3.0 Spontaneously Turns TiVo Off

[DaveLessnau]

This has happened twice in the several months I've had version 3.0. Sometime in the middle of the night, TiVo will turn itself off. The first time, a week or two ago, I'd assumed my son (who was the last to use the TiVo the night before) had accidently hit the Standby button when shutting off the AV system. But, it happened again last night. And I was the person who shut everything down.

When I plopped down this morning to check on what had recorded last night, I noticed that no lights were lit on the TiVo and nothing was hitting the TV screen (via the S-Video/RW AV jacks). The last time this happened, I neglected to check the Standby button. So, I did so this time. Nothing. Tried changing channels, Instant Replay, Advance to End, etc.. Nothing. Pulled the plug and re-plugged (as I did last time), and everything came up fine. The last time it happened, the recording light promptly came on. There were two partial recordings in Now Playing. So, TiVo was recording (I guess like it thought it was in Standby). But, it was recording the wrong channel. I checked Now Playing this time, and several shows had recorded overnight. Prior to, and including, a 2:20am Suggestion recording of Tremors (which ran to about 4:30am) on TBS, everything recorded correctly. But, the 5:00am showing of a show that was supposed to be on the History Channel didn't change channels at all. It didn't even look like it made an attempt to change channels (I'm not sure about that -- I didn't conciously look for the cable box banner change). So, this time, it looks like the TiVo turned "off" between 4:30am and 5:00am. Last time, I believe it was sometime around midnight. Also, the last time it happened, several shows recorded while the TiVo was "off." None of them attempted channel changes either.

I never use Standby, so any problems that might be associated with it shouldn't apply here. The TiVo was operating normally (and recording) when I went to sleep last night. There's nothing in Recording History. This has only happened on the Sony SVR-2000. Both TiVos are on UPSs.

[Dan203]

Weird. Although I seriously doubt it's related to 3.0, since I have had 3.0 running on all four of my TiVos for several months and I've never seen this issue. Do you have your TiVo connected to a UPS? If not then it could be a power hicup causing the TiVo to glitch.

Dan

[DaveLessnau]

Both TiVos are on UPSs. Even if it had been a power glitch, I can't see any way that a TiVo could end up in a quasi-Standby mode. It would either stay totally powered down (which it wasn't) or come back up normally (which it didn't).

[Dan203]

I was thinking more along the lines of a brown out, those can cause electronics to do all sorts of weird things. Although since you have a UPS that can't be it.

Do you have any kind of IR transmitting equipment, like a wireless transmitter, video distribution system, etc...? It could be picking up interference and putting out IR that is confusing the TiVo.

Dan

[DaveLessnau]

Nope. No IR stuff at all. The only remote that's out is the TiVo remote. And it was sitting on the table where I left it with nothing capable of pushing the buttons.

No real need to reply on this. It's only happened twice in the last couple of months. I was just reporting it in case anyone else sees it.

[DaveLessnau]

An update to this. On 08/30/02 at 6:45 pm (today, about 15 minutes ago), I noticed my Philips TiVo had no lights on. The cable box was on, and some kind of (normal) whirring sound was coming from the TiVo (either the fan or the drive (or both)). Nothing on the remote did anything (specifically, not the TiVo button, the Advance to End button, or the Instant Reply button). I unplugged the TiVo and plugged it back in. It came up fine. In Now Playing, the last scheduled recording had been from 4:30 - 5:00 pm. It was fine. The last recording was a Suggestion from 5:00 - 6:00 pm. It, too, was fine. Unfortunately, I don't know when the LED went out. Because of one of the similar instances below, I checked the phone call. The last call status was "Failed. Unknown error" and was from 3:23 this morning (which agrees with a symptom noted in one of those threads). Garbage collection and Indexing both last ran prior to that failed phone call. As before, everything is on an UPS, I'm running 3.0, and I'm connected to my digital cable box via S-Video plus L/R RCA jacks (ditto to the TV). But, this time, I'm using a TurboNET card connection instead of a phone line.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=65273

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=67909

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=73647

[MJGunn]

Dave, this same thing just happened to me! Check my post here

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=74057

Just like yours, my last call status is listed as "Failed. Unkown error" I'm not using turbonet or anything, though, I have added a second harddrive

[MJGunn]

I've been reading a bunch of those other threads you linked to Dave, and I've seen more than a few people mentioning the power supply. I don't have my tivo hooked up to a UPS, but I do have it on a power strip. This This morning (was about 20 hours ago now), my power did on/off at least once. I don't know if that might have anything to do with this.

BTW, I don't know if 3.0 has anything to do with this, but, as others have said, I haven't had a single problem with my tivo before it, and in addition to this new (and pretty disturbing one), I've noticed my tivo, amongst other things, to be quite sluggish at times now. Like I'll hit FF, nothing will happen, I'll wait a few seconds, hit it again, and then again, and then, out of nowhere, like 10 seconds after I hit it the first time, it will suddenly do all 3 commands at once. Not all the time, but often enough to make me wish I was still running 2.5

[DaveLessnau]

For the sluggishness, it could be that TiVo is processing a download, doing garbage collection, or indexing at that time. The next time it happens, check Messages & Setup -> System Information for when those things last happened. While you're there, check the temperature.

Regarding the main problem, were you watching the TiVo in the wee-small hours when it happened (your original post was for 0222 hrs)? It looks like most of these things have happened overnight following a "Failed. Unknown error" call (though not all).

In my case, we had no power glitches here (that I noticed). Also, someone in those other threads mentioned problems with the swap file and that we should check the logs. But, I forgot. At this point, there's too much stuff in the logs for me to see if there was a problem (glancing through them, I didn't see anything).

[MJGunn]

Yes, I was watching a show when it happened, the tivo stopped responding to all remote commands, and the lights went out. When the show ended, the options came up for if I wanted to keep the show, or delete it. The tivo was still unresponsive, and after a few minutes automatically chose to keep the program, and went back to the now playing screen. At that point, I pulled the plug, and it booted back up just fine.

I went to the system status screen, and did make a point of checking the temperature, cause it was a bit warm in my room at that point (it was running at 40c). I noticed then that it had made a failed call, within the hour of the tivo flipping out (I can't remember right now exactly when the tivo made the failed call, or when the problem happened.....it was late). I went to the phone options screen, and told it to make a call, watched to make sure it downloaded the data ok, and then, when it started processing it, went to sleep. Woke up this morning to find that it was able to successfully complete the call, and everything seems to be normal.

[disco]

Okay...this seems to be a real problem (I didn't just make it up (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=74920)!;)), is TiVo aware of it and working on a fix?

[kclements]

I've just read this thread and the others referenced. I've experienced a similar problem twice since the upgrade to version 3; once last night. Symptoms and environment are:

(1) No LEDs lit on the front (no green, no red,... none)

(2) Black screen, no audio. Remote still works. I can still change channels, see the description text at the top of the screen, in the blue capsule. Can still access Now Playing and watch previously recorded programs. But Live TV shows a black screen and has no audio.

(3) Not in standby accidentally.

(4) Failed call attempt reported.

(5) Rebooting restores normal functionality.

(6) No extraneous IR sources.

(7) Cable signal still present (TV's tuner still works when I switch over).

I use direct coax input (no cable box); RCA video and audio output.

Last night, it happened right before my very eyes, late at night; right around the time the Tivo normally makes its call. I was changing channels on Live TV when the screen suddently went black. At first, I assumed there was a problem with that channel. But as I continued, I realized that all of the channels were black. Rebooting restored function. The first time it happened (a couple of weeks ago), I just assumed there was some minor glitch. Now it's happened again and I'm pretty disappointed. Seems like it may continue to happen until the next forced upgrade. I certainly hope the good Tivo folks are aware of this problem and are burning the midnight oil to fix it. I'm off to their site right now to e-mail a report.

--Kevin

[bedelman]

I wonder if this is what I've been seeing lately.

I have a SONY stand alone, completely unmodified. I noticed that it recently has begun to record shows on time but the signal to change the channel on the digital cable box is coming late (once as late as 20 minutes)

I did some checking on the forums and found this "late" behavior can be due to spurious IR signals (the TiVo waits until it's "quiet" on the IR traffic before it issues a change channel command). Since I do have my TiVo distributing its signal to seven televisions and their are IR repeaters involved, I thought this could be the problem. I rearranged some of the IR repeaters near the TiVo (it's in a closed cabinet, but with ventilation) and that does seem to be better for the last day or so.

However, the other night I was watching the TiVo go to change a channel on its own. As soon as the channel changed, the screen went black! I couldn't get it to respond to any commands from the remote.

I *think* I still had lights showing on the front panel of the TiVo though.

Software version 3.0.01-1-010 with backdoors enabled

[JPriller]

Originally posted by disco904
Okay...this seems to be a real problem (I didn't just make it up (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=74920)!;)), is TiVo aware of it and working on a fix? Same thing happened to my Series 1 a few days ago - came home from work, both LEDs out, remote buttons did nothing, power cycle fixed it. I was so relieved not to have a dead TiVo I didn't look at any system information, and for the last few days it's behaved itself. Mine's on a UPS too, so it wasn't a power problem.

[robertj49]

I've had problems since version 3 with failure to complete download. Sometimes restarting corrects it for a week, then it happens again. I hope TIVO comes out with version 4 soon. Version 3 seems to be a real Turkey.
Can they give me back version 2.5?

[snoop]

Did any of these tivos recur the problem and if so was there any permanent fix to it? Mine just did the same thing last night.

312 with two recently installed (four months ago) hard drives, tivonet (8 months ago), in a cool room (running about 27c), and on an apc ups.

Exactly same symptoms: black screen, both green and red lights out, unresponsive until power cycle, failed daily call (unknown), continued to record but without channel changes.

The ONLY thing I can correlate with the failure is that I had changed the tv over to the dvd player and watched a dvd that morning. I watch dvd's about once in a blue moon so its an unusual event. Perhaps something the dvd remote sent annoyed the tivo.

Maybe it was just jealous.

[JPriller]

Originally posted by snoop
Did any of these tivos recur the problem and if so was there any permanent fix to it? Mine just did the same thing last night.Mine hasn't done it again so far. Still no idea what caused it in the first place.

