Series 2 stuck on powering up

randym44 · 11-17-2006, 10:19 PM

Any suggestions for me. My 2 yr old Series 2 is stuck on the Welcome, Powering Up screen. I've tried unplugging to no avail. Tivo support has told me my box is essentially blown up and need a new one. Help if you can please.

Thanks

sbl · 11-17-2006, 11:22 PM

Sounds like you hard drive has failed most likely. You can buy a preconfigured drive on Ebay or read the forums and figure out how to image one yourself...

wscannell · 11-18-2006, 07:55 AM

Preconfigured hard drives are also available from the store on this forum.

If you want to do it yourself, you can get an image via Instantcake from ptvupgrade.com.

ShawnDoc · 11-18-2006, 12:11 PM

I had the same problem this morning. It had downloaded the new service update, which then proceeded to brick my Tivo. I pulled the plug, waiting 30 sec, then plugged it back in. It got to the Powering Up screen, stayed there for about 5 minutes, and right now it says its installing the service pack.

So hopefully in an hour or so my Tivo will return to functional.

jjberger2134 · 11-18-2006, 12:49 PM

I agree with sbl, sounds like a hard drive failure. Visit the stickies in the Upgrade Center from the Main Menu of this forum on how to image a new drive. As previously said, you can also buy a pre-configured plug and play drive.

Keep in mind, as a rule of thumb - The least expensive repair option is to repair it yourself by purchasing a blank drive, putting the correct image on the drive yourself. The most expensive repair option is to buy a plug and play drive with the correct image already installed.

To buy an high capacity and inexpensive drive visit www.outpost.com and look at their daily hard drive specials. You can probably get a 300GB drive for around $70-$80. Then to image the drive, visit www.ptvupgrade.com to download and burn the correct Instant Cake image for your Tivo. To get the image on your new drive you will need to open a computer, connect the new drive, and boot from the Instant Cake CD (be careful to follow the steps closely). Then just unplug your TiVo, open the case, and replace the drive.

To buy a pre-formatted drive visit www.weaknees.com or www.ptvupgrade.com or the store on this website. Generally speaking you will pay anywhere from $75 to $150 to have an image put on the drive for you.

Good luck.

8486 · 11-18-2006, 12:58 PM

Happened to mine too this morning. Pulled plug and left unplugged for a few minutes the plugged back in and its been stuck on "powering up" for 30 minutes now. Just thought I'd post in case it's a trend....

Raff · 11-18-2006, 02:56 PM

I think it may be a trend... mine started to do the same thing yesterday (11/17)..
powers up... then says 'almost there... .just a few more minutes'

8486 · 11-18-2006, 07:43 PM

It's never left the "Powering up" screen after a few unplugs and hours of sitting. Doesn't look good.

izaguirres · 11-19-2006, 04:08 PM

Mine has been on "almost there" since yesterday. I tried unplugging it overnight with no luck. Has anyone had any success with theirs coming back to life?

Gregor · 11-19-2006, 04:33 PM

Occasionally they will come back to life, if you leave them plugged in, but really it's just an indication of a hard drive going bad.

Weaknees sells preconfigured drives that work very well.

pmpappas · 11-19-2006, 04:34 PM

(My apologies for cut/paste of this exitsing post. I have not posted enough for the forum to allow me to imbed url's - or so it seems)
I've seen several reports of problems with the 8.1 service update on Series 2 units causing them to "hang" after the restart to install the update. Restarting the Tivo's don't seem to help. Hopefully my experience will give you some hope if you are having a similar problem. I have four 80 hour Series 2 units (one a Humax). This morning one of my regular Tivos showed the "it may this take an hour or a bit longer to install this update" (close enough :-) screen. Normally my Tivo's do their restarts around 2 am. I'm 99% sure it was performing the update at about 4 am. To make a long story short, it appears it took about TEN HOURS to complete the update. During those last few hours when I was awake I never heard the hard drive active (and in my experience its very easy to hear on all my Tivo's). The silence coupled with the reports of problems finally made me decide to pull the plug and restart it myself. Turns out my wife had discovered just a few minutes before the tivo was up and running (and showing 8.1 installed). Everything SEEMS to work so far. So, my advice (and your mileage may vary) is to leave the beast alone for 24 hours before you give up. One of my other units is pending restart and I assume the rest won't be far behind. I plan to wait at least 24 hours after restart before I assume the installation failed. Wish me luck (you too :-).

shasteve · 11-20-2006, 08:27 AM

This happened to me too. It was hung up on "just a few minutes more" for hours. I unplugged it overnight and when I plugged it in this morning, it started up and appears to be working fine.

