Continuous rebooting. Tivo tells me it is dead.

TheLongshot · 08-26-2010, 07:38 PM

So, I came home to find my Tivo endlessly rebooting. It never got past "Powering Up...". I tried power cycling it. I tried to access Kickstart 54 to check the hard drive. No dice on either.

So, I called Tivo's support. The only thing different they had me try was to unplug everything and reboot. When that didn't work the CSR gave up on it and told me I need to replace it, either with a refurbished HD at $150 or upgrading to a Premiere (at an appropriate price).

What are my options here, since Tivo bailed on me?

shwru980r · 08-26-2010, 07:48 PM

If it's a lifetime unit, then look for a used model without lifetime service and start swapping parts beginning with the hard drive.

If it's not a lifetime unit, then you could find used HDs cheaper than $150 on craigslist or ebay.

netringer · 08-26-2010, 07:48 PM

Replace the hard drive.
or
If it has lifetime, sell it to one of us.

StanSimmons · 08-26-2010, 09:05 PM

In most cases it is a drive failure. Get the model number of your unit, then order either a preformatted drive from dvrupgrade/weaknees or get a blank sata drive and install InstantCake from dvrupgrade.com for your model. More details can be found in the Upgrade or Underground sections of this forum. Preformatted drives can also be found on ebay.

rickwagner50 · 08-26-2010, 09:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheLongshot

So, I came home to find my Tivo endlessly rebooting. It never got past "Powering Up...". I tried power cycling it. I tried to access Kickstart 54 to check the hard drive. No dice on either.

So, I called Tivo's support. The only thing different they had me try was to unplug everything and reboot. When that didn't work the CSR gave up on it and told me I need to replace it, either with a refurbished HD at $150 or upgrading to a Premiere (at an appropriate price).

What are my options here, since Tivo bailed on me?

I had the same issue and it was the hard drive failing. Luckily, I had made a backup of the TIVO drive image and was able to restore the image to a new hard drive. If you don't have an image you can use one of the options mentioned above.

jerrymel · 08-26-2010, 09:21 PM

Mine is started doing the same thing last week. It would manage to boot up without the cablecards in but reboot and go back into the cycle with the insertion of one of them.

TiVo tech support and later Weaknees told me is was the hard drive so I bought a replacement but that didn fix it. There are times when I insert the power cord into the back of the unit that it doesn't restart but with the cover off I can hear a clicking noise from the power supply so I feel fairly sure thats the issue. I'm not ready to pay an additional $100 for a replacement one from weaknees.

I am sending them back the hard drive for refund and looking for either a cheap power supply or a unti being sold for parts. If I'm not successful then I will do the $150 refurbish replacement with Tivo.

TheLongshot · 08-26-2010, 11:09 PM

I have a 500GB drive that failed in a RAID. I'll give it a through error checking and get InstantCake so that I can put it into the Tivo to see if it is a bad hard drive. Thanks.

eisenb11 · 08-27-2010, 01:20 PM

Before using InstantCake, I'd take a look at the drive upgrade and expansion sticky at the top of the Series 3 forum.

If your drive is not completely dead, you may be able to transfer your OS and settings over to the new drive. You may also be able to transfer over your recordings. It'll also save you $40.

I a lot of cases using InstantCake (starting from scratch) means that you're going to have to get your cableco to redo your cablecard info. I believe the transfer method has the possibility of saving you this step.

I just did this yesterday (the transfer method) and moved my OS and settings over from a drive that was failing SMART (tested with kickstart 54). It was pretty painless.

TheLongshot · 08-27-2010, 11:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eisenb11

Before using InstantCake, I'd take a look at the drive upgrade and expansion sticky at the top of the Series 3 forum.

If your drive is not completely dead, you may be able to transfer your OS and settings over to the new drive. You may also be able to transfer over your recordings. It'll also save you $40.

I a lot of cases using InstantCake (starting from scratch) means that you're going to have to get your cableco to redo your cablecard info. I believe the transfer method has the possibility of saving you this step.

I just did this yesterday (the transfer method) and moved my OS and settings over from a drive that was failing SMART (tested with kickstart 54). It was pretty painless.

Gave it a try and no dice. The new drive is exhibiting the same behavior. Time to buy InstantCake.

TheLongshot · 08-28-2010, 12:48 AM

Well, that was a slight improvement. It now gets to "a few more minutes" before it reboots. God, this sucks.

jerrymel · 08-28-2010, 09:44 AM

Are you sure it's not the power supply? Are you able to get it to boot without the CableCards inserted?

Michael3649 · 08-28-2010, 09:58 AM

I have a DirecTivo Sony SAT T-60 that does this every few months. I pull out the drive, run it through all of Seagate's diagnostic tests and the drive is supposedly fine.

Restore the good image and it runs for another few months.

My 2nd SAT T-60 is subject to pretty much the same usage and it doesn't have this problem.

TheLongshot · 08-28-2010, 10:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jerrymel

Are you sure it's not the power supply? Are you able to get it to boot without the CableCards inserted?

No, I'm not sure it isn't the power supply. No one has suggested that in this thread.

And no, it doesn't boot without the CableCard. That was one of the things done back when I talked to the Tivo CSR.

TheLongshot · 08-30-2010, 05:26 PM

Well, dvrupgrade isn't going to be helpful, since they don't have any power supplies in stock. They offered to repair it, but their service price is the same as a refurb from Tivo.

TheLongshot · 09-15-2010, 10:01 PM

Finally got to replace the power supply. No change so the power supply is good. Unless someone else has an idea, it is time to call Tivo and replace it. Bleh.

maddhatter99 · 09-19-2010, 10:35 PM

I had the exact same issue happening, and, using hard drive manufacturer tools and Spinrite from GRC dot com, the drive checked out 100 percent. I also had a spare TiVo drive (original from another upgrade) that booted the unit with no problems, so I then knew it was not the TiVo unit itself, including power supply.

So I did a bunch of Googling, and finally came across a post that suggested a bad bootpage. I used WinMFS to fix this and things have been great since. This allowed me to keep the configuration and recordings on the supposed "bad" drive.

WinMFS has two bootpage fix options, and the documentation says to try fix 1, and if that does not work, try fix 2. I can not post links yet, but, Google for WinMFS and click on the Full Guide link, and scroll down until you find the entry for Fix Bootpage Option 1 & 2.

As you have read, there are many issues that could cause your problem. There is supposed to be a kickstart code to fix this but I could never get it to initiate.

Don't know if the WinMFS fix will help you, but, if is worth a shot.

Good luck!