Tivo constantly reboots

[browncoat]

Hello. I'm having a problem with one of my Tivos and I've run out of ideas on how to fix it. I'm hoping someone here can help.

Here are the details:

This is a 250GB drive with Tivo v3 software. I do not have service.

I recently formatted 2 drives (both 250GB Seagates) for use in 2 Tivos and both worked fine.

However, one recently started to reboot about every 5-10 minutes. The
other still works fine. This is NOT a GSOD reboot loop (I had that on another drive 2 years ago). The Tivo will boot, you can access things, play things, even start to record, but it will just suddenly reboot. Nothing specifically triggers it, it will reboot even if left alone.

After doing some research I tried the following:
I moved the rebooting drive to another Tivo to eliminate the power
supply as a problem, it still rebooted.

I copied the drive to a 320GB drive using dd (more on that later), put
the 320 in a different Tivo than the 250GB came from and it still
rebooted. So its not a drive problem.

This drive has 19 M-F events all set to save until I delete. The drive
is starting to get full to the point that future events will not get
recorded unless I delete things (which I do but it doesn't know in
advance about that).

I also recently had 4 M-F events that I removed about 3 days before
the reboots started. I read that orphaned season passes could be a problem so I was thinking that this could be related. I dont see any remaining occurances of those 4 events in the to do list. Since I don't have service I can't access season pass manager, or look at details in recording history so I can't use that to help.

After it started rebooting I had a problem setting a one shot event. But I've had similar problems on a v1.3 drive that works fine so this may not have any relation to the reboot issue.

I thought maybe this was a problem with swap space. It was created
with a swap of 127 which should be enough for a 250GB drive. So I tried what I did 2 years ago when I was in a GSOD reboot loop--move
the primary partitions from 5-7 to 2-4, delete 7 and 8, recreate 7 as 1MB and 8 as 255MB and reformat 8 as a larger swap partition.

It is still rebooting.


In terms of the DD copy, that did and didn't work. The copy boots up
and I see all the events but when I try to play anything it says it
didn't record because there was no signal. Also I've tried to delete
all the events in the to do list but even though it says it removed it
from the to do list and the season passes list, its still there.

I've run out of ideas. Can anyone suggest anything else to try?

Thanks

[browncoat]

Anyone?

[qcd]

I have a similar problem. I came back from a week away and my TiVo is constantly re-booting. Any programs recorded have only a few minutes in them. The TiVo is also very slow. It might take minutes to change pages. Sometimes the orange light does not light up on the front of the box when I am using the controller, too.

-I have a Series 2, 80-hour TiVo DVR.
-SW VER: 9.3.1-01-1-140
-Temp = 43C (normal)
-Carrier is COX in PHX.
-Power was off on my cable box (more and more common), but I seem to have lost power while I was gone, so cable box power issue might not be COX's fault.
-The DVR does appear to be dialing in successfully each night, though.

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

[HomeUser]

I have a similar problem. I came back from a week away and my TiVo is constantly re-booting. Any programs recorded have only a few minutes in them. The TiVo is also very slow. It might take minutes to change pages. Sometimes the orange light does not light up on the front of the box when I am using the controller, too.

-I have a Series 2, 80-hour TiVo DVR.
-SW VER: 9.3.1-01-1-140
-Temp = 43C (normal)
-Carrier is COX in PHX.
-Power was off on my cable box (more and more common), but I seem to have lost power while I was gone, so cable box power issue might not be COX's fault.
-The DVR does appear to be dialing in successfully each night, though.

Any thoughts?

Thanks. It does not look good. Check that the power cord is firmly plugged into the TiVo. Try and unplug the Cable/Video-IN, USB-Network, and/or Phone. See if it becomes stable if not you probably need either a Hard drive, Power supply or a new box.

Here is your chance to justify getting the new 1 terabyte HDXL. A Uninterruptible Power Supply for both the TiVo and Cable box might be a good investment too.

[qcd]

Thanks, HomeUser.

