4 Lights Flashing on Bolt

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Please Note: This thread is for the Bolt, not Bolt+. I am no longer using the Bolt, I have upgraded to the Bolt+. Considering the Bolt+ has a 3TB HDD, I personally think this is "enough" for me and won't be attempting to upgrade the drive. Bolt+ Users, feel free to report any such 4 Flashing Lights issues on this thread, if you choose to upgrade your drives. The software may be identical, anyways so any behaviors may be the same regardless if using the Bolt or Bolt+.

I upgraded my Bolt to 4TBs a few months ago. It was working fine until this week. TWICE, there were instances were all four lights were flashing. The first time, I just unplugged my Bolt for 20 minutes. This fixed the problem. It didn't work tonight.

I will say that I had Verizon FiOS Internet/TV/Phone. Starting in April, Verizon sold off their lines in a few states to Frontier. I'm one of those states (in California).

So here's the question. What exactly is the problem? Is it my TV provider going out? (which could be the case considering there had been several complaints about Frontier since the switch) Is there something wrong w/ my Bolt? (hard drive, firmware update)? I noticed that my Bolt had been running hot this week, but to be honest, I hadn't checked on heat prior to the problem.

EDIT 5/14/2016

• Make - STDR4000100
• Drive type - Internal
• Installation Method - Installed drive, run setup to 1st screen, unplugged it, plugged into PC, ran MFSR1003.zip, plugged back into TIVO and re-ran setup to finish, done.
• Date of Hard Drive Upgrade 3/13/2016 - Was working flawlessly until 5/13/2016
• Confirmed that my Frontier FiOS cable service is working just fine (still had DVR) and that the culprit is my TiVo Bolt.
• Possible that the 20.6.1 Update caused a problem??

EDIT 5/15/2016

• I E-mailed TiVo support on 5/14/2016. Heard back the next day. I explained that I have a TiVo Bolt 500 GB with 4 lights flashing and have owned it for a few months and that it worked fine up until the last few days when the update was pushed out.
• I tried their suggestion: Unplug the CableCARD and everything else, except for the HDMI, then plug the Power cable back in. For me, this included the CableCARD, Power cable and Coax cable. This did nothing.
• A friend of mine installed the 4TB HDD. It had worked fine since Mid-March. When I have a chance, I'll have him come over and swap the old one back in.

EDIT 11/11/2016

If you decided to purchase the STDR4000100, check the firmware version before you do ANYTHING. I'm not sure how to do it. If you have firmware version 0004, do not even bother. It will not work. If your firmware version is 0001, it probably will work. Chances are, if you buy this drive NEW, it'll have the most updated firmware, 0004, unless there's a newer firmware revision.

Source: Starting with Post #366 - 4TB 2.5" drive for Bolt

There IS another solution, but it's not pretty. Search around the forum for those that've replaced the SATA cable, and either cut a hole in the back of the Bolt and mounted the port to it, or left the cover open and plugged the cable in. In either case, you have to purchase a WD Red HDD and put it inside a specific Rosewill external enclosure, so you can manage the temperature. You are limited to an 8TB HDD. The cable is probably $5 and the external enclosure is about $40, give or take. I will caution you in saying that I have not followed up with individuals that have tried this approach to see if their Bolts are still working or not. If you have the Seagate drive, do not even try to purchase this particular enclosure, along with a bay size converter. It won't fix your problems. I tried that and still got the same issues. Had I known about the link posted above beforehand, I wouldn't have bothered, but unfortunately this information came out much later.

EDIT 11/21/2016 (To Be Continued)
Here are a list of known drives that will fail, that is, may or may work under certain conditions and may end up failing after an unspecific amount of time.

• Seagate - STDR4000100 - This drive may work if and only if the firmware on the drive is 0001. You must have purchased this drive early on for such condition to exist. If you have this drive, return it if you can and get something different or use it for a different application. Use Seagate Tools for Windows to determine which firmware version you have, if it's not listed on the device itself

EDIT 11/22/2017 (To Be Continued)

Wow I haven't edited this OP in just over a year. I've had zero problems with my Bolt+. I highly recommend the upgrade, even though it may be costly, and there may not be a guarantee that TiVo would transfer the service over. I'm not sure how that works.