[snoop]

Troubling. I was hoping it was something simple like a failed power supply since I have spares of those. Occurred to me that the power supply spits out 4-5 different voltages and the front panel lights, the IR receiver/transmitter/serial control might be one of those voltages.

[DaveLessnau]

Snoop: are you getting repeats of the problem? From my own experience, and from what I can see from others', it looks like it's a fairly rare problem. I've only had the three occurences I've documented here (1 probable and 1 definite on the Sony and 1 definite on the Philips). It doesn't cause too much trouble. But, then, I HAVE modified my behavior to always check that the green LED is lit on both machines first thing in the morning.

[Ruth]

Lots of threads on this, so I just randomly chose one to revive. Just wanted to report another instance of this. My TiVo reports "Failed. Unknown Error." at 11:20 last night. It was taping a show on Channel 5 at 11:00, and it taped the whole thing just fine. But every scheduled recording afterwards was on Ch. 5, too -- It did not change channels after the severe error occurred. When I got home from work today both lights on the TiVo were out, and I could only see the black screen. I unplugged it and it seems to work fine now.

This happened at least once before, about six weeks ago. (There are some posts of mine kicking around related to it, as well as some other problems I was having; I put a pretty complete description in the survey thread, if you're interested.)

Does anyone have any new updates/information about this problem?

[mrmike]

Add me to the list, both my Series 1 boxes did this in the last week.
Both had failed calls, both seem fine after a reboot.

-MM

[DaveLessnau]

I finally got around to officially reporting this. Everyone who has experienced this should probably do so, too. Just go to www.tivo.com and enter the Customer Support area. There's a link in the middle of the left-hand column to "Contact Support." I basically summararized the problem and referred them to this thread.

[Zirak]

If you search the forum for "event bug" you will find other situations where the tivo stops responding to the remote. The symptoms are not exactly the same (leds stay on, but "locked" and picture continues, generally), but could potentially have the same root cause, namely a problem in the tivo event server. The cause is speculation only, clearly labeling it as such.

The event bug seems to occur most frequently on hacked units, running something that is monitoring tivo events, but it is important to note (Tivo Inc.) that it has been reported on completely unhacked units.

I have been looking at this "remote freezing" problem extensively since 3.0 came out. If anyone from tivo reads this thread and is interested in my observations, I will be more than happy to discuss it. I have recently been able to (frequently) "fix" the problem when it occurs, but I can't cause it at will. Pounding on the remote when the tivo is relatively "busy" seems to cause it more frequently than when the tivo is not so busy. Please note that the observations and fixing the problem relate to shell access to the tivo -- nothing you can do on an unhacked unit.

This never happened on 2.5, or at least so rarely that I didn't notice.

I have never seen the lights go out and the screen go black. The problem I describe isn't the exact one described here, but may very well be related.

[fljoe]

I have a Series2 80 hr SA model and the same thing happened to me yesterday. My wife wanted to see her soaps and found that TIVO had not recorded them. There were menus, but the screen behind was blank. I could select "Now Showing" but could not play anything. I couldn't even watch Live TV.

Turning the power OFF and back ON seems to have fixed the problem.

Did TIVO update any software to cause this to happen?

Seen this behaviour of frozen cable boxes on Time Warner cable when they have updated software before.

[DaveLessnau]

Not that I really expected anything different, but here's the response TiVo's Customer Support sent me:

"We apologize for any inconvenience you have experienced. Unfortunately, we are unable to troubleshoot this technical issue by e-mail. Each hardware manufacturer provides their own support for the TiVo product. Please contact your TiVo DVR manufacturer for more help. To contact Sony Support, please call 1-877-585-SONY (1-877-585-7669)."

In other words: don't bother us. [sigh]

[snoop]

Nope, mine hasnt repeated yet. Just that one time. Wish it was something that was repeatable so I could fix it rather than hope it doesnt come back and wipe out a whole day or two worth of recording.

[Philosofy]

I've got two TiVos, both Philips standalones. Today, one of them was not responding to IR commands. I changed the channel on the Dish reciever, and the channel changed, so the TiVo is passing the signal through. There was no light on in front, red or green. I've got a universal remote, so I thought maybe the TiVo reset itself to respond only to a remote set at code #0 (instead of 1.) No dice there. I rebooted the TiVo, and it started working normally, responding to the #1 remote code. Any ideas?

[DaveLessnau]

If your TiVo wasn't in Standby and didn't even have the green power light on, then it sounds like the problem noted here:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=62228

[Philosofy]

Hmmm, I was on the phone today, and (I'm assuming) one of my TiVo's tried to pick up. I can't remember if it was before or after this problem, but I think it was before. Could that be the cause? (PS: Moderator, you could merge this with Dave's thread.)

[solomita]

And I'm another one with the identical symptoms. This is a very strange confluence of symptoms (no channel change, lights out, video out, bad call, yet TiVo thinks it is functioning).

Given how long this thread has been around, is it safe to assume that TiVo has read it and is ignoring the problem? Or do they not normally chime in when a dozen people report the same problem?

Thanks to Dave for spotting my first post.
-- Ethan

[solomita]

I seem to have gotten a little better success when I contacted Tivo customer support:

Hello Ethan,

Thank you for contacting TiVo!

The concern you have brought to our attention requires investigation by a department other than customer service. Your inquiry has been forwarded to the appropriate department, and we anticipate a response. However, due to the nature of the inquiry we are unable to guarantee a timeframe for the response. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

For future reference, we have created case number 955958. If you contact us, please refer to this case number.

Sincerely,

Devon

TiVo Customer Support

[rangerz128]

Just to stand up and be counted: This happened to me twice in 24 hours! Black screen, no response to the remote, reboot yields working system. I sent an email to TiVo and they referenced me to Philips as a hardware problem. Philips wanted to charge me $19.95 to troubleshoot! I hope they fix this soon.

[skorous]

This has also happened to my HDR212. Twice in three weeks. Out of curiousity, has anyone tried restoring from a backup to see if it was some minor software corruption or something? I'm wondering if I swapped the
drive from my 112 (which works) with the 212 (which has done this twice
now) what would happen...

Skorous

[Doctor_K]

This happened to me again early this morning. I watched TiVo until about 11:30 last night. When I got up this morning, it was it the "blackout" state. This the second time in about a month.

[DaveLessnau]

Well, after 4-1/2 months without the problem, it happened again on the Philips HDR112. Earlier today, the TiVo was working happily (I had noted the lights were on). Just now, my son turned on the television and couldn't control anything. Same symptoms as before (lights out, Failed: Unknown Error, no remote response). The only difference is that the failed call was made at 11:21 this morning and the last good recording ran from 9:00 to 10:00 this morning just before it. So, this time, the TiVo turned off during the day (probably between 11:21 am and 2:20 pm).

Oops. Another difference is that the TiVo was putting out a signal via its S-Video/RCA combination just fine.

[MJGunn]

Yikes, I forgot about this problem. I'm leaving for vacation tomorrow, I have my tivo set to record a lot of stuff I don't want it to miss, hope it doesn't happen while I'm away :(

[JPriller]

Just got hit with this on my HDR212 again this morning. Daily call at 2:48am (though serial port w/PPP) failed with unknown error, LEDs both off, no response to remote control.

From the Now Playing list it appears to have recorded programs while in this state. The kids report when they turned on the TV this morning the TiVo didn't respond so they just watched what was on, and that one time the "need to change the channel" banner came on and the TiVO switched channels appropriately after the 1 minute timeout expired.

A power cycle got it working again, and a forced daily call has it loading data now.

[dslunceford]

Well, misery loves company. Thought I was the only one to see this, but today marks the second time I've seen this event over the past two months. First time I've ever had a problem like this occur in 2+ years of operation...

Dave's initial explanation is exactly the same experience I have. Go to bed everything's working fine. Wake up, TiVo has somehow powered itself down (NOT in standby mode, which I don't use). Reboot seems to correct the problem.

[Polcamilla]

Originally posted by dslunceford
Dave's initial explanation is exactly the same experience I have. Go to bed everything's working fine. Wake up, TiVo has somehow powered itself down (NOT in standby mode, which I don't use). Reboot seems to correct the problem.

*Exact* same thing happened to my TiVo yesterday (Phillips 60 hr. SA). I didn't think to check the system status screen after rebooting, but did notice that several shows (going back to 12:30 am) didn't record properly, in that the channel didn't change at all. So far it's only happened once, but I'd like to know what caused it and what can be done about it. I'm inclined to call TiVo tech support since the forum shows it happening to both Phillips and Sony units.

[Polcamilla]

Okay, I called TiVo (and spoke to the supervisor after the support drone refused t help).

The supervisor was quite friendly. He hadn't heard of this problem, but he documented it. He said that I should probably call Phillips to rule out a hardware problem, but also noted that if enough people called in complaining of the same problem, their engineers would want to investigate it and see if the software was causing some sort of problem.

So I'd encourage everyone here who has had a spontaneous reboot to call TiVo and let them know about the problem and its symptoms. That will probably be the fastest path to getting the issue resolved!

[DaveLessnau]

If you call Philips, most likely they'll want to charge you $25 to even talk to you. But, definitely inform TiVo (either via email or by phone).

[Polcamilla]

Originally posted by DaveLessnau
If you call Philips, most likely they'll want to charge you $25 to even talk to you.

Yeah, I know. That's why I called TiVo first and made it clear that the problem was being reported on Phillips, Sony, and S2 units. The low-level tech's knee-jerk response was "Hardware problem! Call Phillips!", which is why I escalated to the supervisor.

(*sigh*)

[ahaines]

Add me to the list of hey I got the same problem

[martinp13]

My olde Series 1 (Philips 30) did it too. At first I had no lights, but it responded to the remote. The next morning, no lights, wouldn't respond to remote. I unplugged and replugged and it came up fine and has been ok since.

