Multiple Reboots tonight

Do you have an external drive connected? A loose eSATA cable cause cause spontaneous reboots.

TiVo did say it was rolling out an update to a limited number of testers, but that should only take one reboot, not four.

 

Now that you mention it, I had a weird spontaneous reboot on my TiVo HD last night. I triggered it by flipping to the other tuner.

No software update or external storage though...

 

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If you have an expansion drive, that's probably the problem, I uninstalled mine and all problenms went away. no more pixilization, freezes, or reboots.

 

I got a new HD XL on Tuesday. 1 reboot Tuesday night and 3 reboots last night. It's going back to Tivo unless I can fix this.

I don't have an external drive.

 

Trying to watch the last ER last night, it rebooted twice. I've had enough.

I called Tivo to set up a return of my refurb, but they talked me into staying by offering a new unit instead. We'll see if things work out. So far I am not happy at all with my return to Tivo. What's up with the ads everywhere? My S1 never had that.

 

Some percentage of all TiVos are defective, and I'm sure the numbers are higher for refurbished units.

The primary causes of TiVo lockups and reboots are (a) a defective or failing internal or external drive, (b) a defective or loose eSATA cable to an external drive, and (c) signals that are so strong they overpower the TiVo. If you were using a cable amplifier for your Series1, you should probably remove that for the TivoHD. If you aren't using an amplifier, and your signals are the 98-100 range, then I would order a -6dB attenuator to go with that new TivoHD.

Check out the TivoHD Overview, Q&A, Setup, Tips thread while you await the replacement.

 

Where are the Ads? I watch my seven TiVos on a regular basis and I don't remember seeing any ads.

 

Thanks for the pointers. I will check signal strength on the replacement, when it arrives. I was not using an attenuator on the Comcast DVR or the Series 1 that it replaced, but perhaps the Tivo HD is more sensitive. What would be an ideal signal strength?

I stuck with my S1 even through I had to replace it 3 times due to shocked modems. Here's hoping I will have better luck this time.

 

Anything in the 80s to the mid 90s is good. But if all your channels are in the 99-100 range, that could be a bad sign. Signal levels aren't completely linear across the spectrum, so most channels could be just fine at 99-100, but a few might be strong enough to overpower your TiVo and cause problems (even reboots). Dropping your average Comcast or Cox signal to the mid 90s, using an attenuator, should be sufficient to eliminate any possibility of that.

The digital tuners in the TivoHD are definitely more sensitive than the analog tuners in the Series2.

 

The ads are there, but we found that it isn't hard to disregard them completely. Much less obtrusive than the current practice of pop-up and banner ads shown during shows by most of the networks these days.

 

There are ads at the bottom of the Main Menu, there are ads within folder groups in the Now Playing list.

 

Mine started rebooting and freezing Wednesday night and Thursday. I have a Series3 that is 2 1/2 years old. End result: crashed hard drive. Couldn't run any diagnostics because it would freeze after entering a kickstart code. Now it freezes on initial reboot and the 4 lights never go off. I can hear the drive trying to read the same sector over and over again. Simple solution: bought a 500GB drive from weaknees.com to replace the dead drive. Should arrive this week. Sucks, but at least I can replace the drive without having to replace my Series3.

 

I turned one of my TivoHDs on today and it was on the "reboooting" screen. I figured I just got an update, but I grew concerned when it was still there 1/2 hour later.

After turning everything off and on, I still got the series of reboots. It got to the "almost there" screen and then started over. I finally removed the external hard drive and had it run without that, since I had to do that with another unit several months ago. It was annoying to lose all the recordings, but I am not watching a lot now anyway.

It then took multiple reboots to come up after removing the drive, though it did finally come up. I have now returned power to the drive and rebooted and I will see what happens.

Brad

 

I gave up on ER years ago, but watched the final episode to see how it ended. The retrospective was better than the final show. You didn't miss much, it wasn't that spectacular of an ending.

 

I just had this happen to me again this morning. It's been about 1.5 months between incidents.

 

Just to follow up on my earlier problems, the replacement TiVo has had no problems with rebooting. So, chalk it up to a bad refurbished unit. I had numerous issues with my CC installation, but that has been resolved.