Anonymous Reader X seeks to troubleshoot his or her Apple TV. Said A.R.X writes:
I’m not sure my Apple TV is working properly. It’s slow to respond to commands and sometimes it won’t “see” the Mac I want to stream movies from. Is there some way to check to be sure it’s working?
Sure. Hold down the Menu and Minus (-) button on the Apple Remote until the Apple TV flashes a yellow light. The Apple TV will eventually restart and display a Language screen. Select the language you wish to use and press Play/Pause.
You’ll see an Apple TV Recover screen, which lists three options: Restart, Run Diagnostics, and Factory Restore. Select Run Diagnostics and press Play/Pause.
You’ll see the familiar spinning gear icon along with a message that reads “Running Diagnostics” for the couple of minutes the test takes to run. The message you eventually want to see is “Your Apple TV is Working Correctly.” Click Done to return to the Apple TV Recover screen, select Restart, and press Play/Pause to restart the Apple TV.
If you see an error message instead of the “Working Correctly” message, Apple suggests that you return the Apple TV to Apple for servicing.
If the Run Diagnostics test concludes successfully and you still have problems, be sure that you’ve got a decent network signal—two bars or more. (If you get less, the Apple TV continues to be slow or can’t connect to a networked computer and you can’t move your wireless network so you gain better reception, consider a different network connection—wired Ethernet, for example.)
If you’ve got a strong signal and it’s still hesitant in every action—video as well as audio—you can try restoring it to factory settings. Doing so wipes out your network settings and removes any media that’s been synced to the Apple TV.