[ronsch]

This problem hit my unit for the first time on Monday morning. I left it recording Dead Zone on USA Sunday night and put it into standby, which I usually do. Monday morning I went to check overnight recordings and got zero response from the remote although I could still hear the disks spinning. I rebooted and everything came up fine. I discovered that a suggestion had been recorded on Cinemax at 11:20. On the system information screen was a failed daily call at 1:23am, error unknown. There was a scheduled recording of Northern Exposure on Hallmark at 2:00 but what I got was an hour long chunk of a movie on Cinemax. Channel didn't change. Two more suggestions and the service data download also got Cinemax.

The point where everything went south appears to be the failed attempt to do the daily call. Everything was fine before that and although recording was still working afterward, channel changes and the remote were not.

[Ruth]

Another data point: This happened to me again today. Exactly the same. TiVo reports "Failed. Unknown Error" at 8:26 a.m.; shows after that recorded at the correct times, but no channel changes; when I came home TiVo had no lights on and was unresponsive to remote; all seems fine when rebooted.

Buffy was a rerun, right? If this happens during the NCAA tournament, I am going to get mad.

[DaveLessnau]

Happened again on my Philips last night. Has anyone had this happen on anything other than 3.0?

[pfriedel]

I'll chime in, too - actually got an idea of the uptime tonight - came home from work around 6:30pm-ish, found it was stalled, so I rebooted it and noticed that it had recorded Stargate at 6 without changing the channel (through the blaster), giving me about an hour of Friends and Everyone Loves Raymond.

Went off to fiddle with some other stuff and came up around 11pm to find that it had locked up and gone to blackscreen again. Yay for about 4 hours of uptime.

It's been doing this for about a week now - it started out slow, but it seems to be accelerating.

Aside from whether the front LEDs are on or not (I don't remember which they were), I had all the symptoms - Call failed for an unknown reason, remote ranging from "slow" to "glacial" (took 5 minutes for it to acknowledge me hitting select, while I read the forums, ferinstance) to "unresponsive", etc. Temperature is 36C, so not unusually hot.

*sigh* Was kinda looking for an excuse to get a S2, but I'd hoped it wouldn't be like this.

[davepacrat]

First, thanks for all of your posts, because they helped me diagnose (if not solve, unfortunately) what just happened to my good old 112 today. I was upstairs when it started recording something at noon, and when I came down at 12:30, all I could do with the remote was turn the tv on and off and adjust the tv volume, but no tivo response. Then I saw the lights on the unit were out, so I ran upstairs to check online--nothing on tivo.com, but I found the link to this site, and lots of similar stories. I went back down and power cycled my unit, and it came back up--same failed call error (call initiated after the program began recording), and same story--the program had recorded fine, even though the unit was on down/standby/whatever. An hour later, the unit made another call out, and that went fine.

So...I called TIVO, and the rep had "Never heard of the problem"--after she put me on hold for 10 minutes or so, she came back and said the "second level tech" had also never heard of it, and furthermore, that they have a 'good' info system, so that, if other reps knew of the problem, it would be posted there. She opened a case for me, but said I really should call Philips if it happened again, since they now do "their own support". When I pointed out that it seemed from this board like it was a software issue, she seemed unconvinced ("if it were, we would know about it"). She did say they knew about this board, and since I told her there were at least 3 pgs of comments on this issue, that she would "check it out".

Fingers crossed that they believe and deal with it, and that we don't see any more repeats!:confused:

[pfriedel]

So I picked up a Series2 last night, and was having the same slow remote response. I was worried, but figured it was because it was busy doing the guided setup processing, and didn't worry about it. This morning, it was still slow and sloppy about remote control, and the blaster was hit and miss. Uh-oh, I thought.

I discovered a remote control upside down, pointing away from the entertainment center. Nothing _really_ unusual, really. Well, once I picked it up and pointed it into a dark corner, the IR lag stopped. Completely.

I'm guessing that the stereo remote was spewing IR noise to the room, causing 2 problems: 1) any signals from the TiVo remote were being mostly overpowered by the IR coming from the stereo remote, and 2) I suspect the TiVo was busy decoding and throwing away bad IR packets for long enough that it eventually crashed. (I suspect the TiVo decodes the IR in software, which could cause problems like that.)

So, totally freak occurrence that somehow the stereo remote was spewing IR when by all rights it shouldn't have been. *shrug* Wanted a S2 for the speed anyway - the S1 was kinda chugging along through the mass of channels I have available and the S2 seems much faster.

[snoop]

As a follow on and fyi, this has now happened to me three times, all on the same tivo, havent seen it at all on the other four. About 3-4 months between occurrences, all report 'failed call'. Updating via tivonet, and i dont even have a phone line installed, so no interruptus of the phone line, although perhaps my cable modem went out in mid update. No response to the remote, channels recorded via RF from cable work fine, although it still wont change channels on the satellite via the infrared dingy. Power cycle resolves it. Only other thing I can offer is that this unit gets less use, both recording and watching, than my other tivos. Its my 'backup' for conflict resolution, so it only records 5-10 shows a week and I might only sit down to watch it once a week or so. May be my imagination but it seems to me that its incidence of failure is when its been a while (say a week) since i've used it.

Guess is that either the power to these devices (front panel leds, remote receiver, infrared blaster) has been disrupted, or a software module that handles this piece of the machines bus went to sleep. I seem to remember someone telling me something about why the lights blink on the front panel when its beginning a daily call. It never did that pre v2.0, it started then. They said something about the encryption chip was just now being used for a certain set of tasks and that when that was doing some particular activity the software momentarily couldnt keep the lights on, so they blinked. Something about them being on the same bus or something. I wish I remembered more than that but clearly this was a couple of years ago. I wonder if some problem with the encryption chip or the s/w driving it locking up takes down this 'piece' of the system while the rest merrily runs on. Also wonder why i'm only seeing it on one tivo, and didnt see it on that box for 3+ years...

Sad that tivo isnt picking up on this, as clearly many people have reported it. Modern tech support at work...tell them its a hardware problem or to power cycle it.

[Steward356]

I just started having the problem with my Series1 SVR2000 Sony TiVo this week; I just spoke with Sony, and they told me to do a "Clear and Delete Everything", which they claim will reformat the hard-drive and rebuild the system software. Argh.

[MJGunn]

steward, I could be wrong, but if I had to guess, I would say thats just Sony telling you to do it, hoping it will fix it....having no idea if it really will or not.

[snoop]

A clear and delete all with neither reformat your hard drive nor rebuild the system software. All it does is wipe any built or downloaded data files, along with all your recordings, allowing the tivo to rebuild all of the information (with considerable help from you in terms of re-entering season passes, etc). If it were a corrupted or bolluxed database causing the problem then a clear and delete all would be helpful. However (while you never know...) I would doubt that a database flaw or corruption would cause a problem that only manifested itself every few months.

Seems to be either a very unusual hardware or software (or perhaps both) situation that is a rarity and is dependent on a particular setup or hardware config. One of those "three things happening independently at the same time" deals.

I'm curious if this has happened to anyone with a series 2. If its just a once in a while glitch with the series 1 I would doubt we'll ever see any investigation on it. The S1 seems to be in tivo's rear view mirror at this point.

I'm going to be reconfiguring my tivo to cable only as i'm dropping my satellite service in favor of cable. That takes out the infrared transmitter/receiver. I'll report back if the problem reiterates with that out of the loop. Perhaps its a power supply trip when the box is changing channels, turning on the record lights, and its just started a download via the tivonet card ?!?

[JPriller]

Happened again. Series 1 Philips HDR212. Both LEDs off, no response to remote, reboot fixed. System information showed "unknown error" for last call (I use serial line/PPP). All shows when it was in that state seemed to have recorded okay (I don't have a cable box).

[Ruth]

Happenned again to me last night. Just the same as my last post in this thread. Kinda getting irritated. Does anyone know anything more about "Failed. Unknown Error"? Like other symptoms it might bring with it? Or what causes it?

[LifeIsABeach]

I had been thinking about starting a thread about this, but just assumed my modem was going bad. How did I ever miss so many threads on this topic? I get this problem about once a month. Sometimes when my daily call is made the green light will flash on and off. I hold my breath each time because if it stays off then I have the problem and need to reboot. Most times it is okay, but it is really annoying when the problem occurs.

[tlc]

Just adding a "me too". First time I've seen this.

HD312, larger hard drive mod, no other mods.

Home from work, find black screen on all outputs.
Notice that the green led is out.
Wife says she noticed it was out this morning (but never turned on the TV).
Pull the plug, & replug. Comes up ok.
Sysinfo says last call was 6:37 AM and it "Failed. Unknown error."
Test call worked. Didn't try a daily call.
It had recorded 3 shows in that time frame, but failed to change the channel when doing so.
Operating normally now.

-tlc

[Ruth]

I guess my TiVo just likes to have unknown errors every two months or so. Yesterday, again. :(

[phone1]

This happened to my SVR-2000 which has been running fine on 3.0 for some time.

[dslunceford]

Hit me twice last week....first time in a long time...

[JPriller]

Happened again early this morning, same symptoms as always - both LEDs out on the TiVo, black screen, no response from remote, reboot fixes, last call status shows "unknown error".

This is the first time I've had it happen since moving from standard analog cable to cable+DirecTV. For the recordings off cable it was able to switch channels okay using it's tuner, but it didn't change channels on the satellite receiver for those recordings and I got the last thing the receiver was tuned to (Disney, as it happens).

The TiVo in question is an HDR212, upgraded with a 80GB second drive and with a TurboNet card. This is the 4th time this has happened to it, looking through my posts to this thread. It has happened to me before when I was using a phone line and also with PPP/serial.

[melora]

Just adding my Phillips Series 1 as another Tivo having this problem. I wonder why tivo has never had an answer for this?

[jeffw_00]

Happening to me too - just thought I'd add to the list. I have an HDR312. it's on a UPS. It's not in standby. it had not made a call recently (but did 1/2 hour after i brought it back). it WAS passing through video. 2nd time, also happened a month ago - never had a problem before (had it for 3 yrs).

I'm surprised that with so many people experiencing it, that the Tivo folks have never commented....

/j

[alansh]

Has anyone looked at the system logs (via bash or the backdoors) to see if anything interesting was in the system logs?

