Tivo Misery

[john7033]

Without warning, my Tivo series2 suddenly started recording the wrong shows. I have no idea why. I tried to restore to factory settings, but like so many other things, it didn't work. At some point the machine was rebooted, and now it's in an endless loop of reboots which repeats about four minutes into the "just a few minutes more" message.

1) Is there a way to restore to factory defaults without the menu (like the reset on a PDA device)? I have no access to the menu because the OS won't load.

2) Is there any other option for fixing the machine aside from buying a new drive? It has only been in use for about 300 hours. If they are shipping machines with drives that fail after 300 hours, I don't want it. I doubt the drive is bad. The more likely culprit is that the reset failed, damaging the OS irreparably.

Fo those who are wondering, I tried to call support. Of course, they never answer the tech support number, so I can't get any help that way. I doubt it would do much good anyway. I have a bad feeling that there is no easy fix. Does anyone have any suggestions?

[Rosincrans]

you'll probably get a better answer soon. But if nothing else, try unplugging it for a full five minutes and then plug it back in. I haven't had to do this with my Tivo, but I've had some other electronics lock up and had to do that.

[jjberger2134]

Without warning, my Tivo series2 suddenly started recording the wrong shows. I have no idea why. I tried to restore to factory settings, but like so many other things, it didn't work. At some point the machine was rebooted, and now it's in an endless loop of reboots which repeats about four minutes into the "just a few minutes more" message.

1) Is there a way to restore to factory defaults without the menu (like the reset on a PDA device)? I have no access to the menu because the OS won't load.

2) Is there any other option for fixing the machine aside from buying a new drive? It has only been in use for about 300 hours. If they are shipping machines with drives that fail after 300 hours, I don't want it. I doubt the drive is bad. The more likely culprit is that the reset failed, damaging the OS irreparably.

Fo those who are wondering, I tried to call support. Of course, they never answer the tech support number, so I can't get any help that way. I doubt it would do much good anyway. I have a bad feeling that there is no easy fix. Does anyone have any suggestions?


1. None that I am aware of.
2. 300 hours? That means the machine is only 12 days old. Unlike a PC, your TiVo drive is ALWAYS on and ALWAYS spinning. The machine is designed to operate that way. 300 hours of recording shows that you programmed is not indicative of the actual use of the hard drive.

How old is the unit? Which model Series 2? Is it still under warranty? Do you have a monthly subscription or lifetime?

If you are handy with a PC you can pull the hard drive from the TiVo, then run a diagnostic on your PC to see if you have a bad sector, etc.