-I disconnected the phone line, but that had no effect.
-I disconnected the coax and cut the power for a day. When I turned the TiVo back on everything was working fine. (I later saw that even though I had disconnected the coax to my TiVo, my cable box and and TiVo were still connected via RCA plugs.)
-Everything worked fine for a day, so I reconnected the phone line. TiVo made a successful call and then some time within two hours after the call, the TiVo went to the gray powering-up screen. (It could have been right after the call, but I don't know.)
-I cut the power and then reconnected power plug. My TiVo came back up within a few minutes, but then a few minutes later my TiVo was taking forever to change screens. (The orange light was coming on and the boop was audible unlike a few days ago.) My TiVo then re-booted to the gray screen. After a while I cut the power.

Do these symptoms tell anyone anything more? I saw in another thread that there was a recommendation to move to SW VER 9.4 (for an HD machine). Is it possible to request a SW push?

Thanks.

[HomeUser]

After doing some research I tried the following:
I moved the rebooting drive to another Tivo to eliminate the power
supply as a problem, it still rebooted.

I copied the drive to a 320GB drive using dd (more on that later), put
the 320 in a different Tivo than the 250GB came from and it still
rebooted. So its not a drive problem.
If the drive from the rebooting TiVo caused rebooting in a different TiVo that would point to a bad drive or software on the drive. Have you looked at the Logs (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5566442#post5566442)? Copying the failed drive to a new drive could still has the file errors. Nice detail about the problem is it a series 1 DVR? I Suggest you post this over in the Underground Playground (http://tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=24) where you will find discussions that are much more technical then the ones here in the general help forum.

[HomeUser]

Thanks, HomeUser.

-I disconnected the phone line, but that had no effect.
-I disconnected the coax and cut the power for a day. When I turned the TiVo back on everything was working fine. (I later saw that even though I had disconnected the coax to my TiVo, my cable box and and TiVo were still connected via RCA plugs.)
-Everything worked fine for a day, so I reconnected the phone line. TiVo made a successful call and then some time within two hours after the call, the TiVo went to the gray powering-up screen. (It could have been right after the call, but I don't know.)
-I cut the power and then reconnected power plug. My TiVo came back up within a few minutes, but then a few minutes later my TiVo was taking forever to change screens. (The orange light was coming on and the boop was audible unlike a few days ago.) My TiVo then re-booted to the gray screen. After a while I cut the power.

Do these symptoms tell anyone anything more? I saw in another thread that there was a recommendation to move to SW VER 9.4 (for an HD machine). Is it possible to request a SW push?

Thanks.
9.3.1 Is the current version for the Series2 DVRs.

Being slow again indicates failed hardware. Could your TiVo possibly be overheating?


Information about the following are for the Do It Your Selfers and are subjects discussed in the underground forum

=======================================================
If you have some technical know how you might pull the drive and run the manufactures diagnostics.

You could run one or more of the unsupported and not recommended for general use kickstart commands.

[qcd]

Thanks for all your help.

My TiVo seems to have settled down to one problem now: After every call (each are listed as successful), it locks up, and after a while it will re-boot. (I normally cut the power before that happens.) The To-Do list does not get up-dated, but TiVo thinks the call went fine. Any other thoughts?

I suppose this still points to a hardware issue: corruption in the To-Do update portion of the drive, but I wanted to make sure I haven't missed anything.

I was trying to get a log-in w/ TiVo last night since TiVo.com has an old e-mail for me. I requested a msg though my TiVo, but even though the call was successful, I did not get the message. It is a similar issue, but maybe whole problem is a more esoteric communication issue.

Thanks.

[HomeUser]

Thanks for all your help.

My TiVo seems to have settled down to one problem now: After every call (each are listed as successful), it locks up, and after a while it will re-boot. (I normally cut the power before that happens.) The To-Do list does not get up-dated, but TiVo thinks the call went fine. Any other thoughts?

I suppose this still points to a hardware issue: corruption in the To-Do update portion of the drive, but I wanted to make sure I haven't missed anything.

I was trying to get a log-in w/ TiVo last night since TiVo.com has an old e-mail for me. I requested a msg though my TiVo, but even though the call was successful, I did not get the message. It is a similar issue, but maybe whole problem is a more esoteric communication issue.

Thanks.

If it runs better after it has been unplugged for a while check the fan and vents (holes on bottom) the TiVo might be over-heating. You can also check the temperature in the system information screen.

Other than that I am thinking database/index corruption. Possible causes could be bad memory (RAM) or disk drive.