[Jeremybme]

mine seems to do this every couple of days, its very annoying, does any one know what triggers it or how to stop it?

[Robertsonland]

My Tivo upstairs (which has the same version as the one downstairs) has just started doing this as well. Very troubling as it has been the one that has performed solidly. It's completely unmodified. I get no lights, remote doesn't cause a response. Unplugging and plugging back in cause it to start up again and it runs fine for a couple of days then it happens again. I'd really like to get a fix for this as it's driving me completely nuts.

Lance

[JPriller]

My experience with this was only once every 4 to 6 months. If you're getting this every couple days, I'd contact TiVo - as it happens fairly often maybe they can scan your unit's logs every day for a week and try to come up with why this is happening.

[mlevin]

Originally posted by kclements
I've just read this thread and the others referenced. I've experienced a similar problem twice since the upgrade to version 3; once last night. Symptoms and environment are:

(1) No LEDs lit on the front (no green, no red,... none)

(2) Black screen, no audio. Remote still works. I can still change channels, see the description text at the top of the screen, in the blue capsule. Can still access Now Playing and watch previously recorded programs. But Live TV shows a black screen and has no audio.

(3) Not in standby accidentally.

(4) Failed call attempt reported.

(5) Rebooting restores normal functionality.

(6) No extraneous IR sources.

(7) Cable signal still present (TV's tuner still works when I switch over).

I use direct coax input (no cable box); RCA video and audio output.

Last night, it happened right before my very eyes, late at night; right around the time the Tivo normally makes its call. I was changing channels on Live TV when the screen suddently went black. At first, I assumed there was a problem with that channel. But as I continued, I realized that all of the channels were black. Rebooting restored function. The first time it happened (a couple of weeks ago), I just assumed there was some minor glitch. Now it's happened again and I'm pretty disappointed. Seems like it may continue to happen until the next forced upgrade. I certainly hope the good Tivo folks are aware of this problem and are burning the midnight oil to fix it. I'm off to their site right now to e-mail a report.

--Kevin

Hi all,

I *just* started getting this (or a very similar) problem within the past week -- not sure it is the same since it sounds like folks have been reporting it for quite some time. I've got a Philips HDR-312. It is on a UPS. My symptoms are similar to the ones above but slightly different.

Twice this week I've found the TiVo "stuck" -- by this I mean:

1. Both LEDs off
2. Unresponsive to any buttons on the remote
3. I AM getting video and audio to the TV
4. The only thing I can do is power cycle, and after it comes up, I see that the last call failed.

Might my problem be something different?

[mlevin]

Originally posted by DaveLessnau
Snoop: are you getting repeats of the problem? From my own experience, and from what I can see from others', it looks like it's a fairly rare problem. I've only had the three occurences I've documented here (1 probable and 1 definite on the Sony and 1 definite on the Philips). It doesn't cause too much trouble. But, then, I HAVE modified my behavior to always check that the green LED is lit on both machines first thing in the morning.

For me, twice in one week, so I don't know that I'd call it rare. Strange that I've just started to get this problem this week. Sounds like people have been having this problem since 2002...

UPDATE: After waiting on hold for a while to talk to the TiVo folks, the support rep immediately suggested (as expected) that it was a problem with Philips and said the software couldn't be the issue. After explaining that several people with other hardware were experiencing the same or similar problems, she agreed to escalate the case to a second level technician, so we'll see what happens... I'll post again if anything interesting comes to light.

[Robertsonland]

*knocking on wood* Mine hasn't done it but those two times. It looks like it was having problems downloading the The Dead Will Rise this March stuff. Once that got downloaded all seems to be fine.

Lance

[mlevin]

Originally posted by Robertsonland
*knocking on wood* Mine hasn't done it but those two times. It looks like it was having problems downloading the The Dead Will Rise this March stuff. Once that got downloaded all seems to be fine.

Lance

Hmm... might it be a problem downloading the promo stuff and not the regular program guide? How could we pinpoint the cause?

FWIW, my system info says last successful service data download was 2/2.

[mlevin]

Originally posted by JPriller
My experience with this was only once every 4 to 6 months. If you're getting this every couple days, I'd contact TiVo - as it happens fairly often maybe they can scan your unit's logs every day for a week and try to come up with why this is happening.

FWIW, the first-level tech support I talked to today said that was not possible. She said she already had a full log of everything, and she said she saw no failures in the past month.

So possibly my unit never actually connected and that's why she sees no failures? I don't know exactly how this works, but I'd think that if there were a local error, that info would be uploaded next time a connection IS made?

Also, maybe we were having some miscommunication over my request that they look at the logs for a few days -- maybe she was thinking of a call log rather than an error log.

[Ruth]

Hey, me again. Exactly the same as I've reported before, with the unknown error, at 1:36 this afternoon.

Except this time it caused me to miss a game I was really looking forward to. Grrrrrrr! :mad: :down: How come we never hear from anyone at TiVo in this thread?

[jeffw_00]

I'll leave this post here - but I have to correct an honest mis-understanding. Pony's PM to me was a bit ambiguous. In fact he had ran across this POST, he had not "run across" (which I took as "experienced") the problem I describe. My apologies to the community and Pony for my mis-information. (2/27)
=========================================================


I PM'ed TiVo pony on this a while ago and he said he had experienced it, but he opined that it affects very few users, and that its infrequency would make it hard to track down, and he believed a re-boot fixes it. I understand he's a busy guy, but not really a wholy satisfactory answer. Given the number of comments in the forum, and it's infrequency it could be quite common. The reboot 'fixes' it only until the next time, and I would like to think that the developers could express an opnion on the cause. After all, it appears to be a programmed failure mode. I'll bet the developers could comment on what sort of problems might cause the TiVo to lockdown into standby and turn off all the LEDs. - that would at least give us a chance of tracking the causes.

sigh
/j

[JoshNJ]

Whew, I thought my tivo was in trouble...

I have a Phillips stock 30 hour unit from 2001, running 3.x

Never happened before, but had this happen twice in the past few months to me. Got home unit was turned off, no lights or anything, unplugged and plugged back in and works fine.

[TiVoKiD2112]

How old are you TiVo's? They may be overheating due to a dusty fan.

[jeffw_00]

See - this is the point - it would be nice to know what failure mechanism this behavior is a response to - overheating sounds like a likely cause - so if we knew this, and we all put fans behind our tivos (those of us with the problem) and it went away - we'd all be happier Tivo-Boosters.

But...Noooooooo - Tivo doesn't even want to look into it (sigh)

[jeffw_00]

Just happened to me again - i checked system info on re-boot. Temp was fine, but a recent call had been unsuccessful with an Unknown Error - has anyone else see this? Perhaps switching to TivoNet will solve it?
/j

[JPriller]

My HDR212 did it when I was using a phone line, when I was using PPP over serial to a networked PC, and when I was using a TurboNet board. The connection method doesn't appear to matter.

[jeffw_00]

Ok - but I still think it's when it goes for information that causes it...

[JPriller]

Originally posted by jeffw_00
Ok - but I still think it's when it goes for information that causes it... Definitely. It's always had "failed, unknown error" for a last call status the 3 or 4 times it's happened to me.

[Ruth]

My TiVo has never shown any tendency to run hot.

Even if it's not economical to do the work necessary to find the cause and to prevent the problem, TiVo could at least add code telling the boxes to automatically restart if they encounter the unknown error, couldn't it? I mean, it's a recognized event in the logs . . . Since the problem is cured by a restart, that would at least minimize the lost recordings caused by the problem. That would be far preferable to what we have now -- an error that could mean you'd miss a week of recordings if you were on vacation.

[jeffw_00]

I'm sorry to say it appears TiVo isn't interested in addressing it at all. My guess is that, short of catastrophic problems, they don't want to do another release to the 3.0 code base because of the cost of beta testing, release, etc. (and the minimal benefit of such a release to TiVo). This isn't catastrophic (at least, to TiVo). Too bad it wasn't caught pre-3.0. Unfortunately they know we love TiVo anyway and will buy TiVo next time regardless of whether they fix this bug.

Though, I have to admit I now love TiVo a little less....
/j

[TiVoPony]

Originally posted by jeffw_00
I PM'ed TiVo pony on this a while ago and he said he had experienced it...
/j

Jeff, not sure where you got that from. I've personally never seen this on any system.

The only place I've ever heard of something like this is from the few reports in this thread.

Sorry you're having trouble every now and again with your system. From the reports it does seem to be both random and infrequent. And not widespread. That is a combination that makes any sort of investigation extremely challenging.

Pony

[jeffw_00]

I'll leave this post here, but I need to tell people that as a result of subsequent PMing between Pony and me, what he meant in his post below was that he has "run across" this Post, NOT the problem as I originally implied. Twas an honest misunderstanding of an informal message. My apologies to Pony (and this forum) for the mis-implication. (2/27)
============================================


Sorry if I misquoted you Pony - on 2-10-04 you wrote me privately

"First I've run across it myself, but I'd think isolating and identifying something that is that infrequent would be somewhat difficult......".

Thought that meant you had seen it.

I agree that it is both random and infrequent. However,

1) it appears to happen in tandem with an "unknown error" on a daily-download attempt

2) It ALWAYS puts the TiVo in the same state (standby, remote doesn't work, both LEDS off). I would submit that it can't get to this state without SW that sends it there, and so discussion with the developers would shed some light on it (possibly suggesting causes). However, I understand that this would require getting development support on Series-1, so.... (sigh).

/j

[Hawking]

I’ve been going through this for a few months.
My series 2 was shutting down at night and getting stuck during the reboot.
I’d have to unplug it 3 times before it would come back up.
It had other symptoms too like slow response to the Tivo button, video stuttering, the audio would drop out for a second, the picture would get pixilated then correct itself.
I deleted all my show ratings and the responsiveness came back for a day or two but yesterday it gave up the ghost. It wouldn’t reboot at all. I called Tivo and they are replacing it for $100. I think the hard disk went south.

My real dilemma is that now I have to live without Tivo until the replacement comes.

I pulled my old Series 1 out of storage (no service) just so I could pause and replay but that’s giving me a green screen “Severe Error” of death.

-what am I to do?

