TiVo Preimer XL with replacement hard drive can't get through guided setup

I've got a TiVo Preimer XL 7480000 which started to have intermittent booting problems, artifacts during video playback/live TV, and failure to record some scheduled shows. Thinking the hard drive is most likely the problem based on reading the forums, I'm trying to replace the drive. Using a newly purchased Western Digital Red 5400 rpm 2Tb drive.

I started by doing a truncated backup and quick restore from the original drive to the new one using dvrbars. That procedure resulted in a welcome screen boot loop with the new drive. Did not try any kickstart codes here. Thinking my image was bad due to failing hard drive, I asked for a clean image, and Greg provided (thank you!).

I then used dvrbars to do a quick restore of the known good image to the new drive. No expansion to the full 2TB yet, just the original image. It boots, but now there is a new problem. Every time the TiVo boots, it asks me to do the guided setup, and every time it reboots after appearing to download something from TiVo servers and reaching the "loading info" step.

I've tried kickstart codes 57, 58, and 76543210 clean and delete, with no change in the TiVo behavior with the clean image.

Would appreciate advice to get the new drive working. My original drive has not quite failed yet, as it passes quick smart check in WD diagnostics, so I was thinking of trying to directly copying a full image to the new drive with msftools, dvrbars, or dd_rescue. Im worried about stressing the old drive, though, by copying the full image.

Sounds like my issue is very similar (identical?) To this thread.

Thanks in advance for the help.

 

Thanks very much for the advice. I did the full erase on the new drive and then did a full restore of the good image, but I'm getting the same results. Confirmed that the software version did not update by pressing info button. After that I did run the long test which did not report any errors, so it looks like the drive isn't bad.

Is there a later image for this model with more up to date software? Perhaps the latest update from TiVo can't patch a version this old? If not, I'll probably try to use dd_rescue to copy directly front the old drive, unless folks have other suggestions.

 

The version which was unable to complete the guided setup was 20.4.1, the image downloaded from dropbox.

Some good news, though. I realized that I was using an outdated version of DVRBars (6 instead of 7). Once I switched to 7, I was able to successfully make a truncated backup and restore it to the new drive. That image was version 20.7.4b.RC3-748-2-748.

So, while my problem is solved, I think there is an issue which prevents the dropbox 20.4.1 image from updating, at least for my 748.

Because of that, I did a clear and delete everything to make a clean 20.7.4b.RC3-748-2-748 image. I did not test if it could successfully complete guided setup (oversite on my part) but I could make it available for others to try who are having this problem. It did come from a drive with two bad sectors, though, so I can't guarantee it's perfect. Things seemed to be working fine, including a guide data update, before the clear and delete everything. Let me know if this image is useful to the community.