Powering up Screen stays after InstantCake new hard drive installed

[calguy99]

Hi I have a Philips DSR704 Series 2 Direct Tivo. I have done hard drive replacements on this unit before with instant cake. Today I formatted two new drives to replace a drive that got stuck at the "Welcome Powering Up" screen. I have tried three drives formatted with the Instant Cake software for made for the DSR 704. All three drives get stuck at the powering up screen. Is it possible that the motherboard or processor has gone bad? All went well during the formatting, got no error messages during the procedure.

Thanks and where can I purchase a dual receiver Direct DVR unit any one have one for sale?

[rbtravis]

The Welcome Powering Up screen is ROM generated before the boot up. Are you sure the PATA cable was pushed in all the way? On both sides? The symptoms indicate the disk is not communicating with the motherboard. :) Do you have the drives set to master? I have noticed that some of the new Western Digital Caviar Blue drives do no like cable select.

[calguy99]

Well I reinserted the cable each time I installed the drive possibly a bad cable? The drive is set to master, all of them I tried. Not sure what else could be not working correctly

[rbtravis]

Try replacing the cable. It can be a longer cable if necessary as long as it 80 conductor. :)

[jonbig]

If a new cable doesn't help, it's probably the power supply. That's a common "will not boot" failure.

[calguy99]

So possibly someone can explain this to me. Is the Powering up screen like a boot screen, in the bios not on the hard drive? And is the powersuply replaceable or is it hard wired to the motherboard? And if I have to get a new DVR to replace my Philips I'd rather get a DVR with Tivo instead of the Directv DVR's. Where is a good source for Tivo Directv DVR's. I also have an R10 and I like it a lot. I have not heard many good things about the Directv DVR in this forum or elsewhere.

Thanks

Joe

[rbtravis]

Yes, it is a rom based display screen before the drive starts to boot.
search EBAY for Tivo power supply

[calguy99]

Yes, it is a rom based display screen before the drive starts to boot.
search EBAY for Tivo power supply
But if I had a bad power supply would the DVR even get to the boot screen?

[rbtravis]

Yes if only the 12v was bad. But I have never had that happen. Then the hard drive would not power up.

[rbtravis]

When you said new drives did you mean new from the manufacturer or new to tivo and perhaps used. If perhaps used did you run the manufacturers diagnostics as recommended by Tivoupgrade?

[calguy99]

One new drive was formatted with instant cake and two used drives were tried. One of the drives was from DVR Playground formatted at their place and worked in the Phillips DVR. No diagnostics were run on any.

[calguy99]

One new drive was formatted with instant cake and two used drives were tried. One of the drives was from DVR Playground formatted at their place and worked in the Phillips DVR. No diagnostics were run on any.

Is it possible that the drives may have been formatted incorrectly with instant cake? During the formatting I received no error messages and the format seemed to go the same as when I formatted other drives with instant cake.

[rbtravis]

As long as you were using instantcake for the Philips DSR7000, DSR704 or DSR708 with a version at or above 6.2a everything should be fine. By the way instantcake does not format the drive, it sets up the TiVo image only. It should work as long as the drive was never used with Windows NT or later. :)

[calguy99]

Not sure why the instant cake is not working on these drives. Slould I erase a drive first and then copy the image?

[rbtravis]

As long as you are doing a low level format with 0's it should work. :)

[bitmap]

I'd have to agree with jonbig, it sounds like a power supply issue to me too.
Three different disks that won't boot, and the original symptom that started the hard drive replacement was the identical stuck at power up screen.

Possibly the supply isn't giving enough power for the drive to spin up?
Do you hear the disk spin up in the tivo when power is first connected?
(easier to hear with the top off)

When my S1 power started to go bad, the only way I could get it to boot
was to add a small switch into the drive power cable, and a few seconds after powering the tivo, flip the switch on, then the drive could get enough power to spin up. (one of those little switches meant for case lights with M/F molex on each end)

[calguy99]

I'd have to agree with jonbig, it sounds like a power supply issue to me too.
Three different disks that won't boot, and the original symptom that started the hard drive replacement was the identical stuck at power up screen.

Possibly the supply isn't giving enough power for the drive to spin up?
Do you hear the disk spin up in the tivo when power is first connected?
(easier to hear with the top off)

When my S1 power started to go bad, the only way I could get it to boot
was to add a small switch into the drive power cable, and a few seconds after powering the tivo, flip the switch on, then the drive could get enough power to spin up. (one of those little switches meant for case lights with M/F molex on each end)

Thanks for the post...........That solution is a bit beyond my expertise. I just purchased an R10 for like $19.00 so if it boots I'll go that way. Thanks for the response. Could anyone use a Philips DSR 704 for free? No hard drive no access card. Joe