Just upgraded but having the same problems...

[dstephan]

Hi all, I love Tivo but this is my first time participating in the Tivo community. I have a Series 2 which had started dropping out, stuttering, pixelating, etc. So all the literature on the web says this is due to a faulty harddrive. Having a spare harddrive I do the research and manage to successfully install a new 160 GB HD with an image from the faulty drive.

However I have the exact same problem now with the new drive - same symptoms. So is the Tivo software perhaps corrupt? Is there somewhere to download just the software and install it rather than transferring from the old drive?

Or is there something else that could be causing these problems?

I'd appreciate any help that could be provided.
Thanks.

[windracer]

Maybe forcing a kickstart (57) would help? A mfscheck might find (and fix) any problems with the image on the drive.

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

There's no official place to download a fresh image, but you might want to check out this thread (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=62430).

[dstephan]

Strangely enough I did a complete wipe and reset and it seems to have maybe solved the problem. Of course I lost all my season passes, but that's not such a big deal.

I say maybe solved the problem, because in a few hours of watching there were a couple of glitches, but no where near the problems that it had before switching the drive.

However I'm worried that the problem will continue to grow again. I'll try the kickstart, although it sounds like starting from scratch does pretty much the same thing.

[bob61]

Run the manufacturers drive diagnostics on the drive, let it see if any physical errors on the drive.

[ryanhendrickson]

I upgraded my Tivo a few months ago, just as it seems everyone else has. I do NOT have problems with my Tivo rebooting spontaneously, making clicking noises, overheating, or doing anything strange with the exception of image quality.

I have a Tivo 40hr box, and I added a large Maxtor hard drive as the secondary drive. I've noticed when the Tivo is almost empty, it writes shows to the original hard drive, as that fills up, I start having problems.

If I'm watching a previously recorded program (SHOW A) while something else is recording (SHOW B) and I fast-forward/rewind parts of SHOW A, the image quality of SHOW B at the point where I did the fast-forward/rewind pixelates and stutters. I don't actually loose any of SHOW B, it just pauses, as if the Tivo device is thinking about what it needs to do. It then continues to write SHOW B to the hard drive. Could this be some kind of buffer issue?

I also cannot record shows on "Best Quality" because the problems I just mentioned make it impossible to watch anything. I have to do the next setting down. Additionally, I can very rarely watch anything "Live," hit pause for a few seconds, then resume playing. It starts to stutter where the show is recording as I'm watching what it previously written to the HD.

Is there an issue with the Tivo trying to write to the secondary hard drive (the one I installed)?

Anyone's help is greatly appreciated.

Ryan

[funtoupgrade]

Sounds like it may be a swap file problem. Size of second hard drive? Do you have a record of the actual commands you used to set up the second drive?