No more Welcome, Powering Up

[zimm0who0net]

My TiVo rebooted yesterday right in the middle of watching a show. It got to the "Almost There" screen and then rebooted again. It did this a few times and then never got past the "Powering Up" screen.
I pulled the hard drive and tested it thoroughly and it all checked out fine (the drive is only about 1 month old).
I put it back in the machine and it again got to the "Almost there" screen and rebooted.
NOW, when I plug it in it won't even show the "Welcome, Powering Up" screen. (well, that's not entirely true. WHen I unplug it and plug it back in, about 1 in 20 times I'll get the screen, but it never gets past it). The screen just stays black. It's definitely not a cabling problem.

I'm worried in that the Welcome Powering Up screen comes up before the hard drive has even spun up. That leads me to believe that the problem is in the Tivo unit itself.
(Incidentally, I checked the power to the hard drive and got +5.02V and +11.86V)

[zimm0who0net]

I just tested the power coming from the power supply to the tivo main board. Here's what I got:
Pin Voltage
1 0
2 3.36
3 3.36
4 3.36
5 0
6 5.03
7 5.03
8 0
9 12.01
10 0
11 0
12 3.36
13 3.36
14 0
15 12.01
16 5.03
17 0
18 29.83
19 0.03
20 0

[HomeUser]

What model is your TiVo?

What tool did you use to test the drive?

If you still have it have you tried booting the original drive?

While you have the drive in the PC look at the TiVo's log files.
oh and NEVER ACCESS THE TiVo's DIVE WITH WINDOWS 2000 or XP

You might get more information over in TiVo Upgrade Center (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=25) on upgraded drives.

Not a lot that you can do if it is not the drive or power supply

[zimm0who0net]

I used Spinrite to check the hard drive. The SMART parameters all look good (no reallocated sectors, no read errors, etc)
It's a TCD140060
I don't have the original hard drive because it died, but I can't imagine that it's the hard drive because the hard drive should have nothing to do with the "Welcome, Powering Up" screen not coming up. That screen should come up even if there's not a hard drive installed in the Tivo.
I will try looking at the log files to see if there's anything there.

[windracer]

Here are some other suggestions:

http://alt.org/wiki/index.php/TivoDiagnostics

How about the white ribbbon cable? It's not loose, is it?

[zimm0who0net]

I've tried re-seating the power supply cable. The other white ribbon cable that goes to the front panel scares me as I've seen lots of messages that I should never touch that, so I haven't...

I looked through the log files and found out some interesting information. It looks like it rebuilt the /var partition so most of the log is gone, but I do get a CPU Illegal cycle detected at EPC=0xc00c49bc.
It seems to progress past this, does a lot more initialization things, and then I get an "Illegal read at 5ed4ff07" "do_page_fault #2: sending signal 11 to checkForSwInsta(155)"
Then a bunch of kernel dump parameters.

NOTE: These log messages were made last night (judging by the timestamp). It doesn't appear that any messages have been logged since then even though I've been re-starting constantly (albeit, I have not been getting the "Welcome, Powering Up" screen either

[zimm0who0net]

OK, well I captured another session when it happened to get to the Welcome, Powering Up screen (again, it only gets to that screen on rare occasion. Usually it just gives me a black screen and does nothing). This time it got all the way to initializing the USB subsystem, but crashed without putting an error message into the logs (in fact, it looks like it crashed in mid-write of a log message)

I think the problem is in the Motherboard. I don't suppose anyone has any suggestins on how to debug a motherboard fault??? I'm assuming I'm going to have to get a new TiVo. Will I be able to use my drive "as-is" with my new TiVo? I know I can wipe it and re-perform the upgrade steps, but I would like to just drop the drive into the new TiVo and not lose all my saved programming, configuration, and season passes. (I'm aware that none of the accout information (lifetime subscription) will transfer over)

Thanks,
-Rich

[windracer]

This time it got all the way to initializing the USB subsystem, but crashed without putting an error message into the logs (in fact, it looks like it crashed in mid-write of a log message)
Do you have anything plugged into the USB ports, like a network adapter? If so, have you tried booting without the adapter connected?
Will I be able to use my drive "as-is" with my new TiVo? I know I can wipe it and re-perform the upgrade steps, but I would like to just drop the drive into the new TiVo and not lose all my saved programming, configuration, and season passes. (I'm aware that none of the accout information (lifetime subscription) will transfer over)
Not really. Your drive image contains the TSN so if you put it into another box (which has to be the same model) you'll have to do a Clear and Delete Everything before the image will work properly.

[bingle]

OK, well I captured another session when it happened to get to the Welcome, Powering Up screen (again, it only gets to that screen on rare occasion. Usually it just gives me a black screen and does nothing). This time it got all the way to initializing the USB subsystem, but crashed without putting an error message into the logs (in fact, it looks like it crashed in mid-write of a log message)

I think the problem is in the Motherboard. I don't suppose anyone has any suggestins on how to debug a motherboard fault??? I'm assuming I'm going to have to get a new TiVo. Will I be able to use my drive "as-is" with my new TiVo? I know I can wipe it and re-perform the upgrade steps, but I would like to just drop the drive into the new TiVo and not lose all my saved programming, configuration, and season passes. (I'm aware that none of the accout information (lifetime subscription) will transfer over)

Thanks,
-Rich

I'm having similar experiences and symptoms with my HDVR2. Have you tried replacing the power supply? Did that work?

[zimm0who0net]

It wasn't the power supply. It all checked out. There may have been transients on the lines, but the steady voltage was just fine.
I'm pretty sure it was something wrong with the motherboard. I ended up exchanging it through Tivo for the $150 exchange offer and got to transfer my Lifetime Membership.
Unfortunately all my programming, season passes, show ratings, etc were lost because they're encrypted with the key residing in the unit itself. Yet another example on how stupid encryption / copy protection schemes screw legitimate users and do nothing to stop the pirates.... Oh well...