S3 spontaneous reboots

[dorktivo]

My S3 has rebooted over 10 times since Friday. I set it to record Monday Night Football. I have four recordings of it, none more than 45 minutes. When watching the four partials, the Tivo will reboot during playback, pausing for about 15-20 seconds on the same frame, then it boots. Fortunately the game was pretty lackluster, but I did miss most of the game.

On some recordings, in the past week, I've noted that the audio is not in sync with the video. I JUST missed calling tech support before they closed, so I will be contacting them in the morning.

I didn't know it was rebooting until tonight. I checked my dhcp logs and noted how often the Tivo was asking for an ip address. More often than half the lease time, apparently.

[vman41]

I'd guess a bad disk, which would be easier to diagnose if the TiVo system information displayed the S.M.A.R.T. value on the disk.

[dorktivo]

Anyone care to predict what Tivo is going to do about the problem? I shall be calling them within the hour. For the $1K that this thing costs, plus it being just 6 weeks old, one would hope they will send me a new unit and ask that I ship my old unit back to them.

[d_anders]

Anyone care to predict what Tivo is going to do about the problem? I shall be calling them within the hour. For the $1K that this thing costs, plus it being just 6 weeks old, one would hope they will send me a new unit and ask that I ship my old unit back to them.

Sounds like a hard disk issue, but I wonder if is an underlying problem with the code base. The S3 split off from the S2 code base for a while while they were getting ready to ship the S3's. Some S2s for a while were suffering from reboots and the problem was fixed via a subsequent software update. I wonder if that update was provided to the S2s after the code split occured. If so, there is a possiblity that some of this could be due to the code.

Hopefully someone will chime in and note otherwise.

That said, looks like a hard disk failure. They do happen, unfortunately. That said, for the profit margin they're making on this, are they using the best disks possible?

[thanna]

I had a similar problem. I had to return the unit for a replacement.

[JimPa]

Mine just did 3 reboots before I decided to unplug it and give it a rest.

First problems receiving channels, then partial and missing recordings, then audio drop outs and now these spontaneous reboots.

Edited to add the following.

Powered up the S3 and it continued rebooting until I pulled the plug on it again.

All together now "crashed and burned"

[JimPa]

With the continuous spontaneous reboots, I decided that I was going to return the S3 for a refund. Unplugged everything, removed cable cards, called Tivo and cancelled service receiving a RMA number.

Later in the evening, I was wondering if the Tivo had somehow cleared itself. After plugging it back in (without cablecards) it worked fine, that is as far as the reboots were concerned. Haven't tried any recordings, yet. I was able to tune in the channels that are in the clear. When I plugged in the first cable card, after about a minute it began rebooting itself. Removed the cable card, it stopped. Granted it may be more than loosing authorization or bad cable cards, but at this point I'm going to persue this with the cable company before returning the S3. During the period between each reboot cycle, before removing the cable cards, I could see that it was having the "acquiring signal" pinwheel spinning. ...and all this started after I had called the cable office about having problems receiving one of the channels. I'm believing that the cable company did something causing me to loose the signal.

[JimPa]

Day 2 of the reboot saga.

Spoke with my cable provider (Brighthouse) and was able to swap the two cards for 2 new ones.

Plugged the first one in and the S3 started the reboots again. Didn't have anything to loose at this point, so I removed the card and did a total system delete and restart.
Plugged first card in and it didn't reboot. After authorization, it didn't acquire the signal which could be a lot of things. Removed card, reinstalled it and called in the new numbers. CP authorized it and stations started coming in almost immediately. Basically the same routine on the second card about two rounds of installing it and calling it in before it was receiving signals.

For now, it has stopped rebooting. I still have to do some recordings to see if they perform as expected.

Only thing that makes sense is that the subsystem that works with acquiring signals on the cable card had something corrupted that only a full delete and system restart could correct.

[TorontoNC]

My S3 is rebooting randomly also
I thought it was the cable cards; I have the Moto cards from Charter, NC
so I took them out now it isn't rebooting as much but it did reboot right in the middle of OTA HD LOST tonight it sucks why even have a dvr if it is going to cause you to miss your live shows

I have been talking to tivo support and they said the unit may be defective and suggest swapping it out but I don't want to have to spend the time setting it up again. And I feel that tech support is just wanting to get me off the phone and that swapping it out won't fix the problem

[JimPa]

TorontoNC,

Just curious, are you using an amplified OTA antenna?

[TorontoNC]

it's the cheap antenna from radio shack

Amplified VHF/UHF/FM Indoor Antenna

Model: 15-1878
Catalog #: 15-1878

should I turn the amplifier off?

