Tivo froze & on re-boot is stuck at "Welcome. Powering up"... help!?

[davey971]

I was watching TV last night when the screen froze & the Tivo had stopped responding to the remote - I left it for 15 mins 'just in case' but was still frozen. I've rebooted and it stuck at 'welcome. powering up'. I've now left if overnight but it was still stuck. Re-booting again still leaves it stuck as 'welcome. powering up'. :(

I've a Maxtor drive in it (a refurb from Maxtor a few months ago after a drive started 'stuttering') and a cachecard.

What's the best way to prove whether it is the drive or not and if it is any recommendations for a replacement drive?

If it is the drive, any idea how I can get it sorted in time for Xmas before I have a family mutiny on my hands! :)

thanks in advance

Dave

[blindlemon]

Unfortunately it is most likely the drive :(

The best way to prove that is to fit a known-good drive in its place.

The good news is that you have a number of options for replacement - DIY if you like messing with computers or pre-configured if you don't, and either way you still have time to get it fixed before Christmas.

As to recommendations, my hands are tied ;)

[davey971]

Thanks for a speedy response. I've already been surfing a well known website that you may know ;)

I haven't got a known good one & I'd like to be pretty sure before getting the drive in case its something else. All I can think to do is:

Remove the cachecard & try without.
If that fails, run the Maxware diags (sense of deja vu with that:().
If that fails, buy replacement drive/kit.

Any other ideas of things to try?

Any recommendations for replacement drives? My first Maxtor lasted a few years, the 2nd (a refurb by Maxtor) seems to have lasted a few months. I'm looking for something 200-250GB-ish or bigger that is cool, quiet and not too power hungry (don't want to stretch the PSU).

Is there anything else worth doing to prove it one way or the other?

[sanderton]

It almost certainly is the drive. Do you have any old hard drive you can use (over 40Gb?)

[blindlemon]

If you have a spare drive, 40gb or over and a PC you could download an image and configure the drive with that to see if it boots your TiVo.

If that works OK, then the drive I would recommend would be the 5400rpm Samsung HA250JC which is easily the coolest and quietest 250gb drive out there, and being a Samsung, pretty reliable too :)

These are available preconfigured or, if you have the means to configure it yourself, as bare drives with (usually) next day delivery from www.ultratec.co.uk

[davey971]

I'll have a dig around and see if I can find an old drive to try. Thanks for the tip.

[davey971]

I haven't found a spare drive yet, but I have tried Maxtor's Powermax a few times in non-destructive mode on the suspect drive. The software didn't find anything, but on putting the drive back in the TiVo it now boots up okay ... :confused:

I've switched on backdoors and checked the logs and nothing seems to be shouting 'problem' - although I have to admit I'm not certain as I'm not too familiar with the innards of a TiVo. Anything to look for in particular?

Is there anyway to get the TiVo to check the drive itself? I can recall some way of re-booting and getting the filesystem to check itself but can't remember it.

Any advice welcome - I've a feeling this isn't fixed and will bite later :(

[iankb]

Rogue IR can cause it to hang on a boot - it will display two amber lights if this is the cause. It is only likely to cause the picture to freeze if you are paused at the time that the rogue IR stops it receiving any further commands.

[davey971]

I'm afraid the patient has taken a turn for the worse :(

Its now stuck in a GSOD loop:
1. Reboots itself
2. Welcome. Powering up..
3. Almost there
4. Cachecard Screen
5. Almost There
6. GSOD
7. Return to '1'

The 'GSOD' appears for only 1 second before it sponaneously reboots.

I've tried it with & without the cachecard/cachecard RAM.

Any ideas? I've tried kickstarts () but they don't seem to have had any effect.
Any disk checks I can do if I boot off CD? Any startup config files I can edit?

[Pete77]

I've a Maxtor drive in it (a refurb from Maxtor a few months ago after a drive started 'stuttering') and a cachecard.

Unfortunately Maxtors are notoriously short lived in the demanding environment which Tivo imposes on them and frequently fail in less than half the time of other drives. The longstanding view of members of this forum is to buy either Samsung or Seagate drives (a) because Samsung drives are the quietest and Seagate are the most reliabile and (b) because Samsung drives have a 3 year warranty and Seagate drives a 5 year warrany through the right supply channels. Maxtor, Western Digital and Hitachi drives all only come with a one year warranty.

Although I have two Samsung HA250JC 250Gb drives in my Tivo installed in June 2005 I can't really recommend them today in economic terms because they are a deleted product line and Samsung now have a 400Gb hard drive out which represents far better value per GB and is almost certainly nearly as reliable and nearly as quiet as the Samsung HA250JC. Latest Seagate big 400Gb and 500Gb drives are also quiet and reliable but due to their power consumption requirements you can can't fit a pair of them in a Tivo like you can with the large Samsung drives.

You should be able to install your own hard drive replacement using the instructions at www.steveconrad.co.uk/tivo if you are at all familiar with installing network cards and reformatting hard drives and installing the Windows operating system in PCs previously. Although there are up to four firms out there who supply pre-configured drives they do charge rather a large premium for the service, especially in my view on the larger capacity drives where instead of charging a fixed fee for the software installation work they effectively charge a percentage markup for fitting on the entire drive price. :eek:

I hope I won't offend blindlemon too much with these comments but I do find the price of the TivoHeaven 2 x 400Gb hard drive upgrade rather steep bearing in mind two of the drives can currently be sourced and delivered for just over £160 from www.komplett.co.uk (according to www.pricerunner.co.uk). I think his one drive upgrade price is fair enough, given all the work and expertise involved. What alarms me though is the two drive upgrade price being basically double when it really only involves TivoHeaven in about 5-10% more work at most than a one drive upgrade. Of course TivoHeaven doesn't approve of two drive upgrades so perhaps it is their way of protecting customers from their own natural gluttony in hankering after more hard drive space than is really either necessary or good for them or their Tivo's longevity. ;)

[blindlemon]

What alarms me though is the two drive upgrade price being basically double when it really only involves TivoHeaven in about 5-10% more work at most How on earth do you come up with that figure? :confused:

I'm tempted not to bother answering this, but just in case anybody else has thought about it as little as you, I should point out that testing two drives takes not 5-10% longer but twice as long as testing one; also, two drives are not 5-10% more likely to fail than one but twice as likely, so the warranty risk is doubled. It's true that adding a 2nd drive to an upgrade set only takes a few seconds, but then configuring the "A" drive from a pre-prepared image doesn't take very long either. The costs are in the testing and warranty risk, not the time to configure.

So, a twin-drive upgrade is basically two drives rather than one. What retailers do you know of that will give you a "bulk" discount for two items? :cool:

[Pete77]

How on earth do you come up with that figure? :confused:

I'm tempted not to bother answering this, but just in case anybody else has thought about it as little as you

blindlemon,

I really don't want to fall out with you over this but surely testing a second hard drive is simply a matter of attaching it, setting off the hard drive test program and pushing off to watch a tv program or make and eat a sandwich or whatever. You don't sit there watching the whole hard drive test run for the 20 minutes or half an hour or whatever it takes do you? :confused:

Most of the charge you make and that is embedded in your initial hard drive upgrade price for one drive is an expertise fee for doing the job and a hassle factor involved in dealing with each customer who is likely to call you and email you with follow up issues. Very few of those factors are double on a dual drive installation. While having two drives may increase the risk of failure I would imagine very few drives fail in your one year warranty period anyway and that very little of the charge you make is related to replacing and reformatting drives under warranty as it only occasionally happens. So I don't think it justifies charging a 100% extra second drive addition fee.

As I said in my PM to you it would be a bit like a garage needing to take the engine out on a car to do the head gasket and also replacing some inaccessible sensor at the same time. There is no way they should charge you two lots of labour for taking an engine out. Its not at all like buying two apples instead of one and expecting to get a 50% discount on the second apple. In my view you should levy a labour fee for the upgrade job and then charge separately for the drives. Then when someone wants a two drive upgrade the labour fee will be higher but not basically double as it is at present.

I am rather upset about the hostile way you have reacted to this constructive criticism, almost as though I am now being treated like Chris from a couple of days ago. Surely people can differ in their opinions with you without you having to actually belittle their point of view? :(

[blindlemon]

I hope I won't offend blindlemon too much with these commentsjust in case anybody else has thought about it as little as youI am rather upset about the hostile way you have reacted to this constructive criticism:confused::confused:

In my view you should levy a labour fee for the upgrade job and then charge separately for the drivesI guess that's why you did your own upgrade then ;)

Now, help me remember, who was it that guided you through that long and tortuous process...? :p :)

[Pete77]

Now, help me remember, who was it that guided you through that long and tortuous process...? :p :)

As I said in my PM you do rather sell against yourself there, although in a funny way I think these long technical discussions do help convince the natural non self upgraders (a) that you know what you are talking about and (b) that its not something they would feel at all comfortable about doing.

No one here doubts that you are an expert on these matters blindlemon. The only discussion is about what is the suitable rate of pay for Tivo upgrade experts should be but clearly there's a competitive marketplace in this work and so ultimately the market will decide. :p

[blindlemon]

No one here doubts that you are an expert on these matters blindlemon. Thanks, although I have never claimed as much, and if it is the case then it's more by accident than design :)

[PhilG]

Surely the point here is not "Is he charging too much for the work (I think) he is doing" but more along the lines of "Am I prepared to pay whatever the current rate is for a job well done AND in the knowledge that there is someone to blame if it goes pear-shaped".

That's the beauty of competition.

