HELP! Tivo dead - constantly rebooting

[diamondsw]

This evening I tried to follow the instructions posted here:

http://homepage.mac.com/steventamm/tivo.html

I used the "PTVupgrade LBA48 CD v4.02 Enhancements" CD. Now, my Tivo reboots endlessly - it gets through "Powering Up..." and "Almost Ready. Just a few more minutes..." (and does stay there for a few minutes) and then reboots.

I tried to make a backup of all of my recordings, but was unable to - the history of that effort (and my Tivo setup, model, etc) are all here (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=3955060). I do have a backup of my base files without the recordings, however, but I really don't want to lose them.

In summary: I have a standalone Series 2 Tivo, model 24004A, with software 7.2.2. I have in the past used MFSTools to upgrade it to a dual-drive 80GB/120GB (total 200GB for 234 hours) setup.

[diamondsw]

I reverted my hacks (replaced the stock kernel and deleted the rc.sysinit.author files) and now not only does it not work, where it previously rebooted, it just dies. Black screen, never reboots or anything.

Is it dead?

[diamondsw]

Restored from backup. Still dead. No one around to help?

[MungoJerrie]

When you boot from the PTV disk, does the partition map look OK? You should have 12-15 partitions; hdX8 (swap) should be there. Type these commands and make sure your bootpage is OK.

bootpage -p /dev/hdX

Should give you either root=/dev/hda4 or root=/dev/hda7

bootpage -b /dev/hdX

If root=/dev/hda4 then this should report boot partition as 3. If root=/dev/hda7 then this should be 6.

bootpage -a /dev/hdX

Should report the "alternate" paritition, which the reverse of the above.

"X" is a place-holder for your actual hard drive position on the IDE chain.

[diamondsw]

Since posting this, I ultimately discovered it was a bad hard drive that coincidentally decided to go south while I was hacking. As a result, my backup was kaput as well. Thanks to the guys on DDB, I have a fresh image and everything is fine. Damn scary in the interim, though.

[MungoJerrie]

Yea, I was following that thread over there as well...congrats!