My Tivo is stuck on "Powering Up" screen.

[Tivoloverljc]

I have had my Tivo for less than 2 years. I was wondering if the hard drive is shot . What is the best/cheapest way of replacing it ? Through Tivo Exchange or just purchase a new hard drive ?

[HomeUser]

You can get quite a large drive for $150. If your drive is bad you will need to get a backup image for your model of TiVo.

Option 1 purchase a preloaded drive from one of this forums sponsors.
Option 2 get InstantCake from PTV Upgrade with an image for your TiVo.
Option 3 find a kind TiVo fan who can send you an image from the same model.

[dobbie1]

I would recommend option 2 or 3. I tried option 1 and the drive I received did not boot up. I ended up having to restore an image on the drive myself. The directions and tools that are provided on the board are very good, so spending a little time upfront yourself can save you time and money in the long run.

[TCmullet]

I'm new, and my Sony SVR-2000 is acting like that too. But my situation is a little different.

My Tivo was thrown out by someone in the neighborhood and I salvaged it. This was in summer 2004. The unit has worked pretty well, except that the clock has been slowly drifting. (About 6 or 7 minutes off by now.) I have not and do not plan to subscribe to the service; I only want to use it as a simple PVR. I've heard that I cannot get the clock fixed unless I let the modem connect to the service. I have not allowed that to happen as I fear some kind of system disabling action by Tivo. I constantly get an innocuous warning that it's been a long time since dialing in. I just press select and continue. As I said, the clock drift has been the only drawback up til now.

Problem now is this... I had reason to unplug the ac cord. I forgot to notice that the unit was on, and now I get a permanent "Your recorder is starting up. Please wait a moment..."

I have learned how to take the 30GB drive out and attach it successfully to a Win98 PC as a slave drive (simply changing a jumper). The PC bios sees the drive okay, and I used Maxtor's testing program to test the drive (read-only tests), and all is okay.

I don't want to change drives, replace drives, backup, extract, or anything. I think some kind of control file has been damaged and I'd like to get the thing working again, even if the old tv shows leftover on it are lost. I've acquired mfstools 2.0 CD image, but there doesn't seem to be anything in there to diagnose or fix damaged Tivo control files. (When it booted up, a whole bunch of junk went by on the screen fast. I think I noticed that it unlocked my Tivo drive.)

Is there some kind of Windows-based program that can look at my temporarily attached Tivo drive, check everything out, and repair anything damaged? Like I said, I'm not feeling like I HAVE to upgrade any hardware or software; I just want to get it working the way it was before I stupidly unplugged the cord. (Fixing the clock would be nice though.)

I've tried reseating the IDE connections in the Tivo, with no effect. The fact that the drive is being successfully accessed on my PC makes me believe that the drive is fine, albeit with some of the data damaged.

[dobbie1]

TC,
I believe you have created a problem for yourself by booting into Windows. You may have what is referred to as a "locked drive" now. Even though you don't want to upgrade your hardware, I would recommend reading the "How to section" in the upgrade forum.

Others on the forum may provide a better response.

Wish I could provide a better answer.

[albrandwood]

Originally Posted by TCmullet

I'm new, and my Sony SVR-2000 is acting like that too. But my situation is a little different.

My Tivo was thrown out by someone in the neighborhood and I salvaged it. This was in summer 2004. The unit has worked pretty well, except that the clock has been slowly drifting. (About 6 or 7 minutes off by now.) I have not and do not plan to subscribe to the service; I only want to use it as a simple PVR. I've heard that I cannot get the clock fixed unless I let the modem connect to the service. I have not allowed that to happen as I fear some kind of system disabling action by Tivo. I constantly get an innocuous warning that it's been a long time since dialing in. I just press select and continue. As I said, the clock drift has been the only drawback up til now.

When your (S1) TiVo calls in, it sets the time first. Once the time is set, it will then authenticate with Tivo, and confirm the current subscription status. At that point TiVo will tell your S1 that the subscription is not active, and your machine will hang up the phone ... the net result: Time will be updated. Tivo will _NOT_ do anything to your box.

Originally Posted by TCmullet

Problem now is this... I had reason to unplug the ac cord. I forgot to notice that the unit was on, and now I get a permanent "Your recorder is starting up. Please wait a moment..."

I have learned how to take the 30GB drive out and attach it successfully to a Win98 PC as a slave drive (simply changing a jumper). The PC bios sees the drive okay, and I used Maxtor's testing program to test the drive (read-only tests), and all is okay.

BAD idea connecting your harddrive to ANY Windows (though at least it wasn't XP which would have rendered it useless for the TiVo) ... the physical drive may be ok, but the data is probably corrupted...

Originally Posted by TCmullet

I don't want to change drives, replace drives, backup, extract, or anything. I think some kind of control file has been damaged and I'd like to get the thing working again, even if the old tv shows leftover on it are lost. I've acquired mfstools 2.0 CD image, but there doesn't seem to be anything in there to diagnose or fix damaged Tivo control files. (When it booted up, a whole bunch of junk went by on the screen fast. I think I noticed that it unlocked my Tivo drive.)

There are no tools for editing the TiVo Database.

Originally Posted by TCmullet

Is there some kind of Windows-based program that can look at my temporarily attached Tivo drive, check everything out, and repair anything damaged? Like I said, I'm not feeling like I HAVE to upgrade any hardware or software; I just want to get it working the way it was before I stupidly unplugged the cord. (Fixing the clock would be nice though.)

There is NO windows based program for this. Your best bet is to get another harddrive and "upgrade" or "replace" the drive. Though if your control files are screwed, that won't help...