If lots of people think he is overcharging then there is room for another supplier

On the other hand, perhaps we are paying for MORE than just time and components

Finally, in my own experience, the sum of prices for items of work I have asked to be done for my Tivo are not always equal to the price I actually paid - I have found that blindlemon is more than willing to accomodate special requests

I guess you "pays yer money and takes yer choice" (or should that be the other way around)

PS AND he is not averse to talking people OUT of spending more money - he soon convinced me that a 250Gb+200Gb upgrade was probably going to cause more trouble than it was worth and a (later) 400Gb+ single drive upgrade was the way to go - he could have kept quiet and taken my money!

[Pete77]

PS AND he is not averse to talking people OUT of spending more money - he soon convinced me that a 250Gb+200Gb upgrade was probably going to cause more trouble than it was worth and a (later) 400Gb+ single drive upgrade was the way to go - he could have kept quiet and taken my money!

Yes I agree he is usually an excellent and extremely helpful fellow. I suppose I was just trying to get a better understanding of why installing a second HD would also nearly double up the labour charge that is effectively built into his drive prices but I think we now have his explanation on this point.

Still I suppose once Samsung or Seagate release their first 1000Gb drive in a year or so's time no one will then any longer have a need for a two drive upgrade. In my view beyond 1000Gb the poor little 75mhzprocessor on the Tivo and the slow down in speed of Now Playing that would result from larger hard drives and total now playing entries makes exceeding this capacity unacceptable/undesirable for most Tivo S1 users.

[Nebulous]

What alarms me though is the two drive upgrade price being basically double when it really only involves TivoHeaven in about 5-10% more work
I do think you are being a bit harsh there, It does take twice as long to do two drives as one. Ok if he's got two computers then he could do them both at the same time, but having said that, he could be using those two computers to service two separate customers at one time, so the one dual drive system is taking up double time. Even the risk of having to support the drives in case of failure is doubled. At best he could save a couple of minutes because he's only go one box to pack and one invoice to print.

…it would be a bit like a garage needing to take the engine out on a car to do the head gasket and also replacing some inaccessible sensor at the same time. There is no way they should charge you two lots of labour for taking an engine out.

While you are in this hypothetical garage and you ask the attendant to fill your car up with petrol, do you ask him to fill the mrs's car up too, while he's at it, and give you 50% off? :eek:

Because I couldn't bare to be without my tivo for long, I bought a full upgrade kit of blindlemon (Samsung 250gb drive , cachecard, memory), even though I would have loved to have done the hacking myself. He gave excellent service and I was very pleased. :) :up:

PS AND he is not averse to talking people OUT of spending more money… - he soon convinced me that a 250Gb+200Gb upgrade was probably going to cause more trouble than it was worth and a (later) 400Gb+ single drive upgrade was the way to go - he could have kept quiet and taken my money!

When I got my second tivo, I approached him for a blank drive of the same type I had bought from him before, so I could have a play with upgrading at my leisure. He suggested I buy one direct from the suppliers and even gave me their phone number. If he was out for what he could get he could easily have sent me the blank drive with 20 quid on top for handling.

[Pete77]

I do think you are being a bit harsh there, It does take twice as long to do two drives as one. Ok if he's got two computers then he could do them both at the same time, but having said that, he could be using those two computers to service two separate customers at one time, so the one dual drive system is taking up double time. Even the risk of having to support the drives in case of failure is doubled. At best he could save a couple of minutes because he's only go one box to pack and one invoice to print.

However tucked away on the TivoHeaven website is the following service they offer if you send them in your own new hard drives to be configured by them rather than buying one of their standard preconfigured drives (the preconfigured drives being insured against the need to reformat and install software on another drive at no charge if they fail in the first year but then just how many Samsung or Seagate drives actually do fail at under one year old).

BARE DRIVE CONFIGURATION

If you have a bare drive (or drives) that you would like configured for use in your TiVo, you can send it/them to us and we will install the TiVo Software for you for £40 for a single drive or £50 for a twin drive setup. If you would like additional features installed such as cachecard drivers, Mode 0 setup etc., please order these here.

NB. Both these services are for software installation only and we cannot offer any warranty on your drives as we haven't supplied or tested them. We would therefore strongly recommend that you test the drives thoroughly before sending them to us. We also cannot offer any data copy options with these services - sorry!

Cachecard Drivers + TiVoWeb (with drive-only purchase) 10.00

Now that's what I call good value for the peace of mind involved and especially if you only have a Notebook PC and no desktop PC that can perform the upgrade to hand. Note that in this scenario formatting the second drive is a much cheaper charge as its literally only a 1 minute job with the mfsadd command compared to all the software and driver installation all of which goes on the first drive in the pair. Of course I note that this service also does not allow old thumbs data or recordings to be copied across which may put quite a few people off it.

To say having a second drive installed at the same time as the first one is like asking for another 10 gallon tank of petrol to be filled at thes same time as the first one and expecting to get a discount is daft. Its much more comparable to having a new tv aerial and a new tv master socket installed and then also having another extension socket installed while the guy is up the chimney anyway. Inevitably having an extension socket installed at this time is far cheaper than having a new extension socket installed on its own because there are large time savings involved in adding the extension while the guy is already out on site and up on the roof..............................