[JimPa]

TorontoNC,

Another poster mentioned how an amplified OTA antenna somehow bleed over to cause pixelation on the cable input. I doubt that it would also cause the reboots, but it would be worth disconnect the OTA coax from the S3 to see if there is any affect.

[Leo_N]

TorontoNC,

Another poster mentioned how an amplified OTA antenna somehow bleed over to cause pixelation on the cable input. I doubt that it would also cause the reboots, but it would be worth disconnect the OTA coax from the S3 to see if there is any affect.

Wasn't someone mentioning in another thread about a particular channel being "toxic" to the S3 and causing it to reboot? Maybe the same thing here?

[Burdy]

I've had 3 reboots in 3 days on my 3 day old Series 3.

One happened sometime last night (noticed 30 sec skip got reset, and it wasn't because of a software update-- it had been updated to 8.0.1b the previous night); one was a 'pull the plug' reboot required while I was watching Cablevision's ABC HD feed of "Lost" (screen froze and then turned to a pretty good imitation of random snow; no response to remote) and a spontaneous reboot about a half hour ago tonight while recording 2 HD programs (CW HD and ABC HD)-- while I was watching, Ugly Betty suddenly disappeared and was replaced by the reboot screen.

I'm not using OTA; I'm not using any cablecards; just recording unencrypted QAM. I haven't seen any of the hard disk failure precursors (stuttering, pausing, etc.) that showed up when my Series 2's hard disk died last month.

By the way, I noticed that the Series 3's tuner did not detect any digital signal whatsoever on the cable when I had a Motorola cable drop amp in the line. The Panasonic plasma TV's QAM tuner had no problems with it, but it totally killed the Series 3's cable reception. I removed it and have no problems with reception (getting 97% signal strength, usually).

Hope it's a software problem soon to be fixed... I like just about everything else about the Series 3, especially the picture quality.

[JimPa]

Burdy,

Does it look like one of the tuners is on ABC when this happens?

[Burdy]

Yes- both times the S3 failed while I was watching it, at least one of the tuners was on the ABC HD cable channel. The partial recordings (the S3 resumed recording after the reboot) were playable just fine and had no defects in them I could see (except for being 'partial').

I actually had another reboot since posting, this time when I went into the Diagnostics screen. I don't know what was tuned at the time, but I don't believe any recording was being done. That was about 3 hours ago; been running fine since then...

Minor correction to my post, above: I do have a small, crummy loop antenna connected to the antenna input, but didn't have any OTA stations tuned when the S3 failed.

[JimPa]

Burdy,

Sure sounds like its related to ABC HD cable.

In the signal level screen for cable, when tuned to that channel, do you see any wild fluctuations? Is it higher than other channels?

Might want to try a total system delete and restart. That seemed to fixed my problem, but I was using cable cards and only had the reboots with the cable cards.

[Burdy]

I checked and the cable signal seems stable at 97 / peak 97 for just about all the HD cable channels; it doesn't seem to vary much, if at all.


I noticed the box did another reboot at around 2:00 am this AM (judging by the 59 minute partial recording in the suggestions list that started at 1:00 am). It wasn't pending restart before, and the software level is still 8.01b.

[Burdy]

This machine definitely seems confused-- this afternoon I found a blank gray screen and the 'searching for a signal on antenna' popup. It was trying to record 2-1, an OTA channel which I have unchecked in the channels list (actually I have all the OTA channels unchecked). It must have been trying to record a suggestion, since I have no season passes setup that would want to tune 2-1. I may try rerunning guided setup as cable only since there are only a couple of OTA digital channels within range, and I don't watch them. If that doesn't improve the situation I'll resort to the clear & delete everything.

I wonder if anyone's experience with the Series 3 is as uneventful (reboot-wise) as the Series 2?? I think my 2003 vintage Series 2 went 4 months without a reboot (and only then because I had to reconfigure the cabinet it was sitting in).

[JimPa]

Burdy,

It shouldn't be trying to record off of an unchecked channel.

Before the clear and delete, I was having a time with some of the unchecked channels reappearing. Has that happened to you?

[Burdy]

I swear I have seen the reverse-- Channel 2 (which I do want to receive) seemed to become unchecked. I did verify that 2-1 was unchecked even after I caught it trying to tune the channel.

That prompted me to verify that my season passes and scheduled recordings weren't using 2-1 (they weren't). That's also when I noticed a flood of bogus entries in the recording history (37 duplicate entries complaining that a manually scheduled recording 'did not record' because of no program guide data , even though it did in fact record. I'm starting to think that manual recordings of channels without guide data (aka unencrypted QAM channels received without cable cards) doesn't work well, and may be contributing to the problems I'm seeing.