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HELP! Tivo Premiere stuck in guided setup loop?

46K views 432 replies 59 participants last post by  ggieseke  
#1 ·
I have a Tivo Premiere and a Tivo Premiere XL that I am bringing out of "retirement" while I was in a rental house for a few years and couldn't use them. Unfortunately both of them are stuck in a guided setup loop. They will go all the way to the "Getting Setup Info" screen, connect, and download. Then they start loading info for a while only to restart back to the beginning of the guided setup process.

I have repeated this process several times (the definition of insanity? LOL), and I also check each time to see if the software version at least changed, but it never does.

I used DVDBars to reimage the hard drives for both Tivos, and tried again. Unfortunately the end result is the same, they both get stuck in the guided setup loop. I have tried to use the kickstart codes, but that didn't seem to work at all. I get the green/yellow rapid flashing indicating that it received the kickstart codes, but then it just starts guided setup over again.

Any other ideas? Is it just that both of the hard drives went bad? Do I need to replace the hard drives and try again? I have been working on this for hours and hours, but not having much luck.
 
#2 ·
Have you run diagnostics on the hard drives?

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#3 ·
I have same issue. had not one BUT two tivo premiers brought out of retirement today. Got them online and they do the same behavior you describe. never ending restart loop. Both of them do this exacty the same so I know it is not the units but rather the Premiere's not working with Tivo HQ servers properly and updating the unit correctly.

Your drives are fine. this is tivo bricking our units 100%.

Their plan worked. I ordered a new Tivo bolt tonight so will try that out. If I don't like it can send back within 30 days. I guess the old units were 8 and 9 years old so got my money out of them. both had lifetime service. too bad tivo does not at least let us transfer this to the new units considering they bricked the old ones.
 
#4 ·
I wouldn't give up on the lifetime service. That is worth a lot of money over time. I was able to get one of my two units running again thanks to some great advice, a new image, and software (DVDBars) from Greg (ggieseke). With The DVDBars software, I just re-imaged the two Tivo drives and tried again. One of them is now working. The other appears to be a corrupt drive. Even for that one, however, I bought a replacement drive for $75 on Amazon and will image that to bring the Tivo back to good as new. I figure I can always sell the unit on eBay if I don't need two of them because working units with the lifetime service are going for decent $$$.

BTW, I noticed online in my research that Tivo does sometimes run promotions to allow you to transfer your lifetime service to a newly purchased Tivo. At least they have done so in the past. They charge a pretty heft fee to do so though, so I figured it would still be cheaper to buy a new hard drive and fix the old Tivo myself.

Good luck with whichever path you choose. And thanks again to Greg and others in this community who have been so helpful in providing advice to help me figure it out.
 
#5 ·
BTW, I noticed online in my research that Tivo does sometimes run promotions to allow you to transfer your lifetime service to a newly purchased Tivo. At least they have done so in the past. They charge a pretty heft fee to do so though, so I figured it would still be cheaper to buy a new hard drive and fix the old Tivo myself.
Usually once a year they have a promo where you can transfer lifetime to a newer model unit for $99 (usually summer.) Assuming the unit being transferred from has connected to the Tivo service within 6 months to a year. In the past few years it has been transfers to Bolts I think. Maybe in 2020 it will be transfers to Edge. Connect those older Tivos at least once every six months to keep them active. This Premiere thing is scary, I have two up and running, now I would be afraid to run a guided setup, based on what I have read here.
 
#6 ·
I am having a similar problem as Doug. I have a Premiere Series 4 TCD750500

I received a fresh image from Greg (ggieseke) and restored it to a WD 1TB drive using DVRBARS. The Tivo starts up and gets through some of the setup. it connects out to TiVo for data. From there it reboots and starts over again like it's the first time it's running. Any advice?

It's been 5+ years since I upgraded a drive so I am relearning a lot.
 
