Kickstart not working.

First off, here is my system, I have a Tivo Series 2 40 hour unit with a 250 gig hd added to it. It has been working for years...

The other day, my tivo rebooted by itself. During reboot, it became stuck in the "Welcome Powering up" screen. After literally reading the forum's here for hours, I decided that I was probably having a hard drive issue, so I decided to try a kickstart. During boot up, the light never changes to orange for me to do the kickstart. How long do I need to hold down the pause button? It doesnt seem to be responding. I even changed the batteries in my remote to make sure the remote was working correctly. Anyway kickstart is doing nothing.

Here is what I was thinking about doing.... I want to take both hard drives out of the tivo and run diagnostics on them with software from both drive manufacturers. I have read not to connect a tivo drive to a windows pc. Luckily I setup a Ubuntu linux box a few weeks ago, to try and learn this OS. So if I have to I want to try and run diagnostics using my linux box. The only problem is, is that it will be a little learning curve for me... Not a big deal, I set it up to learn on anyway.

So if that doesnt work, or if everyone thinks the diagnostics isnt the way to go, then I want to put a new image on the main drive. From what I understand Tivo isnt too found of this practice and they try to shut down these sites when they find them... So anyway, can somebody point me to a good set of instructions on imaging a drive?


Also here is some weirdness that happened a few weeks before my tivo died. In the Music, Photos and more section, I have somebody else's pc "shared" files showing up on my Tivo. This concerns me, because the owner of these files has scanned her drivers license and social security card into this shared folder. Anyway, I called Tivo and they said they are not able to contact these people and help them not share their files with me (or possibly) everyone. Tivo was not very helpful with this problem. One time I called them, the girl didnt believe me, she thought they were actually coming from my pc.... Strange since I didnt have the Tivo to go software on my pc at that time. And the next time I called in, this tech said it wasnt possible either, because he has spent days trying to hack into other peoples tivo to go software. I couldnt believe he admitted to me that he has tried this. He thought that I might have a wireless card picking up somebody else's network. I currently have a totally wired network, nothing wireless at all. Anyway once I get up and running I am going to try and contact this family and alert them to their private info being shared. I just thought it would be better for Tivo to contact them, than me... some stranger off the street. Anybody every heard of this happening before?

 

Ok, so none of my ideas above worked... Instant cake didn't solve my problem, on either hard drive (either alone or together), so I think it is more than a hard drive issue... Anyway, I called Tivo to put my account on hold till I could afford to buy a new tivo, and they worked out a deal with me. And now I have a new Tivo coming! Yeay!