Hawking
:(

[jeffw_00]

I don't know - but i think to get an answer i would post in a new (or at least a similar) thread - this one is about a specific series 1 problem that you don't seem to have.
/j

[mlevin]

Originally posted by mlevin
Hi all,

I *just* started getting this (or a very similar) problem within the past week -- not sure it is the same since it sounds like folks have been reporting it for quite some time. I've got a Philips HDR-312. It is on a UPS. My symptoms are similar to the ones above but slightly different.

Twice this week I've found the TiVo "stuck" -- by this I mean:

1. Both LEDs off
2. Unresponsive to any buttons on the remote
3. I AM getting video and audio to the TV
4. The only thing I can do is power cycle, and after it comes up, I see that the last call failed.

Might my problem be something different?

Didn't have this problem for a while and then it happened again this morning. Anyone else? Same deal... call fails, both lights off, audio/video passthrough but no response, power cycle, try call again, seems OK (well, it is still loading data right now).

- m

[Jeremybme]

I was getting this problem as well,

I finally gave up on trying to figure out what caused it.

My solution which has worked for months now was to do the following


Set up my tivo to communicate via Serial port with my computer.

Then i configured Tivo to use the Serial port as an always on Internet connection

and then changed the tivo to dial in using ,#401 prefix which only works with Turbonet card installed or serial converted the way i have described.

this has worked for me for months as soon as i did this my problems stopped.

[jeffw_00]

Others report changing to turbonet doesn't make the problem go away. see prior responses. hope it works 4 you

[robertj49]

I have an upgraded Philips to 128 hours. It happened to me for the first time a few days ago. I HAD scheduled quite a few recordings pretty close to each other. Could this be a precipitating factor...???

[jeffw_00]

no - you'll find the last call failed about the time it went down

[robertj49]

That's true. But of course, if your unit "dies", calls would not go through until it had recovered. Or do you suggest that the call somehow precipitates the problem..?? I had thought, of course, with the machine off, the call could not be consumated. But which came first, the crash or the call...???

[jeffw_00]

I traded som PMs with various Tivo people about this. It looks like it HAS gotten some attention from engineering, but to no avail.

However, there is a suspicion that it is limited to hacked (or perhaps just any 2HDD) units. Can anyone refute this?

/j

[mlevin]

Originally posted by jeffw_00
I traded som PMs with various Tivo people about this. It looks like it HAS gotten some attention from engineering, but to no avail.

However, there is a suspicion that it is limited to hacked (or perhaps just any 2HDD) units. Can anyone refute this?

/j

I wouldn't call mine's "hacked" per se (I haven't installed/modified software on it), but it does have a 2nd HD. I added a 120gb drive to my HDR312. This was a LONG time ago, long before the freezes started happening.

Thanks for the additional info :-)

- m

[jeffw_00]

But this is exactly my situation -added a 40gb drive 2+ years ago, no other hacking (though this <is> how TiVoBIll was using the term 'hacking')

interesting....

[mlevin]

Originally posted by jeffw_00
But this is exactly my situation -added a 40gb drive 2+ years ago, no other hacking (though this <is> how TiVoBIll was using the term 'hacking')

interesting....

I guess maybe it is the combined, occasional effect of both the extra drive and some software that was updated at some point well after the drives were added...?

[jeffw_00]

could be - i think people started having it after 3.0 was installed

[pcurthoys]

I've had this problem happen 4 times now, most recently 2 times in the past week--remote control won't turn it on, call status reports "failed, unknown error." I have a Sony Series 1 SVR2000 (connected to Comcast digitial cable via IR blaster) that has no mod or hacks of any kind. A power cycle fixes it every time, but it's awfully frustrating to miss recordings. I've reported it to Tivo tech support and I'm waiting on a reply, but I don't have a lot of hope that they'll be helpful after reading this thread.

A couple of quick questions: If I surrender and upgrade to a Series 2, will I be safe from this problem? Or does it happen with 3.2 as well? And no known fix, right? I thought it was a power issue, so before reading this thread, I ordered a replacement power cord from Tivo. My current cord has been twisted pretty good, so I was guessing that might be it. I'll post again with any news, and thanks much for any help with the questions.

[JPriller]

I've had a Series 2 SA for about two years now, it's never had the problem. Whatever it is, it's linked to 3.0 on Series 1's.

[mlevin]

Originally posted by pcurthoys
I've had this problem happen 4 times now, most recently 2 times in the past week--remote control won't turn it on, call status reports "failed, unknown error." I have a Sony Series 1 SVR2000 (connected to Comcast digitial cable via IR blaster) that has no mod or hacks of any kind. A power cycle fixes it every time, but it's awfully frustrating to miss recordings. I've reported it to Tivo tech support and I'm waiting on a reply, but I don't have a lot of hope that they'll be helpful after reading this thread.

A couple of quick questions: If I surrender and upgrade to a Series 2, will I be safe from this problem? Or does it happen with 3.2 as well? And no known fix, right? I thought it was a power issue, so before reading this thread, I ordered a replacement power cord from Tivo. My current cord has been twisted pretty good, so I was guessing that might be it. I'll post again with any news, and thanks much for any help with the questions.

You can cross your fingers, but don't hold your breath. I've had this problem a few times and my power cord is fine, and furthermore, my TiVo is on a UPS. I also have a Series 1. Philips HDR312 with an extra 120gb drive. Comcast cable, although that's not the issue. This is the first time I've heard of the problem with an unmodified unit.

[pcurthoys]

Finally heard back from Tivo customer service -- and as expected, they're claiming no knowledge of the issue. At least it hasn't happened again yet...

[mrmike]

Well, one of mine did it again the other day, and it recorded stuff while it was "off", so it's definitely in standby and not really "off". The recording picked up again once I power-cycled it, but it did channel change and start the recording while all of its leds were off. Curiouser and curiouser

[gtxjoe]

Happened to me also...

HDR312 (series 1 SA)

This has happened twice this week. I hope it stops.

no lights, remote does nothing, but the tivo is still recording the shows properly.

Pulling the plug fixes it.

sure enough, last phone call attempt "failed: unknown error"


I am going to turn on the "Detect Phone in use" feature and see if this prevents this from happening

[jeffw_00]

gtxjoe - this is not the same problem - in the problem described in this thread the TiVo is NOT recording properly - might want to move your post to the proper (or new) thread 8-}
/j

[zidge7]

Originally posted by DaveLessnau
Both TiVos are on UPSs. Even if it had been a power glitch, I can't see any way that a TiVo could end up in a quasi-Standby mode. It would either stay totally powered down (which it wasn't) or come back up normally (which it didn't). My s1 directivo did the same thing after the update and it wasnt going into standy it was power cycling going through the almost there stuff and i also have ups so it is the soft ware ( probably) it did it right in front of me while i was watching a show! And i saw a post from a nother person that described the same symptom!

[pldoolittle]

My Philips HDR212 (SA1) is exhibiting this exact problem (video through, no power light, no response, Failed: unknown error). It started about two months ago. About a month ago, the HDD gave up the ghost (no drive motor action). I found a new 20gb HDD laying around in my parts closet and downloaded and successfully employed PTVupgrade. I assumed that would be the end of it as my HDD was obviously on it's last legs...

Since the upgrade, the unit appears just like it did before the HDD crash but the mysterious power off problem is still there. Presently, it's about once a week. FWIW, my Tivo is in a 75F room and on a surge supressor. It is not on a UPS and uses a phone line to dial. That line is DSL w/o a filter and there is no audible noise nor any apparent problems using that line otherwise.

I'm also experiencing periodic index corruption of the "Search by tables"/wishlist functions but I suspect that it is related to the crashes/"unknown error".

pldoolittle

[pldoolittle]

Update on the lockup issue. I was sitting here watching a pre-recorded movie on my HDR212. When it hit a commercial, I hit FF. No response. Looking up, I noticed that the power light is off. I am still watching the movie but the powerlight is off. I have no idea what will happen when it hits movie end (I suspect it will go to menu and ignore me) but if I were in live TV I could watch as long as I wish so long as I don't want to change the channel or otherwise utilize my tivo.

The only thing that may be correlated is that I enabled backdoors to view the log files. Later I manually initiated a daily call wich would have finished indexing about the same time that the lockup occurred.

[OLdDog]

You have revived a thread from July 2004 dealing with an issue that involved a software version that is long gone.

Or do you still have 3.0 on your DTiVo.

[jeffw_00]

ummm - for those of us with series 1, 3.0 is as current as we will ever get
/j

I've thought of getting a series 2, but I like an open system, high-quality hardware and the absence of video artifacts. silly me 8-}

[pldoolittle]

More data on the lockup. This may all be useless, but perhaps since I am having the event right now, I figured I'd better record the details in case it may be useful to somone later. That said:

My SW ver is 3.0-01-1-000. It was installed with PTVUpgrade. I have no idea what the pre-PTV ver was, but I suspect it was 3.0 as well. Checking the logs, it definitely appears that this happens during/after the daily call. Here's a summary of what happened:

Forced daily call.
Back to watching my movie.
Tivo fails to respond as described previously (power light off).
watch some more movie to see what happens.
power cycle box.

Looking at the logs (severely paraphrased):
02:14 /tvbin/genkey - success
02:14 /tvbin/crypto - success
02:14 /tvbin/bf - success
02:14 /tvbin/crypto - success
02:14 /tvbin/crypto - success
02:14 /tvbin/crypto - success
02:19 watchdog action 113 trigger callActive for 90[screen cut off] interval-seconds

[**Note: Tivo system info after reboot shows last call attempt at 11:21p **]

02:34 watchdog action 113 trigger callActive for 18[screen cut off] interval-seconds
02:50 watchdog action 113 trigger callActive for 27[screen cut off] interval-seconds
02:55 TCphone home active (this is near hard boot time)
02:55 last call status was "in progress"
02:55 last call status will be Failed
02:55 setCallStatus called with: Failed state 0
02:55 /state/Avalanche last status was <0> and getResult was <0>, changing to unknown.
02:55 schedule call after failure
02:55 reschedCall (7,0) in 47 min.
[If anyone has a Turbonet they want to loan me, I'll be happy to post the full logs.]