#7 ·
I'm seeing the same symptoms here on a relative's Premiere XL4.
No amount of reimages or other attempts appear to get me any further. The TiVo seems to be downloading a large update, but then reboots automatically just where it would begin the "loading info" step.

Very frustrating to say the least...
 
#8 ·
Darren Beck, you say you have two Premiers that do not work. Others can let you know if the software is compatible. But if you swapped the drives and then the other one works it would prove it was not hardware and instead Tivo bricking the unit. Of course others will also let me know if swapping the drives won't work because they are married to the motherboard.
 
#9 ·
I have a Premiere XL that will not play video from Youtube, or Netflix or Yahoo. I think the problem must be a bad Main CPU, the one that has a big HeadSink.
The HDMI did not work, so I used composite for testing.
I got an Image from this forum, and used DVRBARS and then used MFSTOOLS. This got me to the setup loop.
I made a backup image from my old drive using DVRBARS and restore to a new HD following the previous steps, this time got me all the way and setup was complete. The bad news was that any video I play got me to reboot. I think my box must be really dead.
But I think there must be hope for some of you, from the setup loop.
I got the image for Premiere XL, if anyone wants to try. send me an email, it is on DROPBOX.
-Luis.
 
#11 · (Edited)
Still no luck with my 748000. I got one image from ggieseke. Because I can not get past the set up loop I can not tell what version software it is. Please PM me with any image for the Premier XL you might have and if you can also tell me what version it is that would be great. I am determined to make this thing work and lucho's report gives me hope.
Thanks,
Tom
 
#23 ·
I too had the problem where it wouldn't go past the loading info stage after doing a service connection. I thought it was my hard drive so I reloaded an original image (from my stock HD) and it still would do the reboot after trying (and failing) a service connection. I ran across this thread and it might be worth a try to load a newer version of the image onto my 746500.

My current version is 20.2.2.1 but I think I had a newer one until I reloaded the original image. The funny thing is that I pulled my old series 2 out of the closet and tried a service connection on it and it worked! Perhaps the old series 2 can't use 20.7 it didn't need to update? My Tivo Roamio is on 20.7.4b.

Does anyone have a newer version (20.7 perhaps) for a Tivo 746500? ggieseke, I noticed you may have one for the 746320 (smaller hard drive). Would that work for a 500?

Thanks
 
#26 ·
I'm in the same boat.

First, I have a Roamio that was showing "to be announced on" on some channels. Posters noted to Clear Program Information & To Do List so did that and it said it would take a few hours but hung for over 8 hours and a repower brought up the same screen (found out that kickstart 57 actually fixed it, FYI, so it is up and running again just fine)

In the interim, while waiting for the Roamia to come back up (before I found the solution) I restarted a Premiere 4 TCD746320 with 320GB HD with LifeTime that was turned off for a few years. After it came up just fine, it wanted to do an update and then I ended up in the "Guided Setup" loop. Nothing worked as I tried all the Kickstarts. The KS54 drive checks completed with all passed. The KS57 said it found problems (always says that) but only ran a short while and restarted. Running the guided setup it would connect, set the clock, get account status, complete the download, and a minute into the loading info, it just restarted and would present the country choice all over again at bootup.

Figured, maybe the hard drive is having issues or there is just unsolvable corruption. So, someone was selling a "TiVo Premiere Series 4 TCD746500 (500GB) DVR (Open Box)" and no lifetime - which no one wants ;-) for $40. Bought it, thinking a cheap way to get an already configured 500GB HD, and figured I'd swap the drives into my LifeTime Tivo box and I'd be good to go.

Here is what happened. I put my 320GB drive in the TCD746500 and ended still ended up in the guided setup loop. Put the 500GB drive in my TCD746320 and it booted with some slightly different choices on the guided setup (which makes me think it was a newer OS as my choice on video had a "smart" choice and no need for 3 thumbs up, stuff like that and putting in the Kick Start codes shows a blue light on acceptance while on my older TCD746320 the acceptance was flashing power/yellow light). Oddly it completed (or I think it did) the guided setup as I could have sworn I saw all check marks, even on loading info. Then it restarted and offered the guided setup again (so thinking it must have updated the OS, although I never saw a boot screen noting it was updating software), after that boot I was in the guided setup loop/restart.

