It is possible to restore the program to its rightful place but it is a bit of a pain. Note that there is some risk in doing so as the law of averages means that some people with compromised PCs may have copies of the program that are infected by a Trojan, and this could include you. Anti-virus programs would normally attempt to clean the original program by removing the Trojan from it, warning if this is impossible. In our case Spotify.exe had itself been mis-identified as a Trojan, so it was safe to restore.

Norton’s official advice is to reinstall Spotify but ‘free’ users who don’t have the install files or their registration details may find it is no longer possible to register for the free version of Spotify. (Premium users can invite up to 10 friends to register for the free service.)

To restore the spotify.exe, simply follow these steps. Note that you need to wait until Norton have fixed the problem and your antivirus has been updated or it will simply quarantine the file again:

1. Double-click on the Norton icon in your System Tray (the bar on the bottom right hand corner of your screen, next to the clock)
2. Click on Quarantine. You should now see a list of Security History events that resulted in a file being quarantined
3. Near or at the top will be a message that a Trojan Horse has been removed, click on this so it is highlighted
4. Now click on the More Details button at bottom right
5. You should now be looking at a Security History Alert Summary saying “Trojan horse detected by Auto-Protect”
6. Clicking on the underlined words Risk Details will open a new window. Clicking on the Details tab should show that the supposed Trojan is spotify.exe. (If it doesn’t, go back to the Security history and lok for another Trojan removal event.) You can now close this window
7. Back in the Security history window, the final step is to click on the Restore button on the right

You should now see a screen a bit like this:

And you should now find that normal Spotify service is fully restored.

Sometimes however these boxes can get their disks in a twist, which can result in flaky operation even when there is sufficient free space. In this case, the answer is often to reformat the disk, which can be accomplished by following the steps below.

Thomson DTi6300 disk reformat instructions

Warning – this operation will delete all recordings!

1. Select Menu then Set-Up and finally Help
2. Press the  green remote button to access the Advanced Information menu
3. Press the blue button
4. Finally press the green button to proceed

The process takes about a minute, after which the box will restart, then go into standby. Hopefully you will then find your box operation has been returned to normal.

Thomson Top Up TV PVR

The first thing to try is to turn the box off at the mains, leaving it disconnected for 30 sec or so, then turn it back on again. Top Up boxes are quite slow to sort themselves out after a power reset like this, so leave it five or ten minutes before deciding whether that has fixed the problem or not.

If you do still have a problem, the best advice is to try turning the power off and on again. If two power reset attempts have not fixed things, there is another option but unfortunately it involves reformatting the hard drive, which wipes all recordings and setting stored on the disk.

To perform a complete reset and reformat the hard drive follow the steps below. Make sure you have tried the power reset twice just in case it resolves the problem without wiping the recordings.

1. Unplug or turn off the mains supply to the box
2. Hold in the Standby/Power button on the front panel (NOT on the remote control) then reconnect the mains
3. As soon as you see a light flash on the front panel, release the Standby/power button
4. Quickly press these arrow buttons one after the other – Up, Down, Left, Right
5. You should now see two lights on the front panel – a solid orange light and a flashing green light
6. When the green light stops flashing (after about a minute) the hard drive has been reformatted
7. After a short wait the box will turn itself on
8. If prompted run a channel scan

You have now finished and should be the proud owner of a working Top Up TV box again. If the box is still not working, or if you can’t complete all the steps above, it is possible that the box has suffered a hardware fault which will need repairing.

If this is the case, it may be cheaper to buy another set top box than to have yours repaired. Asda and a number of other outlets have recently been selling refurbished 160Gb Top Up TV hard disk recorders for £50.

The original HD boxes were all made by Thomson but the current generation of Sky HD boxes are made by Pace, Samsing and Amstrad. Some customers with the new generation of boxes had initial problems with lip sync which appeared to have been solved with over-the-air updates last year.