FWIW, the tivo shows that my "resume" position in the movie I was watching was about 9 minutes before it actually was. So while it played the movie, it did not update the bookmark beyond the point of failure.

It does appear to be somewhat repeatable. I say somewhat because it will happen if the call fails. Or perhaps the call will fail if it happens. In either case I have seen it happen 2 days in a row following a forced daily call. Perhaps not coincidentally, both daily calls followed the activation of backdoors ("3 0 BC") in my case. I am now rebooting to clear backdoors and forcing a daily call.

Here's what happens play-by-play:
phone in use
yellow light on
downloading
yellow light off
loading data
loading data 23%, 14min
loading data 52%, 8 min
loading data 55%, 9 min
back to movie (1:22 in).
loading data 57%, 9 min
back to movie (1:22 in).
loading data 64%, 9 min
back to movie (1:33 in).
Succeded (movie at 1:38)

Last successful 09/03 11:21pm (huh? System time is now 11:49pm)
Last attempt 09/03 11:21pm
Next scheduled 09/04 12:11am (What? Another daily call in 20 minutes?

[pldoolittle]

ummm - for those of us with series 1, 3.0 is as current as we will ever get

Yep. HDR212 = Tivo SA series 1. 20gb hdd. I've got two of 'em. The one in this thread and another that has a dead modem that I need to skip GS on so I can make it a VCR. ;)

[pldoolittle]

More info: It's definitely daily call related. It happened today while I was using the unit. Here's the recap.

12:01am - tivo observed operational. Did not check search by data. suspect it was corrupt as wishlist programs did record last evening while we were out.
01:34am - Failed. Service not answering.
09:55am - noticed search by data bad.
09:55am - forced daily call
10:00am - Failed. Service not answering.
10:00am - restarted recorder from menu.
10:00am - forced daily call.
............................preparing to call
............................green light blinks
............................~15 sec passes
............................green light goes out. Tivo non-responsive
* At this time, the menu graphics are still rolling in the background so tivo is still alive to some degree despite the appearance of being off.
10:10am - power cycled tivo
10:15am - system reports classic "Failed: unknown error"
10:18am - forced daily call
10:20am - call successful - loading data.
10:26am - success. ** Next call scheduled in 26 minutes?!? **
10:26am - search by data is still corrupt at this point. Perhaps it is indexing?

The phoneline was definitely NOT is use at the time, and there were no apparent power fluctuations occurring during the process.

[pldoolittle]

Approx an hour after it completes, a successful daily call fixes the "search by" indexes. So, the database corruption and the lockups are associated with the daily call process.

[pldoolittle]

Btw, the latest failure occured w/o backdoors enabled or having been used.

[pldoolittle]

I had thought, of course, with the machine off, the call could not be consumated. But which came first, the crash or the call...???

In my case, the call. 100% of the time. Failure occurs after the call is initiated, typically during the "loading" phase.

[pldoolittle]

there is a suspicion that it is limited to hacked (or perhaps just any 2HDD) units. Can anyone refute this?

Mine is a single replacement 20gb HDD. Replacement performed with PTVupgrade. No other mods.

[pldoolittle]

Calling all Tivo uber-geeks. I think I have it pretty well narrowed down. In each case, the last command issued is:

About to execute: /tvbin/crypto -x -gek 2>&1

All previous commands are followed by "command succeeded". But the above command had no such entry. After that entry, the tclient log only displays the following entries until the system is rebooted.

WatchdogAction[113]: WatchdogAction::trigger:call active for 900 interval-seconds
WatchdogAction[113]: WatchdogAction::trigger:call active for 1800 interval-seconds
[...]
WatchdogAction[113]: WatchdogAction::trigger:call active for (n-1)*900 interval seconds
WatchdogAction[113]: WatchdogAction::trigger:call active for n*900 interval seconds


The previous commands:
/tvbin/crypto -gsn 2>&1
/tvbin/crypto -gsn 2>&1

Complete fine. Anyone know anything about the switches to "crypto" and what might be making "/tvbin/crypto -x -gek" go off into neverland?

Furthermore, does the S1SA hardware support "sleep"mode? What modes are available that would cause the system to stream video (live or pre-rec) yet turn off the power light and ignore the remote?

If there is a "sleep"mode available, does anyone know of a hack (soft or hardware) to issue a "wake up" command to an S1SA box?

FWIW, my suspicions are that crypto runs away, other processes are not able to run, and as a result the hardware goes to some sort of quasi-sleep. That or MyWorld just croaks. I should have a turbonet soon, and then I'll start delving into running processes, who is doing what, and if killing errant processes or periodically restarting critical processes has any effect. With any luck, I'll find out what's hanging crypto.

Until then,
happy hacking.

[pldoolittle]

Well, I'm still going getting stuck in a thread and falling into "standby mode". But, it appears that a forced daily call immediately followed by a reboot fixes the indexes for awhile. I'm not sure, but awhile appears to be until the next daily calls fails.

[brendag4]

Well, I'm still going getting stuck in a thread and falling into "standby mode". But, it appears that a forced daily call immediately followed by a reboot fixes the indexes for awhile. I'm not sure, but awhile appears to be until the next daily calls fails.

First saw your info on the InstakeCake forum. (Took me a while to figure out how to get to your post here from your link there.)

It sounds like your problem is way worse than mine, but mine sounds similiar enough that how I fixed it might help you.

My Philips S1 was running out of Guide Data. If I tried to force a call, it would report that the call failed, it was interrupted. (No one was using the phone.)

Test calls would work, but Daily Call would stop partway through or anyway never complete the update process and report it failed.

Tried various thins to fix it. Nothing worked. Finally read on the web what to do.

Select a different cable lineup than the one you normally use. Can't remember if I made a call then or not. Then switched back to my normal cable lineup (didnt make a call that time).

Since then, I have had the Tivo act unresponsive to my remote presses. One time it took like 20 minutes to start to respond to me. For the most part, it has been fine.

I don't know if the person who upgraded it did it properly or not. (It's got a 160 gig drive in it, so maybe it is corrupting itself.) Got it from ebay.

the stuff in your logs doesn't look the same as mine

hope this helps

Brenda

[pldoolittle]

Thanks, but although mine is daily call related it does complete the call successfully when it doesn't crash during. The problem appears to be memory related. Today it did it and I telnet in. Here's the results of my snooping around.


bash-2.02# ps
ps: error in loading shared libraries
libc.so: failed to map segment from shared object: Cannot allocate memory

bash-2.02# cat readme
cat: error in loading shared libraries
libc.so: failed to map segment from shared object: Cannot allocate memory

PLD>> Cannot control unit with remote. Power lite out.
PLD>> Telnet and TivoWeb fully functional.
PLD>> Can control Tivo from WebRemote. Response is noticibly delayed.

Oct 13 04:52:17 (none) PhoneHome event hdlr[133]: Tmk Thread Backtrace: 1aa90bc 7ffff418 1acc244 1acd184 1ce3818 1d87ce4 1d1bbf0 1d1c054 1d06858 1cfcae0 1cfdfc0 1cf43fc 1cf4108 1cf3808 1cf33fc 1cf26c8 1cd4f44 1bb65cc 1bb6578 1bbac78 1bbc074 1bbc12c 1bbae20 1bb64b4 1b8d098 1b8dd64 1b8deac 1ce6044 1800134
Oct 13 04:52:17 (none) PhoneHome event hdlr[133]: Tmk Fatal Error: Thread died due to signal 11
Oct 13 04:52:17 (none) PhoneHome event hdlr[133]: Invoking rule 834: rebooting system


Executed /tvbin/myworld
System reset itself.
All is functional.

[pldoolittle]

also, tivoftpd was non-responsive from the outside. Without PS, I cannot tell you if it was running or not.

[Doug_Rodgers]

I am anxiously following your progress because I am experiencing the same issues.

I have a Series 1 (HDR612) that has performed flawlessly since Feb 2001. I replaced the original pair of 30 GB drives with a pair of 160GB drives 10 months ago, so now I have about 344 hours available. I followed the instructions from this forum, and the procedure worked perfectly. That is my only modification.

My TiVo has been randomly re-booting for the last two weeks or so. Sometime it reboots by itself, then keeps on running fine. I know it has rebooted because my '30 second skip feature' gets canceled. Other times the system get's locked and displays a black screen. Typically the front light is displaying yellowish-orange. I need to power it down to correct the problem. It usually boots up very quickly after that.

Like I said, this problem started about two weeks ago. Yesterday I enabled back door (3 0 BC) and displayed the logs (Clr - Ent - Clr - Thmb Up). I scanned the log, but nothing really jumped out at me.

It sounds like you know a lot more about the guts of TiVo than me, so I hope you can come up with a solution or work around. I have a lifetime membership, and a LOT of recorded shows that I don't want to lose. I want to keep this TiVo alive until TiVo comes out with a High Definition version. Then I'll upgrade.

Thanks for listening and keep on looking for a solution!

Doug.

[pldoolittle]

I am anxiously following your progress because I am experiencing the same issues.

I have a Series 1 (HDR612) that has performed flawlessly since Feb 2001. I replaced the original pair of 30 GB drives with a pair of 160GB drives 10 months ago, so now I have about 344 hours available. I followed the instructions from this forum, and the procedure worked perfectly. That is my only modification.

My TiVo has been randomly re-booting for the last two weeks or so. Sometime it reboots by itself, then keeps on running fine. I know it has rebooted because my '30 second skip feature' gets canceled. Other times the system get's locked and displays a black screen. Typically the front light is displaying yellowish-orange. I need to power it down to correct the problem. It usually boots up very quickly after that.

Like I said, this problem started about two weeks ago. Yesterday I enabled back door (3 0 BC) and displayed the logs (Clr - Ent - Clr - Thmb Up). I scanned the log, but nothing really jumped out at me.

It sounds like you know a lot more about the guts of TiVo than me, so I hope you can come up with a solution or work around. I have a lifetime membership, and a LOT of recorded shows that I don't want to lose. I want to keep this TiVo alive until TiVo comes out with a High Definition version. Then I'll upgrade.

