S3 Stuck in "Power Up" [Text View]

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MScottC

11-09-2007, 09:31 AM

I posted this in the S3 Forum, but I'm also looking for ideas here.

I have a Series 3 Box about 1 year old. Last weekend I upgraded the internal 250GB drive to the 1TB WD Green Drive. I believe as of last night the software was still 9.1. When my wife woke up this morning at 5:30 the 4 LEDs and the little TiVo character were on the front panel. When she mentioned this to me at around 7am, I decided to reboot the box by repowering it.

I'm thinking perhaps the box is stuck in the upgrade to 9.2, but that usually happens at 2am, so to be sitting there for 5 hours is an awfully long time. I'm going to leave it sitting in this mode (where it has been again since I repowered it) till I get home from work this afternoon.

By the way, I can feel the HD spinning when I put my hand on the top of the box.

I'm also wondering if there is anything I can possibly do, if the HD is actually still working, by mounting the HD on my PC. If perhaps there is a way to copy over just the TiVo software from the original HD. I'm not a linux guy, but I can follow instructions.

Thank you again

rbtravis

11-09-2007, 09:45 AM

MScottC

11-09-2007, 10:48 PM

go to the site www.wdc.com and download the diagnostics and run them. If the diagnostics show ok it is quite possible that you can save what is on the drive. Your Tivo may not be able to handle the green drive and you will have to get a regular drive. The RPM's vary on the green drive and the TiVo may not like a variable RPM drive thus causing it to go into error recovery mode. Sorry :(

Travis,
Thanks alot for your advice. And also lots of thanks to the the creators of WinMFS. Using the WD Diags, I was assured that the drive was physically okay. That was a relief of course.

Then I hooked up my original drive next to the new drive, did a "Backup Kernel" from the old drive, a "Restore Kernel" to the new drive. I then booted up with the new drive back in the S3 and saw a major smile on my wife's face when she saw that I saved all of our Thursday night shows.

Again, the folks on this forurm are the greatest... Thanks again

MScottC

11-09-2007, 11:47 PM

Well, the saga contiues;A half hour after fixing my TiVo, the box rebooted on its own again, and remained stuck in the "Powering Up" screen. Are there any jumper settings, or configs I can perform on this drive, perhaps some way of turning off the Variable RPM??? So many people seem to be using this drive with no issues, and it did work fine for a week in my TiVo.
Any hints would be welcome

Scott

dwit

11-10-2007, 12:13 AM

Do the Kickstart diags work on this model? Have you tried them?

You could try reinstalling the original drive to see if it consistently boots, operates and updates properly just to be 100% sure it's a drive problem.

MScottC

11-10-2007, 07:55 AM

I managed to get into "kickstart" where it said it was running full diagnostics. I turned the TV off and an hour later looked at it again, where it is now stuck on "Powering Up" again.
I'm going to reinstall the old drive for the day and see where it goes.

rbtravis

11-10-2007, 10:13 AM

Why don't you send an Email to TiVo customer support and ask them if TiVo supports the drive. If not or if they have not tested the drive I would return it. You have already wasted the two to 3 gallons of gas (cost) that it would have saved you. Does not seem to be a great Idea to me. Remember you never buy a new model car the first year it is introduced, To many bugs to be worked out. You have a great intent on buying green, I am just not sure Western Digital has got it right in the first year. Don't get me wrong I believe Western Digital makes some of the Greatest drives for the TiVo such as WD3200JB. I just don't want to be part of the Beta testing program. I would rather watch a TiVo than tinker with it. :)