There are 2 reasons for this ...
a) the drive partitions are designed for Linux, and not readable under dos (or Win9x)
b) attaching the drive to a machine running XP will render it unoperable under Linux ... which would mean if you didnt have a problem before, you would after.
Since there aren't that many win9x users left, and winXp will destroy the drive, there is no demand for windows based utilities.

Originally Posted by TCmullet

I've tried reseating the IDE connections in the Tivo, with no effect. The fact that the drive is being successfully accessed on my PC makes me believe that the drive is fine, albeit with some of the data damaged.

Corrupted data can not be repaired.

Honestly, your best bet is to try a new(er) harddrive. If you need a "clean" image, I recommend that you send a private message to "StanSimmons" and request one ...

@

[TCmullet]

Originally Posted by albrandwood

When your (S1) TiVo calls in, it sets the time first. Once the time is set, it will then authenticate with Tivo, and confirm the current subscription status. At that point TiVo will tell your S1 that the subscription is not active, and your machine will hang up the phone ... the net result: Time will be updated. Tivo will _NOT_ do anything to your box.

Thanks so much for this! I'll use it if I ever get the unit up again.

BAD idea connecting your harddrive to ANY Windows (though at least it wasn't XP which would have rendered it useless for the TiVo) ... the physical drive may be ok, but the data is probably corrupted...

I thought I read distinctly somewhere that as long as it was below Win2k, there would be no corrupting update of the drive. In any case, when I boot up with the mfstool2.0 CD, Win98 does not boot. Of course you were concerned about 98 *ever* booting with the drive attached, and yes, it has, although 98 obviously doesn't show the drive.

There are no tools for editing the TiVo Database.

But after all these years, am I the first one to have some kind of corruption?? Surely someone else might have had a similar problem. Could I pay someone to fix the unit? (Hopefully locally.)

There is NO windows based program for this. Your best bet is to get another harddrive and "upgrade" or "replace" the drive. Though if your control files are screwed, that won't help...

There are 2 reasons for this ...
a) the drive partitions are designed for Linux, and not readable under dos (or Win9x)

Yes, I know they are Linux, but I thought software could be written to do anything definable. And I figured that somebody might have written a Linux/Windows interface by now. Most Tivo users are Windows users, although I would agree that fewer and fewer of us have Win98 dual-booting on machines these days.

Honestly, your best bet is to try a new(er) harddrive. If you need a "clean" image, I recommend that you send a private message to "StanSimmons" and request one ...

Is there any reason why I can't keep the same drive? I was very happy w/the 30GB that I have. And as the Maxtor/Quantum utility seems to say it all checks out, I'd really like to stay with it. If I can stay with it, I'll write for and try that clean image trick.

Believe it or not, in the windows realm, it took me years of kicking and screaming to get off of Dos 6.22 and start using Win95/98. You would think that I'd love to enter commands in linux. Now that I've gotten very used to a mouse, I've kinda lost interest in typing. Funny. Also, I know nothing of Linux command prompt commands.

[TCmullet]

Thanks to any/all of you... I decided to buy InstantCake. As I wanted to keep my data-corrupted 30GB drive, I had to download PTVbake-special (case sensitive!). I'm happy to say that at this moment, my Tivo has made the call, set the clock, hung up, and is now 67% of the way thru the Importing. So I will be very happy! Furthermore, I now have the tools/background to upgrade to a bigger drive sometime! Case Closed!!

Only real hiccup was that my 9GB drive had to be unlocked via qunlock.exe before bake-special would work.

[TCmullet]

Well.... I'm not quite so happy. After going thru all the Tivo setup process, I powered down (via the power button on the remote), unplugged all cables, installed the box on my shelf, reattached cables and power cord, and bang! It's stuck on powering up AGAIN. I took the drive out to my PC and it was locked (9GB). Unlocking (via Qunlock on the PC) didn't solve it, so I am now using InstantCake AGAIN. What could be causing this Tivo system to lock up?

[TCmullet]

Not all mysteries solved necessarily, but I've had success. I couldn't get the 30GB original to work; everything from changing IDE cable to the jumper on the drive (they have been known to go bad), to powering the drive via an old XT power supply I had laying around. Was using the PTV-LBA48 v4.04 patch to InstantCake.

I discovered I had an 80GB Maxtor drive I could sufficient empty so I could fdisk/remove the dos partitions. I used the plain InstantCake, as 80GB is greater than 30GB. Still did not work. Then, because of some old discussions about the PC computer possibly being the culprit (and my inability to use a different PC as an oven), I booted the PTV-LBA48 again, running bake-special. My PC is a 1ghz P3. I specified options as though it was a plain InstantCake run. It worked! I have unplugged the SVR2000 several times since clearing and reseting everything. Comes back on fine!

My guess is that there is something in the PTV-LBA48 patch (using PTVbake-special) that is somehow different than on the plain InstantCake, even though I'm using manual options to be the same as what InstantCake would have done.

So now I have 80GB instead of 30GB; a nice upgrade, especially as I didn't strongly feel the need. But will be nice to have a larger backlog of shows. Heck, if nothing else, I no longer have to juggle the start/stop times in light of a 6-minute (and gradually increasing) drift. Thank you AlBrandwood for that one very valuable piece of safety news; that dialing in will correct the clock, but not destroy my box for lack of a subscription. That tip alone was probably worth half the long day I spent wrestling with all this! And now that I have more current software and experience under the belt, I may do more upgrading in the future, like networking, extraction, etc.

Thank you, thank you!