Thanks for listening and keep on looking for a solution!

Doug.

Doug,

Although the resolution is the same your situation, the "dark tivo" problem differs quite a bit from the specific one mentioned in this thread. With the "dark tivo" problem, the tivo remains functional but will not respond to the remote, all lights extinguish, search by indexes become corrupt, no scheduledprograms record, and the daily call reports "Failed - Unknown error". Also, switching from dial to network daily calls does not stop the appearance of "dark tivo". It was originally speculated that only a power off would fix a dark tivo, but I have subsequently discovered that by using TivoWeb to navigate a reset, by executing /bin/reboot, or executing /bin/myworld you can clear a dark tivo without a power cycle. In fact, ignoring the lights and non-functioning remote, a dark tivo does in fact appear to be about 95% functional.

That said, I do thank you for the kind words but I'm not nearly as versed as it may seem. I do have a linux background and a lot of information about this one particular issue. Outside that, there are MANY here who know a great deal more than I do. That said, if I had to guess based on your comments I would speculate that it is either a failing HDD, or a power supply issue. But, I'd recommend searching this forums a bit more for hardware issues, and if that is unsuccessful start a new thread for your specific issue. There is more than enoough exertise here to get your problem solved quickly.

I'd also recommend that you get some extra HDD space and back those shows up by either duplicating the drives or looking into how to access your video using methods that cannot be discussed in this forum. If this is a hardware issue, it's not going to get better, and if you lose a HDD then your library is gone...

[rphillips187]

Add me to the list! I've come home twice in the past few weeks to a frozen TiVo. I had to unplug it and then power it back up. Temperature is fine so I don't know what else it could be.

[Doug_Rodgers]

Thanks Phillip, I think you are correct. My problems seems to be different. I woke up this morning to a green screen that says:

"Severe Error has occurred. Do not power down or unplug the phone cable for three hours while TiVo trys to correct itself. If it doesn't reboot within 3 hours call customer service"

I waited four hours, nothing changed. So I powered it down and then back up. Now it instantly goes to the green screen.

Someone else suggested swapping out the power supply simply to rule that out as the cause. I don't know if it is too late for that now that I get the 'green screen'.

I will search the forum for this new error or possible start a new thread. Good luck solving your issues.

Doug.

[pldoolittle]

Someone else suggested swapping out the power supply simply to rule that out as the cause. I don't know if it is too late for that now that I get the 'green screen'.

I thought you have a PS problem that initiated it. BUT, the "please wait many hours while we fix your tivo" smacks of a failing/failed HDD. Get and new HDD and a copy of InstantCake. It will give you a nice reload once you have the hardware issues resolved.

FWIW, InstantCake is a great product, but I would be remiss if I did not tell you that I suspect it strongly as a cause Dark Tivo I was exactly where you were about 4 months ago. One new HDD and a copy of PTV upgrade I was back in business! But, in the coming weeks I would become aware that my now functional tivo had an intermittent problem. That problem I now know as DarkTivo and has been documented greatly in this thread.

Philip

[pldoolittle]

Add me to the list! I've come home twice in the past few weeks to a frozen TiVo. I had to unplug it and then power it back up. Temperature is fine so I don't know what else it could be.


Welcome. Before you may join our band of un-merry men, I need to know more about your problem. Specifically does your problem manifest itself as such:

- both LEDs out on the TiVo
- no response from remote
- reboot fixes
- last call status shows "unknown error".
- Video continues streaming during "blackout" despite the tivo otherwise being unresponsive
- No scheduled programs record during "blackout"

If you meet all of these criteria, then you have experienced a "dark tivo" Please indicate your machine make and model, HDD size, SW version, the age of the unit, and any modifications you have made to the unit.

If not, you just have a run of the mill freeze that indicates a failing PS or failing HDD. The classic symptom of a failing HDD is a frozen video frame on screen. With a dark tivo, video continues streaming.

[pldoolittle]

Update: At present, the problem appears to caused by an out of memory condition. I have temporarily disabled TivoWeb and TivoFtpd. I did leave bash/telnet which I need to troubleshoot. I'll update later if the situation does or does not improve. In the meantime, it would be nice if anyone experiencing a true Dark Tivo would post their machine make and model, HDD size, SW version, and any modifications you have made to the unit.


Also, PTVupgrade says their package is bone stock. Obviously tivo series 1 never shipped with TivoWeb and tivoftpd. So, I know that there are undocumented mods in the PTV v3.0 load. If you have any info concerning diff's between a stock 3.0 load and a PTVUpgrade 3.0 load, I would appreciate it if you shared it with me.

[pldoolittle]

Tivo went dark on me again today. I guess that rules our TivoWeb and ftpd.

BUT, this time it did not go out of mem and I was able to capture a listing of running processes (below). Interestingly, myworld was NOT listed. I started it and TiVo immediately threw an exception and went into reboot. The myworld error was:

bash-2.02# myworld
Couldn't CreateSharedMemoryFile() /var/tmp//Osd.mpkey -- check permissions
Tmk Assertion Failure:
CreateOsdMempool, line 60 ()
Tmk Fatal Error: Thread myworld <441> died due to signal -2
1aa90ac 1aa79c8 1b8f9a0 1b8f9d8 1b8f0c0 1b8e4d4 1b8e43c 1ce601c 1800134


Here's the process listing before reboot:
bash-2.02# ps aux
USER PID %CPU %MEM SIZE RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
root 1 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Oct 13 0:00 init
root 2 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Oct 13 0:18 (kflushd)
root 3 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Oct 13 4:33 (kswapd)
root 51 0.0 0.7 1096 100 ? S Oct 13 0:03 update (bdflush)
root 59 0.0 1.1 1164 160 ? S Oct 13 0:50 syslogd -p /var/dev/l
root 61 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Oct 13 0:01 klogd
root 77 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Oct 13 2:19 /tvbin/switcherstart
root 78 0.3 3.7 6876 528 ? S Oct 13 30:12 /tvbin/mfsd
root 87 0.0 0.7 1120 108 ? S Oct 13 0:01 fancontrol
root 93 0.0 1.2 1276 172 ? S Oct 13 0:00 /sbin/dhclient -q eth
root 119 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Oct 13 0:00 /tvbin/mcp
root 121 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Oct 13 0:00 /bin/bash
root 122 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Oct 13 2:26 /sbin/tnlited 23 /bin
root 123 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Oct 13 1:15 PipeListen
root 124 0.0 1.7 7016 248 ? S Oct 13 3:10 Mcp event
root 125 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Oct 13 0:00 /tvbin/tcphonehome
root 127 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Oct 13 0:00 FsMpStream
root 128 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Oct 13 1:17 PipeListener
root 129 0.1 19.3 10324 2700 ? S Oct 13 10:55 PhoneHome event hd
root 132 0.4 10.8 11056 1516 ? S Oct 13 44:37 /tvbin/dbgc-mcp
root 133 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Oct 13 1:02 PipeListener
root 134 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Oct 13 0:20 /tvbin/myworld
root 135 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Oct 13 0:03 FsMpStream
root 136 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Oct 13 0:18 PipeListener
root 138 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Oct 13 0:03 TmkSinkMixAud
root 139 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Oct 13 7:24 TmkClipCache0
root 140 0.0 13.4 17348 1876 ? S Oct 13 6:43 TmkClipCache1
root 141 3.1 17.5 17348 2444 ? D Oct 13 318:45 TvMomCs22Sink
root 142 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Oct 13 0:00 TvMomCs22Sink
root 143 0.5 15.6 17356 2188 ? S Oct 13 51:16 Mediaswitch0
root 144 0.0 19.7 17348 2752 ? S Oct 13 0:46 TvVideoManager
root 145 0.0 22.6 17348 3164 ? S Oct 13 3:49 TvRecorder
root 146 0.0 20.6 17348 2884 ? S Oct 13 4:28 TmkTaskManager
root 147 1.0 20.2 17348 2824 ? S Oct 13 100:27 Scheduler
root 148 1.0 20.4 17348 2852 ? S Oct 13 104:14 Prioritizer
root 149 0.0 18.7 17352 2620 ? S Oct 13 0:22 EventLog event
root 150 0.0 19.6 17352 2736 ? S Oct 13 0:20 PvrMain
root 151 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Oct 13 0:00 bus handler
root 152 0.0 31.5 17400 4396 ? S Oct 13 9:52 ContextMgr eve
root 416 0.0 1.4 1584 200 ? S 22:08 0:00 sh -c /tvbin/crypto -
root 417 0.0 0.7 1168 108 ? S 22:08 0:00 /tvbin/crypto -x -gek
root 418 0.0 0.0 0 0 p0 SW Oct 13 0:02 /bin/bash -login
root 420 0.0 0.0 0 0 p0 RW Oct 13 0:00 ps -aux
bash-2.02#



