (-) lead.

Special thanks to randychev and hiker!! I followed instructions and in less than one hour replaced the capacitors and done. Pictures were a great help. Unit up and running great!! Can't believe Panasonic would soak a person $130 plus to solve a $3.00 problem. I hope I can return the favor some day and help others!!

Thanks to DC and RandyChev for the directions, advice, and photos. It took me about 3 hours (including trip to Radio Shack) to fix the "Please Wait" problem........works like new.

Hey Thanks, It works! This Pana Unit had a bunch of old family films in the hard drive when it stop working. Now it is fixed and all is saved. Thanks again

Thank you, thank you, thank you !!! Nervously replaced the two capacitors and I cannot believe it ! It works !!!! First time attempting anything like this. Wow...... I appreciate it.

What a great help this has been! I had the same problem and stumbled upon this sight looking for a replacement hard drive because I thought mine had crashed. This saved me about a hundred bucks and a lot of frustration. The pictures were absolutely the best help - I even got the part numbers for the capacitors off the picture of the packages. Many, many thanks again.

My E85 suddenly would not power on. It had been acting very sluggish prior to this and I had become frustrated to the point of not using ut. After reading this thread, I removed the circuit board as described and found that capacitors C1260 and C1261 were bulging and leaking. There were rated at 10V, 680 uf. I removed both and replaced with 15V 1000 uf. After reassembly, the unit worked powered up. I then installed the update to the software after downloading from the panasonic website. The unit works perfectly and responds promptly.

Thanks to all.

Thanks to all here!!! I had the same problem as mpitt (totally dead unit) replaced two obviously failed capacitors and all is working again.

Thanks very much to hiker_DC and especially to RandyChev for the step-by-step instructions and pictures that gave me the confidence to do it.

I had the same symptom where PLEASE WAIT was stuck on the display forever, and if you listened closely there was some kind of pulse about once per second.

I was skeptical that the problem would be so easy to fix but when I opened up the unit sure enough C1270 and C1271 had failed visibly:


The local "The Source by Circuit City" (what all the Canadian Radio Shacks turned into) didn't have much capacitor selection, but another local electronics shop had 1000 µF 25V caps that worked great:


Note: When I first plugged the unit back in I got PLEASE WAIT again while it tried to reorient itself. But this time I could hear it doing things, plus the screen display was a bit different (had other symbols too), so I just let it go for a while. Eventually it shut itself off (rather, went to standby). Then, with trepidation, I pressed power. It powered up and told me an error had occurred, and that I needed to press ENTER. So I did that. It shut itself down. I pressed Power again and this time it came up in the SELF CHECK mode. When it was finished the self check everything was fine. It had even remembered all my channels and programs!

In summary this cost me:

• 1 hr to troubleshoot and disassemble (includes finding this web site)
• 2 hrs to buy parts (first place I went didn't have what I needed)
• $10 for parts (had to buy 4 caps even though I only needed two, and I was nearly out of solder so I needed more of that to)
• 1 hr to repair and test

So, if I were able to bill my time out at much, then this may not have been worth doing myself. But since I'm currently a student and my time is worth little (monetarily, anyway), this was great. Plus I had fun doing it.

Thanks again!

I had the same problem with the same 2 parts. I saw others were having other caps go bad in that same general area. So I decided to replace those too.

I did one thing better while I had the thing apart. I upgraded the 120gb hard drive to a 320gb drive while IDE drives are still available cheaply. I used my PC to clone the old drive to the new one. Once I dump all my content to DVD-RAM, I'll reformat to get the full capacity.

I followed RandyChev's instructions, and they were perfect (one bracket screw on my machine was in a different place than his). I have never worked on electronics before, so it was very satisfying to fix this problem. The pictures were fantastic! Thanks so much.

My deck had the same problem with the Please Wait, when I opened it those 1270 and 1271 looked bad and as long as it was open I also replaced the 1260, 1261 and 1272 caps as warned about it other postings but on the other board I had a bad looking cap 3031 so I did that also. As long as you have it open look around.

My E85 started showing the please wait the other night and then went completely dead. Opened the unit up and C1270. 1271, 1260, 1261 all looked bad. Used the recommend radio shack 1000 micro F capacitors to replace all 4. Though I had no confidence in my soldering job, to my surprise, the unit started up! Now , I just hope the soldering job holds. Thanks to all of those who posted here.

Thanks for the instruction. After replacing 6 damaged capacitors, my DMR-E85H is up and running and I become a hero of my 4 years old daughter as there's lots of films recorded she loves.
The capacitors I replaced are C1270, C1271, C1272, C1260, C1261 and C1413.

I have a DMR E85H with exactly these problems and have just dismantled it following all the excellent instructions and pictures posted by you guys. (many thanks).

However my power board is different to those pictured, (made in Slovakia) and seems to have a different layout of components.
Most disappointingly there appear to be no faulty caps, after close inspection they all appear perfect, but due to different board they are also not numbered the same eg.C1270, C1271 so I don't know which are the potentially faulty ones.

Any advice would be most welcome.
Many thanks.

I want to say that the same problem led me here but I had to replace the other two capacitors that were right next to the ones named to resolve my problem. C1269 & C1270 are the same type of capacitor but for another voltage in the power supply (I am guessing). My caps showed signs of bulging and leaking and I realized that I had a similar problem but diferent. I went to Radio Shack and purchased the same capacitors but replaced these two culprits and voila, no more problem. Started right up after the bootup. I did not lose a setting. Thanks, guys!

Let me add to the chorus. Apparently the C1270 and C1271 capacitors are the weak links in the DMR E85H video recorder. Having the same problems everyone else mentioned, I took my unit apart (following the excellent instructions by RandyChev) and found those two capacitors with swollen tops and a scant amount of leakage. Replaced them with the Radio Shack 35V, 1000uf capacitors and the machine works like new! Thanks very much, RandyChev!

First of all, THANK YOU. My Panasonic DMR-E85H DVD Recorder suffered the same fate when it froze on "Please Wait" and ceased to operate. An internet search led me here and I figured I might as well try the remedy described. Once I opened up the machine the same two capacitors were obviously fried - C1270 and C1271 were split and leaking. The photographs and descriptions listed here were right on the money. I ventured to Radio Shack to purchase the better spec capacitors. One mistake I made - I unintentionally purchased capacitors with AXIAL leads the first time - same specs but these will not work for the repair as they are a bit larger and the leads will make contact with other portions of the board when bent around the capacitor. Make sure you purchase the RADIAL lead capacitors - rookie mistake on my part but it might save someone else the trouble. I have zero experience in soldering but found a friend with some experience and we went to work. We found that we did not need to remove the old solder and did not need to use new solder. Very simply - use your solder iron to heat up the original solder just enough that you can wiggle one lead at a time out of the board on the bad capacitors. This was very easy and only required heating the four original solder spots one at a time and rocking the bad capacitors out. It is definitely a two person job using this method - one to heat the solder and one to rock the leads out. We pre-cut the leads on the new capacitors to about 1-1 1/4", reheated the four solder spots one at a time and inserted the leads of the new capacitors. They were solidly on the board after just a few seconds. We bent them over to reduce their height and I had the machine back together in about five minutes. WORKS LIKE NEW again and I am hoping the better spec capacitors will last. Once again, thanks for the tech info. Take it from me - it was not a difficult repair and will cost less than $10 even if you have to buy a new solder iron - less than $4 if all you need are the capacitors!