I put the 500GB drive back into its original TCD746500 and still in the guided setup loop/restart.

So both Tivos are nowhere.

Has to be a Tivo corrupted issue and not the drives or the Tivo themselves. Class action lawsuit perhaps????

Anyway, as some of you noted that a reimage worked for them, can I get a link to the TCD746500 500GB drive image and the TCD746320 320GB image with the newest software, thanks?

As an aside, so as not to lose some older stored shows on my 320GB, is there a way to copy the partition of a newer OS to my 320GB drive but keep the partition where the shows are stored. I'm guessing there are multiple partitions on the drive (maybe not, never really looked). Does anyone know if there is a way to do that? I would like to keep the shows I've recorded if possible. Or can I hook the 320GB drive as is to the eSata port after I get the 500GB drive up and running and will the Premiere then see the 320GB drive with the shows on them?

Any advice and suggestions on any of what I posted is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Arnie
 
#27 ·
OK, a bit more on post above.

Well, it turns out that the "open box" I bought was really "used" as the guy actually ran and got stuck on the guided setup. How do I know? Well as I did more research I round and ran the KickStart 76543210 and it succeeded on wiping everything and on the next boot it really was a "first boot" having me test my sound by pressing the thumbs up and making me accept the license, questioned about my activiation and had no default zip code (as I remember as the case when I first booted). Anyway, I keyed in all the details and hoping for the best was sorely disappointed as I'm backup to the infinite guided setup loop.

Someone posted a link to the TCD746320-20.7.4.RC42.vhd on one of these threads (thank you) so downloaded that so can hopefully restore to a hard drive and see if I get any further.

I'm running Windows 10 (upgraded from Windows 7) and when I run DvrBbars.exe I get
Image

I do have other computers running Windows 7 so will try it on that.

But I came across a discussion on copy vhd to a physical drive

Copying a VHD to a physical disk

And they posted a link to a freeware that will write a .vhd file to a physical drive

HDDGURU: HDD Raw Copy Tool

I haven't tried it yet, but might just go that route.

Thought I'd keep you all up to date on my adventure ;-)

I truly believe this is the fault of Tivo and not our boxes. I'm going to reach out to them on Monday. But I'm thinking this could be a class action lawsuit. I happen to be in IT for longer than some of you are born ;-) and I know vendor issues when I see and read about them. One of my clients is an attorney who likes these sort of cases, so I might be reaching out to him.

Just as an aside, I have a client who had Comcast/Xfinity as their ISP and they used an online website pretty much all day to keep track of their business. But throughout the day they'd fall off the internet. When I looked into the modem logs I can see it was disconnecting as it lost connection with Comcast. Deep research into the problem suggested an issue with the Puma6 chipset in the modem they were leasing from Comcast. I had Comcast replace the modem and told them I wanted a Broadcom chipset as that wasn't having these latency issues. They sent out their service guy and he was holding another modem with a Puma6 chipset. Told him no go and he offered a different modem he had in his truck that actually had the Broadcom chipset. He hooked it up and they have been good ever since. Well as you would think, a lot of people had this problem and a class action lawsuit was filed against Intel as they knew of the problem and can't fix it:

Puma 6 Cable Modem Chipset Defect - Schubert Jonckheer & Kolbe
Schubert Jonckheer & Kolbe is investigating whether cable modems containing Intel's Puma 6 chipset, including the Arris SB6190, contain a serious defect that prevents them from operating properly. Reports on multiple websites and forums indicate that these cable modems suffer from "latency jitter so bad it ruins online gaming and other real-time connections." Intel has confirmed the defect, stating that the company is "aware of an issue with the Puma 6 system-on-chip software that impacts latency," but after numerous months, has failed to release any update that fixes the issue.

