Series 2 locks with blank screen each morning

quokka · 08-02-2008, 06:12 PM

Hi,

I've look through some threads on the site but none of them seem quite to apply to my situation.

For the last few days TiVo has been locking up with a blank screen in the mornings (or at some time during the day if we don't watch TV until the evening). It is not that the system suddenly craps out while we're watching something (although I suppose that might happen in the future), but that it is blank when I turn the TV on.

The screen is blank and no buttons on the remote cause any change. I cannot get the guide, or get to the main menu with the TiVo button. Play/pause/rewind, etc, don't help. Doing a hard reboot clears up the problem and the box works fine for the rest of the evening.

We have a Series 2 DSR7000/17, running 6.4a-01-2-101. It has a second hard drive (from Weeknees, installed about 18 months ago).

(As the box is not usually connected to a phone line it had been over 100 days since our last successful phone home. I though that this might be causing the problems and ran an extension line to TiVo and called home last night. The same blank screen appeared this morning.)

Cheers,
quokka

skarp · 08-05-2008, 04:30 AM

I have the identical problem

OLdDog · 08-05-2008, 06:03 AM

I doubt that this symptom is a hard drive failure, but it could be.

The length of time that you have gone without calls is not directly related to this kind of problem either. However there have been reports that a large number of messages can cause the TiVo to lock up on an attempt to read them and the only way to clear the messages is a Clear and Delete everything.

I suppose that a large number of messages could cause other problems as well by impacting the usage of the database.

Also any corruption of the database can cause various symptoms, including lockups.

My suggestion is to try to watch anything important and then perform a C&D everything and see if that fixes the problem.

As a last resort you can replace the drive.

There is also a small possibility that the power supply is causing the problem but that, I believe, is unlikely.

dcstager · 08-05-2008, 09:53 AM

Hard drive failure. There's lots of threads over the forum spanning several years of this. It's still a hard drive problem.

quokka · 08-09-2008, 03:49 PM

Hi,

Thanks for the responses (and apologies for not answering sooner).

dcstager: I didn't realize that overnight lockup was a sign of disk failure. I thought disk problems showed up with pixelation and such.

Although we've been seeing some pixelation and tearing recently I've associated them with signal problems as they have been channel specific. I would try doing a full reset but the Olympics make it hard at the moment...

So the prescription is to buy a fresh hard drive and dump the old ones? Our TiVo is about 5 years old and so I'd consider getting a new box, but DirecTV doesn't sell TiVo boxes any more

Cheers,
quokka

litzdog911 · 08-09-2008, 04:38 PM

Yep, time for a new hard drive.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb...?s=&forumid=25

http://www.weaknees.com/index.html

http://tivo.upgrade-instructions.com/

http://www.mfslive.org/

http://www.newreleasesvideo.com/hinsdale-how-to/

http://www.dvrupgrade.com/dvr/stores/1/instantcake.cfm

http://www.9thtee.com/

Ozzie72 · 08-09-2008, 07:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by litzdog911

Yep, time for a new hard drive.

http://www.weaknees.com/index.html

Thanks for posting this link. That's an awesome site! I didn't know there are so many upgrade options, even for the older units. I just picked up an older box (Philips DSR704), and I could definitely handle more than 40GB of recording space.

Don't mean to derail the thread, quokka -- I'm sorry to hear about your misfortune, but at least it looks like you can keep your current box instead of having to get a new one.

quokka · 08-10-2008, 01:45 PM

Thanks for the confirmation, litzdog.

Just this morning our box started freezing up every few minutes and spontaneously rebooting. I also (briefly) saw some messages along the line of "Satellite 2: searching for signal".

I've ordered a new hard drive from WeaKnees: I've used them before and was very happy. Hopefully they'll be able to ship it quickly, as my wife is upset to be missing the Olympics.

Anyway, thanks again for the advice.

Cheers,
quokka70

Dkerr24 · 08-10-2008, 03:43 PM

It's good insurance to have a spare hard drive formatted and ready to go should you experience a drive failure. I keep a spare for each unit ready to hot swap. Should I lose a hard drive, I'll be down maybe 10 mins to swap it out and reboot, especially during big events like the Olympics.

quokka · 08-23-2008, 01:07 PM

Hi again,

I started by doing a full clear and restore (including guided set up).

This actually made the lockup problem go away. Everything was just fine for a week or so, and then the blank screen started to come back, and the system again became unusable.

So, I installed a new hard drive and went through guided set up again. Things appeared to be OK for a couple of days, but when I turned on the TV this morning I saw two things:

1. There was a "Searching for signal: Satellite in 2" message on the screen.

2. There was a frozen TV image on the screen, but the TiVo box wouldn't respond to any inputs from the remote. I had to power cycle the box.

This is starting to feel like a problem with the DirecTiVo box itself, rather than the hard drive. Some channels show up as a mess of pixellation and herky-jerky picture, even though the transponder signal strength is in the mid 80s.

I'm at somewhat of a loss. DirecTiVo boxes are still available on line (such as from WeaKnees) but I'm not 100% sure if buying a new one is necessary. If I do get a new box, will DirecTV lock me into another contract to activate new hardware?

Cheers,
Rory

DataDoc · 08-23-2008, 06:12 PM

It may be a power supply problem. You can do it yourself or have someone else do it for $100. John T Smith posted this info:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb...12#post6599012

sarch99 · 08-25-2008, 08:31 PM

I just started having the same symptoms tonight........sudden reboot, then searching for signal on 2 and freezing. I have a relatively new hard drive, so I don't really think it's the HD. I've pulled the plug for a few minutes and am going to try a clear and delete. It's an unmodified HDVR2. Has anyone called Directv about the problem? I don't want to make the call, as I usually turn out to be the one giving the support to a CSR who knows nothing about Tivo boxes.

Derrick · 08-26-2008, 03:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sarch99

I just started having the same symptoms tonight........sudden reboot, then searching for signal on 2 and freezing. I have a relatively new hard drive, so I don't really think it's the HD. I've pulled the plug for a few minutes and am going to try a clear and delete. It's an unmodified HDVR2. Has anyone called Directv about the problem? I don't want to make the call, as I usually turn out to be the one giving the support to a CSR who knows nothing about Tivo boxes.

Sounds like the problem is with your 2nd tuner. One of ours would freeze, get a pixilated picture, reboot, etc whenever the 2nd tuner was on Disney... then ESPN, then a few other channels in the 200's. I finally swapped it out with another DirecTivo that we were only running 1 cable to and disabled the 2nd tuner. Disney, etc work fine... for now.

sarch99 · 08-26-2008, 08:42 PM

An update......finally did a clear and delete of the Hughes........while doing that, I realized my other unit, an RCA, had failed to record all day because of an Internal Error.........too suspicious to have both units fail on the same day. I'm thinking DTV pushed something yesterday to cause the problem or that I may have a multi-switch problem. I'm leaning toward DTV. Anyway, after I got the Hughes working again, I restarted the RCA and both have been fine ever since. Very strange.