I plan on editing this post again very soon, so stay tuned. For now, I do not recommend trying to upgrade your Bolt's Hard Drive. Even the user who had reported no problems on both of their Bolts, finally started having an issue on one of their Bolts. They were using the aforementioned Seagate drive, Firmware 001. So, it doesn't sound like having Firmware 001 is a sure bet, but more along the lines of "YMMV".

I'm going to do some research on what users have reported, using the other solution for expanding the drive, which is replacing the exiting SATA cable with something that connects to an external HDD. That will be my next update. Considering that I haven't really looked into this in over a year, I haven't kept up. So, it'll take me some time to do the research, but I'll try and compile it sooner, than later.

 

1. Make - STDR4000100
2. Internal
3. Installed drive, run setup to 1st screen, unplugged it, plugged into PC, ran MFSR1003.zip, plugged back into TIVO and re-ran setup to finish, done.

I looked at that other thread, I don't see anyone reporting that problem.

 

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Who is your cable provider? I'm thinking the problem MIGHT have to do with the update but I want to narrow it down. Again,I was on Verizon FiOS but now am on Frontier FiOS (since Verizon sold their lines in California (and other states) to Frontier).

Is there any way to rollback the update and prevent it from updating again?

EDIT: I still hadn't returned my DVR to Verizon (now Frontier) when I installed the TiVo Bolt/TiVo Minis. I unplugged one of my minis and re-installed the DVR. I can confirm that my cable service (Frontier FiOS) is working just fine, and that the culprit is indeed my TiVo Bolt. The question still remains: What's wrong with my TiVo Bolt? It seems to be all centered around the 20.6.1 update from this week, but why and how can it be resolved (if possible)?

 

I went ahead and contacted TiVo support regarding the problem. What I told them was that I have 4 lights flashing rapidly and it has been happening over almost the last week I think it happened Wednesday night, I power cycled it and it seemed to have worked fine after that, but on Friday night, it happened again and a power cycle did not work. This was all I mentioned. I did not mention the fact that I'd swapped out my TiVo hard drive for a larger one. I figured that if I would have, they wouldn't have helped me, since this (probably) voids my warranty.

Their response was to unplug everything except for the HDMI cable (even remove the CableCARD), then plug in only the power. Unfortunately, this did not work. Still, all 4 lights were flashing. They also claimed that my TiVo Bolt had been working "several days" before this started so they could not "assume" that the update was the cause of this. I was also told there is no way to rollback an update.

Has anyone tried plugging in the original hard drive to resolve the issue? I have not done this, yet.

 

Not funny. Spam. Reported.

 

Did I say I "called" them? No, I said I "contacted" them. You do know there are different ways to contact someone, right? Unless you've been living in the 1800s.

No I haven't plugged in my old drive. I didn't do the upgrade, a friend of mine did. I haven't had a chance to have him come over and help me out with this.

 

I have no idea what I did, but I somehow got my Bolt running again.

I was a bit impatient, was going to attempt putting in the old hard drive myself, got all the screws out and got chicken about trying to pull the last part off (I got the part that runs over part of the hard drive, off). I went ahead and put it back together. Rather than plugging it completely in, I re-installed my CableCARD, and plugged in my HDMI and Power. It booted up. It told me I had no internet, which was obvious considering I hadn't plugged in my coax and I run off MoCA. I plugged in my coax and it worked. I checked my firmware version and it looked like it upgraded to the newest version 20.6.1. It has so far been running for 6 hours and even recorded my shows that were scheduled. All in all, my TiVo was unplugged for about 2 1/2 days, with the exception of a couple of checks here and there (to see if the 4 lights were still flashing), which took about maybe 10-15 minutes each before I unplugged them.

Is it possible that the new update might have caused overheating issues? Prior to the update, I know my TiVo was running hot and loud, but this seemed normal anyways considering it had been widely reported. On what I consider to be a similar note, I had rooted my Android phone recently and installed different ROMs and kernels, one of which would cause overheating to my phone, but there was a simple fix for that, which was to clear cache. THAT SAID, do we need to do something similar, like clear cache (if that's even possible on a TiVo) and could it be done without losing recordings? Otherwise, is there a way to backup and restore recordings?

 

I also realized that I'm connected to one less mini. I changed it out for the DVD that I hadn't returned yet. Not sure if adding this back into my network might add to the failure.

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Do you have any minis on your network?

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