Direct TV DVR Won't boot. Are shows recoverable?

doyling · 08-28-2007, 07:38 AM

I have a neighbor who bought a Direct TV DVR on Ebay with some type of hacked software and a 500 gig hard drive. She travels quite a bit and records several weeks worth of shows at a time. The concern is that her drive or software may be on the way out. At times it pixelates, and now it simply won't boot. Its stuck on the "powering up" screen. The issues as I figure them are:

If software is corrupt, is there a version of InstantCake that can reload a new drive? I believe there is.

Is there a way to get the shows off if the original software is kaput? I am hoping that perhaps Instant Cake can bake a new drive and MFtools can move the shows from the old drive to the new one. Is this possible?

Does Direct TV recognize the green screen of death repair system?

I am not sure what model number her unit is, perhaps R10.

Thank You
Patrick
Go Bears!

TonyTheTiger · 08-28-2007, 08:12 AM

The short answer is no. Any upgrade/replacement is going to involve a clean drive or at least a clear and delete all, so the programs are lost.

For more detailed info on how to handle the process, head over to the TiVo Underground forum.

doyling · 08-28-2007, 07:18 PM

Thanks Tony I was afraid you would say that. Hopefully the GSoD worked for her. Is it the same for a Phillips Direct TV as a regular Tivo? I imagine it is.

TonyTheTiger · 08-28-2007, 08:28 PM

'fraid so.

cramer · 08-28-2007, 08:38 PM

Long answer: Maybe. But it's certainly more work. Clone the drive, sector by sector, to a new drive. Put the cloned drive in and see if it boots. It might still green screen if the database was damaged from bad sectors. Just leave it running -- if the drive has an activity light, see if it's doing anything. Depending on the situation, it may be running an mfsfix under the GSOD. If not, there's a kickstart code to force it... search the forums (or google) for details; I know it's been posted a few times. (except for the S3 eSATA trick, those codes work on all tivos)

skittish · 09-01-2007, 11:17 PM

The symptom of not booting could be related to localized hard drive damage, or it could indicate that vast amounts of the hard drive are hosed. If you can pull the drive and put it in a PC running linux, then there are ways to rescue and re-insert the previously recorded shows back into the fixed tivo (assuming you are able to replace the drive and get a working tivo OS installed on it). It depends on how much damage has been done to the MFS database to determine if any recorded shows are viable.

Dkerr24 · 09-02-2007, 10:21 AM

Unless they were irreplaceable family photos, hardly worth the effort. It's just TV programs.

john-duncan-yoyo · 09-03-2007, 05:48 PM

There have been reports of SpinRite working to repair such problems. If you have a copy or don't minding spending $89 to try it I would give it a shot.

http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

doyling · 09-08-2007, 10:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by skittish

The symptom of not booting could be related to localized hard drive damage, or it could indicate that vast amounts of the hard drive are hosed. If you can pull the drive and put it in a PC running linux, then there are ways to rescue and re-insert the previously recorded shows back into the fixed tivo (assuming you are able to replace the drive and get a working tivo OS installed on it). It depends on how much damage has been done to the MFS database to determine if any recorded shows are viable.

Thank you for the help. So far the drive is cloning to another 500 gig drive. Its been running for 4 days and is up to 460000 of 475000 megabytes. I installed a new hard drive in the TiVo with an InstantCake image and it did boot fine so its not a hardware issue. I have been reading about corrupt Direct TV push to TiVo units. So, her original OS may be scrambled, but the shows may still be fine.

I installed Ubuntu on a spare computer running SATA and then attached a spare TiVo hard drive on the IDE Slave. The drive shows in device manager. I am not familiar enough with Linux to determine what I am seeing. Go and laugh, did the second drive merge into the directory structure with the SATA drive? I am digging around and can not find the drive on its own, so I can not see what inside of it. I would appreciate any help. I am really giving this a go but not sure where to go from here.

Thank You

Patrick
Go Bears

doyling · 09-08-2007, 01:11 PM

Ouch. After 4 days of running, I got an error stating Restore failed Internal Error 3.tes at 97.76%.

Any suggestions?

doyling · 09-08-2007, 02:57 PM

Hey got it to work. I plugged the new drive in, even though it failed, and it booted up properly. I am wondering if there is a way to connect DirecTV units with a USB NIC like regular TiVo units. I plugged mine in and it did not recognize. I have some stuff I want to move over with Tivo.net but I am not sure if a USB NIC is supported.

ForrestB · 09-08-2007, 04:36 PM

Wired and wireless USB to Ethernet adapters are not supported by DirecTV's installed software - you'll need to pull the Tivo hard drive, install it in a PC and hack it. See Zipper support for more info

doyling · 09-10-2007, 07:47 PM

Thank You Forrest for your help. I am just going to leave well enough alone at this point, its frustrating that DirecTV does not feel customers deserve all the features.