Is my Directivo about to die?

[spartanstew]

I have a Philips Series 2 Directivo (DSR708) that has 70 hours capacity. It's worked flawlessly over the last year or so (I've never had a problem with any of my D*tivos and this is my 7th one).

It's our secondary unit that mainly holds kids shows and our overflow so we don't use it all the time. About 1 week ago, my wife told me that it started randomly rebooting. She estimated that it was doing it once per day.

Today, we were using that unit most of the day and it rebooted twice in about a 4 hour span. I've been checking the temp all day and it's always at 44C (the same as our other unit), so I don't think it's overheating.

Is it about to die?

What could be causing this?

[BillyBob_jcv]

Probably the hard drive - I think that's the most common failure point. Or it could be a component on the motherboard that smoked and is causing an intermittant fault that the box responds to by rebooting. ***** does happen.

OR, there is the classic case of a powerstrip that is accidentally plugged into a switched outlet - and when the switch is occasionally flipped on/off (thinking it is the nearby table lamp switch), the DTivo is power-cycled. (and no it wasn't me - although I once had a similar situation with a powered multiswitch!)

[morgantown]

Aw, you know better :). The most likely thing is a failing HD (could be something else) doubt it though, from what you have said.

Time to plop in a new HD. Since you have others at least you will have a good image to copy from. Up the hours while you are at it.

What else really goes wrong on a TiVo? Goodness forbid a board short.

[spartanstew]

Time to plop in a new HD. Since you have others at least you will have a good image to copy from. Up the hours while you are at it.
.


Unfortunately, I have no idea how to do any of that.

[BillyBob_jcv]

http://tivo.upgrade-instructions.com/index.php

[fjwagner]

Unfortunately, I have no idea how to do any of that.

go to weaknees.com and you can buy a replacement hard disk that is already set up. Instructions are quite good and should take you all of 20 minutes to do the trick. Especially if you are not interested in hooking up extraneous hard drives to your pc and moving some of the cabling around in your pc. I recommend weaknees. I have done both, but in your case weaknees.com may be the way to go!!!!

[Gunnyman]

Unfortunately, I have no idea how to do any of that.

Wow.
I can't imagine having more than 1 tivo and NOT networking them for MRV.
But as others have said, weaknees and ptvupgrade have drop in hard drives ready to go for sale.

[newsposter]

Wow.
I can't imagine having more than 1 tivo and NOT networking them for MRV.
But as others have said, weaknees and ptvupgrade have drop in hard drives ready to go for sale.

yea, some of us dont even know what mrv is ;) nor do we have networks set up at home :) and we are still on dialup :)

[spartanstew]

Wow.
I can't imagine having more than 1 tivo and NOT networking them for MRV.
But as others have said, weaknees and ptvupgrade have drop in hard drives ready to go for sale.


Mine are all networked (as is my DVD player) to be viewed on any of the 7 televisions in the home. It has nothing to do with upgrading the D*tivo, however.

[spartanstew]

http://tivo.upgrade-instructions.com/index.php


My computer skills are limited to forums and Email. I'm pretty sure that's beyond my capabilities.

[BillyBob_jcv]

http://www.ptvupgrade.com/installation/professional.html

[spartanstew]

http://www.ptvupgrade.com/installation/professional.html

go to weaknees.com and you can buy a replacement hard disk that is already set up. Instructions are quite good and should take you all of 20 minutes to do the trick. Especially if you are not interested in hooking up extraneous hard drives to your pc and moving some of the cabling around in your pc. I recommend weaknees. I have done both, but in your case weaknees.com may be the way to go!!!!


I'll probably go this route. My only small area of concern is that there's a chance I'll be leaving D* in a few months (fall of 2006) and switching over to FiOS. I don't like the idea of dropping $120 on a pre-formatted drive (especially since that's more than I ever paid for any of my units to begin with) for only a few months of use. I'll probably be able to recoup some of that by selling the unit when the time comes though. I guess I'll have to give it some thought.

[bsnelson]

My computer skills are limited to forums and Email. I'm pretty sure that's beyond my capabilities.There are plenty of folks in the D/FW area that could lend a hand...

Brad

[catcard]

Hey if I can change out a hard drive, anyone can!!! Yeah weaknees!!