Removing parental controls on a Sky+ box without knowing the PIN.

[Benzade]

Sorry if this has been covered elsewhere. I've recently bought one of the white Sky+ boxes off a car bootie for ?2. Was in great condition and on opening the flap on the front I noticed it still had it's viewing card inside. "Bonus" thinks I if it hasn't been permantly disabled by Sky and is just sleeping I have myself a ?25 Freesat card for nowt.

So I've managed to bump start the card by getting the box to call back and now have Freesat from Sky on my newly acquired box all good I think.

Sadly not the previous owner has set parental controls and I obviously do not know the PIN tried the last four digits of the viewing card and it's not that tried the usual "0000" and "1234" and no such luck.

Now I know that thre's no wrangles to crack the PIN unless I want to start at 0000 and work my way through to 9999 stopping every 10 minutes after 3 attempts but I seem to recall a work around by putting a working viewing card with a known PIN into my box from another box then going into parental controls and disabling the feature that way then put my card back in and it would no longer request a PIN. Certainly worked on the old blue cards.

Question is I purchased a black Sky+ HD box again off the car bootie for my father and a ?25 Freesat from Sky viewing card which they then paired to the box will the last 4 numbers of his card be his PIN or will it still retain the original PIN from the card that was first paired to it?
And secondly does this work around still work?

Any thoughts much appreciated.

[Benzade]

Just for info you can still disable the parental controls on a sky +/HD box using the above method however the software will still ask you for a PIN if you wanted to view any pre watershed programmes recorded on the box. But unless you are paying Sky a tenner a month you wouldn't be using this feature anyway as Sky disables the PVR side of the + boxes on ex subscription boxes.

[dick b]

have you tried doing a "new install" via the engineers menu.
"services" then (4)"system setup">select,then (0) followed by(1)>select then"new install">select.

[Benzade]

Hi Dick, fortunately since posting last I've managed to crack the PIN code number and I've now wrote it on the part of the viewing card that dosen't go into the slot with a CD marker pen for future reference should I need it.
I didn't run any Bletchley Park Enigma style code breaking methods on it I just simply put the card in a non plus box started at "0000" and switching the box on and off again after three attempts worked my way through until I hit the right code, luckily for me I'm a patient man and it was set in the very low "0000's" or it could have been a very long night!

I thought about trying your method but I think all that would do is wipe any recordings from the box but not clear the PIN as these are set by Sky when they first pair a box to a card. Unless Sky pair another card to the box then it will not clear the original PIN number set by Sky when it was being used as a subscription box.

Anyway all good now and thanks for your reply the moderators may now close this topic.