Now I want to know if this is a sign of a dying hard drive or just a software glitch. Is there a way to tell if my TiVo was in the middle of a service upgrade when this happened? Or if I got a service upgrade recently?

randym44 · 11-20-2006, 10:56 AM

I left mine on overnight after the initial "blow up" so it was displaying the powering up screen for about 12 hours and never came back to life. It was just a 40 hr Series 2 and had been wanting to upgrade anyway so I went and got a new Series 2. Just happened to blow up the night before the OSU/Michigan game and needed a Tivo for the game. Now I might give it a try and let it run for a day or so and see if it ever comes back. Only concern is to get the full rebate with the new box, I had to cancel my old Tivo service and activate a new one since Tivo told me my old box was dead anyway. Anyone know if there's any chance of the old box coming back to life without an active subscription on it? I would imagine the software would still run so I could see if it works or not, but just wouldn't be able to do any tivo-ing.

izaguirres · 11-20-2006, 05:24 PM

well, mine has been on almost there for over 24 hours now. I think it's dead.

wscannell · 11-20-2006, 06:05 PM

If your TiVo stays on "powering up", it most likely is never starting to boot from the disk - means bad hard disk.

rpmkel · 11-21-2006, 09:42 PM

Seems like everyone is having the same problem. My Tivo Series 2 has working like a dream for two years. On Sunday I get the message that it has downloaded the new Fall 2006 Update and today it won't run more than five minutes before it freezes on the Welcome! Powering Up screen. Sounds to me more like a problem with the new Update than with a failed hard drive. Especially if everyone is having the same problem after the Update is installed. Has anyone found a way to fix this?

bru2al1ty · 11-22-2006, 09:08 PM

It happened to me this morning. My Tivo has been working fine for the past 3 months and now it just keeps restarting. At first after the just a minute almost there screen it showed the message that it had updated and to push select when done reading which inbetween the restarts i did. now it just blanks to a black screen after the almost there screen and restarts indefinetly for the past 14 hours. But before this my tivo was perfect not one glitch or problem. i received the same fall update the poster before mentioned. My tivo isn't even 1 year old so how can the hard drive be bad?? sorry its a series 2 tivo with 80 hour drive. Anybody know what to do to fix this??

wscannell · 11-22-2006, 09:33 PM

Try unplugging the TiVo, wait 30 seconds, then plug it back in.

bru2al1ty · 11-22-2006, 09:35 PM

i did twice didn't change anything with the power up and restart cycle.

windracer · 11-22-2006, 09:43 PM

Maybe a kickstart would help?

http://alt.org/wiki/index.php/TivoDiagnostics

All three of my S2 boxes received 8.1 without any problem.

bru2al1ty · 11-22-2006, 09:45 PM

Thanks for the advice but my tivo doesn't have a serial connection on the back and i get the almost there screen.

windracer · 11-22-2006, 10:01 PM

You don't need a serial cable (ignore that section). Focus on this part:

Quote:

While booting the power light will change from green to yellow as the line 'checkpanic' in the rc.sysinit gets executed. This happens a few seconds before the screen changes from the startup image to "almost there" and it's your cue to hold down a button (use pause) on the remote to trigger a panic. (You can also press and hold the pause key immediately after reboot.) When the record light changes yellow (or both lights turn yellow), key in one of the following sequences:

I would probably try 57, which will trigger a green screen of death as it runs mfscheck and checks the HD.

bru2al1ty · 11-23-2006, 07:42 PM

ok thanks i'll try that. my wife decided to move the tv stand and all our components to rearrange our living room so ill do that later tonight.

smoothster · 11-24-2006, 12:44 AM

People having problems should try unplugging the network adapter if you have one.

I have 2 different tivos and none of my wireless adapters or wired adapters work anymore with 8.1.

I was stuck on reboot. Unplugging the adapters allowed the tivo to come up.

bru2al1ty · 11-24-2006, 01:56 AM

i tried 57, 58, 52, and 56. the tivo makes it to the main menu and i can scroll up and down from now playing list to the new messages but it will inevitably restart on its own and off we go again... I'm curious why it only did this after the stupid fall update.

bru2al1ty · 11-24-2006, 01:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by smoothster

People having problems should try unplugging the network adapter if you have one.

I have 2 different tivos and none of my wireless adapters or wired adapters work anymore with 8.1.

I was stuck on reboot. Unplugging the adapters allowed the tivo to come up.

I did that too but still keeps doing it i even made sure i had nothing else connected beside the video and power cord..

steve614 · 11-24-2006, 08:01 AM

It's a conspiracy! Someone needs to get rid of overstocked HDD's and bribed Tivo to put extra code in the update to wipe out weak hard drives!

rpmkel · 11-26-2006, 09:53 AM

Not sure if this will help anyone but after getting 8.1 installed on 11/19 and then being frozen for two days, 11/21 and 11/22 -- and being told by Tivo customer service that it sounded like my hard drive had failed and that I had to take it up with Humax -- it looks like my Tivo got a download Thursday night, 11/23 that fixed the problem. It's now working fine again. The only thing I did was to delete aboout seven hours of programs to free up some space on the harddrive.

Michalek · 11-29-2006, 08:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sbl

Sounds like you hard drive has failed most likely. You can buy a preconfigured drive on Ebay or read the forums and figure out how to image one yourself...

Or you can waste your time and money buying a new hard drive, downloading a $20 dollar imaging software and still have the same stupid problem like I did.

Now I have to go buy a new one after spending $100 and two days dinking around with it.

TiVotion · 11-29-2006, 09:21 PM

How odd. I own 4 TiVos, and suddenly TODAY, one of them - a 540-series box - is stuck on the "Powering Up" screen too. Probably about a year old.

Never happened before. I find it really odd that all these hard drives decided to die on the same day/week, but I guess anything is possible...