TiVo won't recover from error message - infuriating!

[writdenied]

Some background:
A few weeks ago, my 4-year old standalone S2 suddenly gave me "Service Message #100," erroneously telling me that it hadn't been able to connect to the TiVo service for more than 30 days. (See previous thread (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=325678).) ZikZak offered some suggestions, but nothing cleared up the problem.

I've forced several connections to the service, and I'm 100% convinced that the TiVo has all the information it needs:
- System Information reports a successful connection as of yesterday
- Attempting to record the contents of the buffer results in a confirmation screen showing all of the appropriate program information, even though pressing the "Info" button during the same program merely repeats Service Message #100.
- Setting a manual recording to occur in the next two weeks causes the TiVo to accurately identify the name of the program I want to record.

But no matter what, the box reacts to any recording scheduling or live t.v. viewing with Message #100. I'm convinced that the box set a flag when it went into error mode, and is somehow incapable of clearing that flag, despite several successful service connections having been made. The following things haven't helped:

- power down and restart
- power down, leave unplugged while on vacation for 16 days, and restart
- "Connect to the TiVo Service Now" -- the connection is compelted, the TiVo spends several hours loading the new information, but the Service Message still remains
- Repeat guided setup
- Clear all program information & ToDo List and re-load

At this point, I'm down to a handful of options:
1. Hope that installing the new 8.1 software will somehow reset things.
2. Buy a new hard drive, on the assumption that there's a corrupted sector somewhere that's causing this.
3. "Clear everything and restart" option (drastic, and in light of the fixes attempted above, not likely to help)
4. Junk a lifetime-enabled box that otherwise works correctly (live t.v. controls work, manual recordings work, Now Playing list still fine, etc.) and be bitter about the whole experience.

Any advice? Any alternative hypothesis I'm missing? What would you do?

[ZikZak]

It's a really strange problem.

I would not junk a lifetime box, and if you aren't having other symptoms... "stopples," reboots, etc, it probably is not the drive.

That leaves options 1 and 4. You just kind of have to wait for #1, so give #4 a try. "Clear and Delete Everything" completely resets everything on the tivo and returns it to the factory state. Theoretically, that should work.

[funtoupgrade]

I think ZikZak meant #3 from his explanation. If you do a clear and delete and it doesn't solve the problem try loading a fresh image onto the drive and see if that helps.

Did you add your TiVo to the 8.1 priority list? I got mine in a couple of days after the request.

[writdenied]

Like any good mystery, it's time to parcel out another few tidbits of information...

I finally broke down and called tech support last night. Ran through the story, the tech went off to huddle with some others, came back, and agreed that nuking the drive and starting fresh was the only solution. She was surprised that I took it so well. I told her that I had pretty much guessed that that would be required and had reconciled myself to losing movies I had taped two and a half years ago and never got around to watching.

So, I wiped the system last night, and got up this morning to run guided setup. Got to the end of setup, hit "Live TV," and waited to see my first program information in weeks. Instead, I got a "your service has not been activated" message. On a box that has been activated for more than four years, and wiping the system shouldn't change your activation data. (Not to mention, I also get the "lost the cable signal" bluescreen on all live t.v. channels. Change channels, same result. So now, after having wiped the system, I've got even less functionality than I had before -- at least I could watch live t.v. before.)

Called tech support again. It's surprising how fast you can get them on the line when you call exactly at 7:00 a.m. The new tech took about 5 minutes to read over my case notes, noted that I had severa successful connections recorded in the system over the past weeks, noted that I was fully activated, etc., dithered around with some useless suggestions, and finally asked me to read some info off my System Information page.

Of particular interest was the entry for "Tivo Service Status" or whatever the line right below "Service Level" is. Having looked at this screen a lot during the past couple weeks, I had noticed that it always said "i:-". After the reset, it had changed to "A:-". The tech explained that both of these were error codes, and that the normal reading should be "C:-". He asked me to reboot, then force a connection in two hours and check the status then. We'll see what happens when I finally get around to that later today.

It's starting to look more and more like the problem was never my box at all, but rather, info it was getting from the mothership. My current hypothesis is that, for unknown reasons, Tivo HQ, like the Catholic Church, suddenly convinced my box that it was in a state of perpetual sin. Although my box was as clean as a chiorboy, it believed what it was told, and basically went into a depressive funk about how badly it was told it had been behaving. Wiping the box clean wasn't really necessary-- I just needed Tivo HQ to clean up what it was telling my box.

Hopefully, the last chapter in this story will come this afternoon...

[writdenied]

... or not. The new connection changed nothing.

