Stuck on guided set up

[garry1]

Hi guys, my daily call has been failing, saying no dialing tone so after doing some searches i thought redoing the guided set up would fix the problem, no! Now i'm stuck on the guided setup at the point of the 1st call because my call is failing i can't continue, i've tried powering off and on but it just takes me back to the guided setup!! Any ideas on how to get back to what i had before any help would be great, thanks.

[yungee]

For starters I'd unplug all the other phones and ADSL filters etc. in the house, then connect the Tivo straight to the master socket where the telephone cable enters your your house and see how you get on.

[garry1]

Thanks yungee, but iv'e tried that, to be honest i've tried every combination i can think of! i'm totally stumped!! :confused:

[yungee]

It worked fine and one day stopped? Any electrical storms around at the time?

I'm not knowledgable about the modem inside the Tivo, but if nothing changed and the rest of your phones are working fine, that would start to make me worried about the Tivo's modem being dead.

Sorry Garry, I don't know where to take things from there. :(

[blindlemon]

I guess a dead modem is a possibility.

I assume you haven't recently changed phone supplier or installed broadband etc.? Have you tried taking the TiVo to another address and using the phone line there?

[garry1]

I'm in Glasgow and the other night my box went down, basically all of Glasgow and Belfast went down due to something NTL did so i'm not sure if it's anything to do with that, i might ask my neighbour if i can try and plug it into his phone line and see what happens thanks for the advice guys i'm really annoyed this has happend, i've only had the Tivo for about a couple of weeks now and was just starting to get into it and relise how good it is, has anyone any ideas on how to get it out of the guided setup?

[yungee]

Sadly, I think you're stuck in that loop until you've made the daily call.

You might be able to hack around it (though I don't know how) if you had a network adapter, but if you had a network adapter then you could make your daily call through that anyhow. Bit of a catch 22.

That doesn't sound good about NTL taking out Glasgow and Belfast. Do you know of anyone else who has a busted modem or ADSL adapter?

I don't like the sound of "no dial tone", especially if you're getting dial tones from your normal phone.

[garry1]

Thanks guys once again,do you think the only way now is to get a cache card and go down that route?

[blindlemon]

Have you tried another phone line?

If you lift a receiver when the TiVo is making a call, can you hear any "modem" noises?

[garry1]

Not yet blindlemon, i'm going to wait till later to try next doors, he works nightshift, then i'll get back to you, thanks.

[Pete77]

Have you tried another phone line?

If you lift a receiver when the TiVo is making a call, can you hear any "modem" noises?

Would definitely suggest you try the machine on a standard BT line as there have been a variety of issues with people being able to make the daily call via NTL lately. There is a fix on an NTL line available, but only if you have a Cachecard and network access to the Tivo.

Obviously NTL ought to be able to be talked out of doing whatever they have done to their network with their proxies that stops Tivo calling using their phone lines in many cases.

See http://www.freeranger.co.uk/TiVo/HowTo.htm

Getting Guide Data Updates to Work

If your ISP uses a Transparent proxy (eg NTL, BlueYonder) then you will find that TiVo will now not make it's daily call, either over the net or by phone.
In this case, you will need to do a bit more hacking to get it to work.
Step 1. Getting a text editor onto your TiVo
I used the Joe editor, which you can download from here to your PC To get it onto your TiVo, do the following:

* Start a Telnet session from a command prompt on your PC and telnet into your TiVo:
telnet 192.168.1.80 (substitute your TiVo IP address where I have used 192.168.1.80)
* Make the File System Read/Write
mount -o remount,rw /
* Create a /var/hack directory
From the # prompt, type:
mkdir /var. You may get an error message if this directory exists. Ignore it.
Now type mkdir /var/hack again ignoring any messages if the directory already exists.
* Change to the /var/hack directory
cd /var/hack
* Open your favourite browser and ftp to ftp://192.168.1.80
(or whatever address you gave the TiVo when you installed the TurboNet software)
and navigate to the /var/hack directory.
* Copy and paste the Joe archive from your PC to the ftp window
* Expand the Joe Archive
From the # prompt in your Telnet session, execute the following commands:
gzip -d joe.tar.gz (unpacks the gzip file)
cpio -H tar -i < joe.tar (unpacks the tar file)
* Make Joe executable
From the # prompt type:
chmod 755 joe
* If you don't need to hack Ident.itcl
From the # prompt type:
mount -o remount,ro / (Makes the File System Read Only)
sync (Flushes your changes to disk)

(Note: If the text appears all jumbled when using Joe, then try typing export TERM=vt100 at the # prompt before running Joe.)


Step 2. Hacking the Ident.itcl file

* From the # prompt type:
/var/hack/joe /tvlib/tcl/tv/Ident.itcl
* Look for this line puts $conn "IDB_TIMESTAMP: $now"
* Insert puts $conn "Content-Length: 0" directly after that line
* Save the file:
Ctrl-K-X
* From the # prompt type:
mount -o remount,ro / (Makes the File System Read Only)
sync (Flushes your changes to disk)


Step 3. Suck it and see
Make sure the phone line is unplugged, reboot the TiVo and make a test call - you're there dude.

[yungee]

If the transparent proxy issues is breaking phone calls now, then really I think Tivo UK should be rolling out a patch for that.

I don't expect them to fix anything that's been hacked, as we've brought that on ourselves, but that problem will affect standard users.

I'm sure the Tivo helpdesk will have had plenty of calls about it.

[Pete77]

If the transparent proxy issues is breaking phone calls now, then really I think Tivo UK should be rolling out a patch for that.

I don't expect them to fix anything that's been hacked, as we've brought that on ourselves, but that problem will affect standard users.

I'm sure the Tivo helpdesk will have had plenty of calls about it.

I agree in principle but I really think Sky's strategy now is to make almost no effort at all with the Tivo helpline.

It might be something one needs to start PM'ng tivopony about and also others at Tivo who are aware of the UK S1 Tivo service. Unfortunately cable users with Tivo are in the vast minority compared to Sky and Freeview.

[cwaring]

For the record, I never had any problem with getting GD over BB with Telewest; and NTL seems to be okay too. (Only had that for a week or so though, so it might break now ;)

[Pete77]

For the record, I never had any problem with getting GD over BB

Seems to be dialup over NTL we are talking about here though? ;)

[cwaring]

I did notice that, but then what's the talk about proxies and stuff?

Obviously NTL ought to be able to be talked out of doing whatever they have done to their network with their proxies that stops Tivo calling using their phone lines in many cases.

I thought a phone-line was just a phone line? (Yeah, I know you can get ADSL over a BT phone-line, but this is NTL we're talking about.

Okay. Now I'm even more confuddled :confused:

[garry1]

You can hear it making the call. :confused: