Need some help with a restore

[Canoman]

My Pioneer 810H died a while back, and I just now got around to mucking with restoring an installation on it. I pulled the stock Maxtor 80gb drive, and I ran the Maxtor diagnostics program on it. It didn't find any errors. Since there weren't any errors, I decided to go ahead and restore to the stock drive. I got an image from StanSimmons, and I followed directions from Hinsdale and used the LBA48 cd to boot and restore that image. It worked fine, and then when I put the drive back into the Tivo unit and powered it up, it started up fine. I started looking at the programs that were recorded with that image from StanSimmons, and then it gave me an error. It said that there was a hardware problem detected and that I should restart the Tivo. So, I restarted it using the menus, and it now hangs on "Almost there. Just a few moments more..."

Does this mean that my power supply is toast? What else should I do to fix my Tivo? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[wscannell]

Not sure what happened exactly. When you restore an image from another TiVo, you need to do a "clear and delete everything". Not sure why it will not boot now.

I would repeat the restore, then boot the TiVo and do the "clear and delete" and see what happens then.

[Canoman]

Hmm, I'll have to try that... Could you give me a little more direction in how to do a clear and delete? Never had to do that before. Is that something I do after I'm in the Tivo menus, or do I do that while it's connected to my pc?

[wscannell]

It is in the setup menus. It should be on the same menu as restart the TiVo. It requires you to press tumbs down three times followed by Enter to confirm.

[Canoman]

Thanks... Off to redo my restore...

[Canoman]

Ok, it's clearing and deleting everything. This takes a while. May have to go to bed and let it clear/delete on its own.

[Canoman]

Still having troubles. Let me update what has been done.

Since the last activity in this thread, I restored the image onto the tivo drive, booted up the tivo, and then did a clear all through the menu. All was well and good until it got to the part where it wanted to dial into tivo and download updates and program information. I didn't have it somewhere close to a phone line, so I unplugged it and took it into another room where I could hook it up to a phone line. When I plugged it in there, it hung on the bootup screen that says "Almost there... Just a few minutes more." So basically back to where I started.

Talked to my I.T. friend at work, and he suggested that it may have just needed a software update, and that's what's screwing it up. So I restored the drive again and installed it into the tivo near a phone line. It booted up just fine. I did a clear/delete all and let it connect via phone line. Everything seemed like it was working fine at that point, so I was going to move it back into the living room where I want it to stay. I plugged it in there, and once again, it hung on "Almost there... Just a few minutes more."

So every time it loses power, it requires a restore. What in the world could be causing this? Should I spend money on a new drive? Again... The Maxtor drive utility checked it and found no errors. I don't want to buy a new drive if it won't fix my problem. Is my Tivo/DVD now an expensive doorstop?

Thanks for any help in advance.

[wscannell]

Did you try booting it more than once? Sometimes I have seen them fail on boot and get stuck. Usually, turning off for 30 seconds, then plugging back in will work.

Some of the DVD TiVos have a booting problem if there is a DVD disk in the drive when they are rebooted. Check you unit for a disk in the drive. You may need to find the manual eject hole, that is probably hidden somewhat by the front panel.

If that does not work, I would get a different hard drive. Even 300 GB drives can be found for under $100. You could use it in a PC if this does not work out.