Multiple calls to tech support last night and this morning. The good news: I've leveled up to Tech Support 3! The diagnosis is just some corrupt data that couldn't get cleaned out by a system reset. The prescription is a self-diagnostic reboot (restart system, hold pause on the remote until the right-side panel LED comes on, release pause, hit 5, 7), which pops up a green screen and the TiVo ponders its own existence for three hours. I'm told that forcing a connection when that finishes should cure the problem. If not, the box might need replacing.

Pretty unsatisfying overall. I wanted them to have me crack the box open to find a moth shorting out a relay or something more exciting than "corrupt data." Bah.

[ZikZak]

If the kickstart doesn't work, try C&DE before replacing the box. The kickstart procedure is really a surface scan of the drive, but you're not exhibiting bad hard drive symptoms.

[wscannell]

Just a thought - try replacing the battery on the motherboard. It may have a bad battery and then forgets what date it is. Replacing the battery is like replacing the battery on a PC.

[writdenied]

If the kickstart doesn't work, try C&DE before replacing the box. The kickstart procedure is really a surface scan of the drive, but you're not exhibiting bad hard drive symptoms.

Right you are, my friend. No apparent effect from the kickstart.

No, I take that back. Now it's worse. Whereas every service call I'd forced up until the kickstart had gone through fine, the three I've forced since then all failed. I forget the text of the error code, something about "unable to obtain account information," I think. Curiously, I watched the connections go through, and they connected and spent 20+ minutes actually downloading before dumping out when I wasn't watching. Tech support wants to blame the DSL filter I've got on the TiVo's phone jack, claiming it's causing a timeout, but the successful calls earlier this week went through that same filter, and the odds of it coincidentally going bad yesterday seem slim. I also swapped filters on that jack, and still had a failed connection today. And it still doesn't really explain the other problems, given all my previous successful connections.

C&DE is already in the kitty from Tuesday morning. Didn't help. The battery on the motherboard's an interesting idea. I'll have to look into that. I've got another date with Tech Support when I get home tonight...

[timckelley]

I thought the DSL filters were so you don't hear the computer data while you're talking on the phone. I would think the computers themselves, including your TiVo, should be reading an unfiltered signal. IOW, I would think you should have no filter at all between your wall and your TiVo.

[writdenied]

I thought the DSL filters were so you don't hear the computer data while you're talking on the phone. I would think the computers themselves, including your TiVo, should be reading an unfiltered signal. IOW, I would think you should have no filter at all between your wall and your TiVo.

Yes and no. The filter does keep the data layer from seeping into your voice channel, but remember that, with a normal phone call, the TiVo is receiving data in the audio range. That's what its modem does -- converts its data to hissing audio for transmission over the phone line and back. But it's all riding the voice layer.

Now, if you really wanted to hack, you could bypass the TiVo's slow dial-up modem and route things through your own DSL modem. Then you could probably plug it into the wall unfiltered and enjoy super-fast daily update calls.

[ZikZak]

Well, I'm kind of stumped. I suppose that it could be a hard drive problem, with the bad sector(s) exclusively in the guide data area. If you have an extra hard drive lying around, load a tivo image onto it and stick it in the tivo box and see what happens.

It might also be a weird modem problem. Try connecting via the 'net and see what happens. Have you been updated to system 8 yet?

[writdenied]

Well, I'm kind of stumped. I suppose that it could be a hard drive problem, with the bad sector(s) exclusively in the guide data area. If you have an extra hard drive lying around, load a tivo image onto it and stick it in the tivo box and see what happens.

It might also be a weird modem problem. Try connecting via the 'net and see what happens. Have you been updated to system 8 yet?

Tech support thinks they've solved it. The last three connection attempts have ended with an S02 error. According to them, that indicates that the connection completed successfully, then failed with the TiVo trying to load the data. Which means the problem is inside the box, not with the connection itself.

Your guess is probably correct -- a bad hard drive sector that just happens to be underneath some critical OS data. The kickstart can't isolate and work around the bad sector, because that particular sector on the drive is essential. It's like having your hard drive go bad in the Master Boot Record -- nothing you can do but junk the drive. Seems to me like that's a pretty rare kind of error that leaves the box running but chronically crippled (c.f. an MBR error), but that's the diagnosis.

I knuckled under and paid $ 149 for an out-of-warranty replacement of my lifetime box. I could've got a pre-loaded replacement drive from a place like Weaknees for $ 119, or I guess I could've gotten a generic drive for about $ 50 and done the tweaking on it to install a software image and swap it in the TiVo myself, but frankly, the time it would've taken to figure it all out is worth more than that to me right about now.

Anyway, ZZ, thanks for the thoughts on the problem. I was hoping it would be just a "press a couple of buttons on the remote and fix it" kind of thing, but they can't all be that easy.