And after:

bash-2.02# ps aux
USER PID %CPU %MEM SIZE RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
root 1 0.2 0.0 0 0 ? SW 22:34 0:00 init
root 2 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW 22:34 0:00 (kflushd)
root 3 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW 22:34 0:00 (kswapd)
root 51 0.0 2.7 1096 384 ? S 22:34 0:00 update (bdflush)
root 59 0.1 4.2 1164 596 ? S 22:34 0:00 syslogd -p /var/dev/l
root 61 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW 22:34 0:00 klogd
root 76 0.1 0.0 0 0 ? SW 22:34 0:00 /tvbin/switcherstart
root 78 0.7 5.7 6876 804 ? S 22:34 0:03 /tvbin/mfsd
root 83 0.0 2.8 1108 392 ? S 22:34 0:00 fancontrol
root 93 0.0 4.5 1276 632 ? S 22:34 0:00 /sbin/dhclient -q eth
root 119 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW 22:34 0:00 /tvbin/mcp
root 121 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW 22:34 0:00 /bin/bash
root 122 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW 22:34 0:00 /sbin/tnlited 23 /bin
root 123 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW 22:34 0:00 PipeListen
root 124 0.0 4.4 7016 620 ? S 22:35 0:00 Mcp event
root 125 0.1 0.0 0 0 ? SW 22:34 0:00 /tvbin/tcphonehome
root 126 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW 22:34 0:00 FsMpStream
root 127 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW 22:34 0:00 PipeListener
root 128 0.0 7.7 9944 1084 ? S 22:35 0:00 PhoneHome event hd
root 131 0.1 5.9 10960 824 ? S 22:35 0:00 /tvbin/dbgc-mcp
root 132 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW 22:34 0:00 PipeListener
root 133 0.7 21.0 17352 2940 ? S 22:35 0:03 /tvbin/myworld
root 134 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW 22:34 0:00 FsMpStream
root 135 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW 22:34 0:00 PipeListener
root 136 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW 22:34 0:00 TmkSinkMixAud
root 137 0.1 17.8 17348 2484 ? S 22:35 0:00 TmkClipCache0
root 138 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW 22:34 0:00 TmkClipCache1
root 139 2.5 18.2 17348 2540 ? D 22:35 0:10 TvMomCs22Sink
root 140 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW 22:34 0:00 TvMomCs22Sink
root 141 0.4 19.5 17356 2720 ? S 22:35 0:01 Mediaswitch0
root 142 0.0 19.8 17348 2772 ? S 22:35 0:00 TvVideoManager
root 143 0.0 23.2 17348 3248 ? S 22:35 0:00 TvRecorder
root 144 0.1 23.3 17348 3256 ? S 22:35 0:00 TmkTaskManager
root 145 10.0 26.9 17348 3752 ? S 22:35 0:40 Scheduler
root 146 1.9 24.9 17348 3484 ? S 22:35 0:07 Prioritizer
root 147 0.0 20.4 17356 2848 ? S 22:35 0:00 EventLog event
root 148 0.0 21.4 17352 2992 ? S 22:35 0:00 PvrMain
root 149 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW 22:34 0:00 bus handler
root 150 0.2 26.1 17400 3644 ? S 22:35 0:00 ContextMgr eve
root 151 0.0 0.0 0 0 p0 SW 22:34 0:00 /bin/bash -login
root 152 0.0 0.0 0 0 p0 RW 22:34 0:00 ps aux
bash-2.02#

[pldoolittle]

For those who did not notice these are the only differences in the two lists

root 416 0.0 1.4 1584 200 ? S 22:08 0:00 sh -c /tvbin/crypto -
root 417 0.0 0.7 1168 108 ? S 22:08 0:00 /tvbin/crypto -x -gek

This corresponds perfectly to the log entries I suspected earlier.
Can anyone else check their logs? Can any tivo experts speak to why crypto might go into a hard loop?

What happens if I remove /tvbin/crypto?

[pldoolittle]

BREAKTHROUGH!! There is hope for fixing the "dark tivo" problem.

This morning the tivo went dark once again. I telnet'd in and killed the following process:
root 472 0.0 0.6 1168 92 ? S 10:22 0:00 /tvbin/crypto -x -gek

The tivo immediately returned to normal. The power light came back on, remote began functioning again, and a Tivo began recording a program already in progress.

Interestingly, the TV was on the correct channel and the program was bufferred, so it recorded all 30 minutes of the scheduled program (it came back at 0:23 in) as if nothing had happened. When I went to bed last evening, the TV was on a different channel recording "reunion". So, obviously the Tivo changed channels to being this recording, but never actually saved it from buffer to disk.

There was one program scheduled for 6am this morning that neither recorded no appeared in the recording history. It's as if it was never scheduled.

Next: I'm going to figure out how to monitor and kill GEK if it runs longer than XX minutes. It'll be a kludge, but it'll prevent tivo from going dark. Any suggestions would be welcomed.

[pldoolittle]

I have been able to reproduce the problem "on demand" by manually executing /tvbin/crypto -x -gek I say "on demand" because only about 40% of the time crypto hangs and the tivo goes dark. The other 60% of the time it returns my encryption key as expected.

When crypto is executed successfully, both lights blink out for just an instant when the process initiates, and then come back on first green then red when it completes. However when the process hangs, the lights go out and stay out until cryto is stopped with a CTRL-C. Once killed all is normal. Interestingly, a recording in progress was unaffected by both successful and failed runs of crypto.

[John95]

Ok, so I hear ya on the Dark Tivo, and I have a similar problem, although not exact to this thread (I ask for patience from everyone if I am off base here).

I have a Phillips DSR7000 that has been acting fine up to last month. My original HDD threw a head and all was lost. L Instantcake (& LBA) was a great save and I installed a New Hitachi 250 GB HDD. I started getting a corrupt show every once in a while, but I never really thought anything of it, as it was 3rd party software (and I hadn’t had a chance to check the forum yet). All was close to well until tonight’s call (why I am posting here).

At just before 9 pm (which is around the usual call time) the Tivo spontaneously re-booted, and never came back up. I am now locked on the "Power-up..." screen. At the time of the crash I had the phone line connected to a Wireless phone jack system (that has been working fine for a year), but it was un-synched since Saturday due to me flipping breakers (our electrical box is labeled poorly). Could the lack of call-ins cause this kind of issue? It never crashed on my OEM image…

I doubt it was the electrical work on the house, as the work was in a separate part of the house and when I flipped the breaker back on everything worked fine. My other components seem to be unharmed from the shutoff and I have a massive surge protector on the system, so I doubt I harmed the power supply.

Anyway, I have pulled the power and the IDE cable and re-seated everything, but no movement off that “power up...” screen. I saw the fan running and hear the drive spin-up, but still the "Power up..." screen stays there. I let it hang on that screen for 2 hours tonight. Will try again tomorrow.

Anyone have any thoughts?

[pldoolittle]

Unfortunately, your issue is completely unrelated to Dark Tivo so you are unlikely to find any help in this thread. I'd recommend that you check the other threads for stuck on power up (there are several, IIRC) or start a new one.

[icewiz]

I had these exact symptoms after I did my 2nd upgrade.

Many years ago (when the world was young ...) I had a 40GB Series 1 Phillips. I pulled the drives and upgraded to 2x60GB Maxtor's, which I now know have a history of random firmware problems. I had never had problems with my hard drives, dark Tivo, or other recurring problems with these drives.

My A drive crashed 2 weeks ago, and since my original image is in storage, I ordered the Instant Cake download with the 3.01 image so I could get up and running sooner. I ordered a 320GB WD3200JB off Newegg.

I used the PTVUpgrade LBA48 CD, restored the Instant Cake image (by switching CDs) with a swap file of 190MB. To be safe, I used tpip (v1.1) to fix my swap file and it reported that it had done so successfully. Thinking about it, maybe I should have done a copykern at this point (otherwise, how would the kernel get to the new drive ... but oh well).

About 50% of the guide calls that were made from that point forward caused a flash and a reboot, with a message of "failed" as the status of the last call. My Tivo would frequently go "dark" (no remote, no channel change, but recording would continue as if the channel had changed).

In addition, my guide data completely disappeared once. Finally, right before the restart would happen (if I forced the call or it did so automatically), the menus would become somewhat sluggish and the video would skip occasionally. I could not run more than 24 hours in a row without having the machine reboot or the Tivo go "dark".

I figured the only thing I could do was verify that the kernel was OK and that the swap file had been initialized properly. I booted the LBA48 CD and used copykern to copy the LBA48 kernel from the PTVUpgrade CD. I plopped the HD right back into the Tivo and have been back up for 72 hours; no sluggishness, 3 successful automatic calls with no failures (and several forced), and best of all, no "dark Tivo".

Three possibilities: 1. the copykern actually fixed the swap file problem (or some other kernel corruption) that existed on my copy of the InstantCake image. 2. I never got the LBA kernel on the Tivo drive since I didn't do copykern (now that I think about it ... this shouldn't have given me the full drive then) or 3. I had a loose connection which was fixed with a reinstall (unlikely).

Hope this helps the rest of you track down your problems ... I am feeling pretty good that my "dark" Tivo has been returned to the light.

*ice*

[icewiz]

Confirmed!

It has been a week and no Dark Tivo and no reboot during call out. The kernel must have been installed incorrectly or something was corrupted.

Copykern took care of the problem.

*ice*

[CyberCowboy]

Sorry for necro'ing a dead thread but I'm new to the tivo community and seem to have been struck by this bug and this is the only forum where I see a solution may have been found.

here's the story

I purchased a HDR212 from e-bay w/ a lifetime sub but no HD for $35 (didn't know when I bought had lifetime or turbonet.) (I think it has lifetime anyway as that's what the properties screen shows)

I used InstantCake to build a 120 GB drive, I went through the GS without a hitch but when it downloaded my cable channels and started to process it keeps locking up. from what I can see it looks like it falls under the "DARK TIVO" thread (seems to be locking up after a call, all the lights go dark, can continue watching channel I'm on for live tv, doesn't respond to remote.)

I see that ICE atleast says he has fixed it but I don't seem to understand how he did it, can someone give a newb very simple walk through instructions to fix this problem so I can join the happy tivo masses?

[pldoolittle]

Confirmed!

It has been a week and no Dark Tivo and no reboot during call out. The kernel must have been installed incorrectly or something was corrupted.

Copykern took care of the problem.


Good info. Mine fixed itself some time many months after it started w/o my help. Cause of fix unknown....

[DaveLessnau]

Well, I thought this had disappeared. But, over four years from when it last happened to me, it happened again (on the HDR112). I don't expect anything to come of this, I just thought I'd report it for the sake of posterity.

[pldoolittle]

Well, I thought this had disappeared. But, over four years from when it last happened to me, it happened again (on the HDR112). I don't expect anything to come of this, I just thought I'd report it for the sake of posterity.

Dave,

Your post may not have been in vain. My Tivo has been flawless since my last post about it fixing itself. In just the last two weeks, it has once again been exhibiting this problem. I have been meaning to come update for a week or so now, and your post spurred me off my rear.

This is speculation at this point, but I have looked into this enough to know that it happens during the initialization of processes that phone home to Tivo. IIRC, specifically the encryption app. The fact that it has shown tendencies to go away for a period, and the rebirth itself leads me to believe it is not hardware. And the fact that you and I have experienced a rebirth at very close time frames leads me to believe that it may originate with the destination side of the "phone home" process.