Soooo, maybe we have a case against Tivo for bricking our Premiere's??

Thanks,
Arnie
 
#29 ·
Thanks for the reply regarding Error 5.

I tried to run in compatibility mode but got the same error.

I just tried running it on my Win7 laptop and same error.

I'm thinking that the file that I downloaded (DvrBARS1007.zip) is corrupt. My file size is 1524KB, is that correct? Do you have a link to the most current file?

Thanks,
Arnie
 
#30 ·
Thanks for the reply regarding Error 5.

I tried to run in compatibility mode but got the same error.

I just tried running it on my Win7 laptop and same error.

I'm thinking that the file that I downloaded (DvrBARS1007.zip) is corrupt. My file size is 1524KB, is that correct? Do you have a link to the most current file?

Thanks,
Arnie
Run it as an administrator and make sure any anti-virus programs are disabled.

Sent from my SM-G988U using Tapatalk
 
#32 ·
I seem to be joining this party too. I have a Premiere XL that won't exit the setup loop at boot up. I would like to get it going again. Not sure what size drive I have in it at this point. Would love a pointer to a known good image along with tips on how to use same.
 
#43 ·
I downloaded it, unzipped it, and then ran it. Had to give my windows 10 permission to run something downloaded from the internet. It ran without issue.

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#40 ·
I contacted Weaknees and inquired as to whether or not a "new" drive upgrade kit from them would solve the problem that I'm having with the unit mentioned above. They claim yes that it will, though the ship drives that are "ready to complete" new setup process which is exactly where I'm having issues with the current unit and drive.

I ordered a drive kit and will give it a go. A new drive (even if slightly spendy) would be a good thing since I don't recall enough of the history of the drive and unit that I'm working on (I retired that Premiere XL when I upgraded to a Bolt along the way, that retirement occurred a few years back, with who knows how much usage of the unit done before that).

I really appreciate the assistance (especially from ggieseke) here and will report back on my success or failure after receiving the drive kit from Weaknees.
 
#41 · (Edited)
terpfan1980, from what I've been reading, I get the feeling that there is a bad version of the software in the 20.x variation and I'm also getting the feeling that once you get a newer version one is good to go (also discussed above in post #23)

If you get a replacement drive that works, please post the version of the software.

Thanks,
Arnie
 
#42 ·
Hey all,

OK, I just got off the phone with Tivo support. And although I'm stuck in guided setup and cannot see anything on my Tivo, tech support can and they tell me I'm on version 14.9.2 and the current version for Premiere is 20.7.4. And I'm guessing when Tivo updates they do not update to all the interim versions but rather are trying to push the current version and for some reason, it fails to install - hence the "guided setup loop and abort/restart".

I'm guessing that had I left my Tivo physically powered up and connected to the internet all these past years it would have gotten all the interim updates and I'd be good. But that is not the case. I'm noticing by the posts made by others who are also experiencing this "guided setup loop and abort/restart" that they also have a Tivo that was powered off for years and just turned it on recently.

I explained to her that if I take a Windows 7 DVD and do a fresh install on a blank hard drive and boot it up and run Windows Update, I do not just get the most recent update but rather I get all the interim updates in pretty much release order. And this is the problem with Tivo. And my claim that since I have a LifeTime subscription it relies on their software to keep me current. If I had a hardware problem, then they can claim the warranty expired on that. But this is a software issue, not a hardware issue.

Sooo, since they don't support the Premiere and they don't send out hard drives they suggest (funny) that I contact Weeknees and buy one from them. And Tivo would offer me a good price on an upgrade.

I told her I will try to burn a new 20.7.4 onto a new drive and see how far I get. I also told her she should have a conversation with her support team about addressing this by providing interim upgrades before a class action suit comes about because of frustrated consumers knowing it is a software problem and not a hardware problem and that Tivo should be obligated to fix it.

Anyway, I'll post back when I upgrade on my own.

Regards,
Arnie