[vonbismarck]

Hello all. I am having a problem with one of my Dtivos. Everything used to work fine with the Tivo, which is a Hughes SD-DVR120, until there was a storm last Tuesday or Wednesday. That night it started freezing and then rebooting, now it just freezes. It has these problems when the satellite is plugged into it. When a cable is plugged into the tuner(s), everything will work fine for about 10 minutes and then the TV will freeze for about a second every couple of seconds. Also, it will not respond to any buttons pushed on the remote. It happens whether watching live TV or something recorded. Even if I unplug the feed, it still suffers from this. If I hook it up to the TV without the satellite feed then it works fine (in so much as I can watch recorded shows with no problems).

Does anyone know what might be wrong with it and if it can be fixed? I tried moving into other rooms, but it still suffers from the same problem.

Thank you.

 

[rbtravis]

Your hard drive may be dying. Get a new image from WWW.DVRupgrade.com. It is called Instantcake and costs under $20.00. Buy a new hard Drive from WWW.Newegg.com. May I suggest a Western Digital such as WD2500JB. be sure it ends in JB because that model runs cool and quiet and is perfect for a DVR. Finally I suggest changing the 2032 battery at the same time as the hard drive. About 2.25 at your local Walmart. An hour of your time and your machine will run as good as new.

 

[Dkerr24]

Your hard drive may be dying. Get a new image from WWW.DVRupgrade.com. It is called Instantcake and costs under $20.00. Buy a new hard Drive from WWW.Newegg.com. May I suggest a Western Digital such as WD2500JB. be sure it ends in JB because that model runs cool and quiet and is perfect for a DVR. Finally I suggest changing the 2032 battery at the same time as the hard drive. About 2.25 at your local Walmart. An hour of your time and your machine will run as good as new.

Q: Will changing that CR2032 battery reset anything in my zippered units? I don't want to lose the hacks I have.

 

[rbtravis]

Q: Will changing that CR2032 battery reset anything in my zippered units? I don't want to lose the hacks I have.

No it should not. The charge on the onboard capacitators in in the power supply should hold for the 30 seconds or less it takes to change the battery.

 

[wedgecon]

I would just leave the battery alone, there is no evidence it is even required anymore.

 

[vonbismarck]

Your hard drive may be dying. Get a new image from WWW.DVRupgrade.com. It is called Instantcake and costs under $20.00. Buy a new hard Drive from WWW.Newegg.com. May I suggest a Western Digital such as WD2500JB. be sure it ends in JB because that model runs cool and quiet and is perfect for a DVR. Finally I suggest changing the 2032 battery at the same time as the hard drive. About 2.25 at your local Walmart. An hour of your time and your machine will run as good as new.

Is there a way I can tell if it is the hard drive before changing it? I had feared that might be it and had hoped that since it works just fine when the satellite feed isn't plugged in, that it might be something else.

 

[Bob_Newhart]

Is there a way I can tell if it is the hard drive before changing it? I had feared that might be it and had hoped that since it works just fine when the satellite feed isn't plugged in, that it might be something else.

I just had this same situation a month ago. Luckily I had spare 40 GB hard drives so I downloaded the InstantCake and had it up and running in short order.

 

[markbox]

Although it might be your hardrive there is also plenty
of evidence that DirecTV is having problems causing
freezing and rebooting. See 4 other threads on this
forum to read about others with problems similar to
yours. Thread titles are:
_
DTivos that are "rebooting"
-
Since 6.3e, Tivo's freezing
_
6.3e on standard-def units -- is it really a problem?
_
OK people, We need to organize and push DirecTV for a fix!
_
The Instantcake suggestion will work (use a different
drive if you still have recordings to watch on your
current drive). However, if you want to ensure the
problem doesn't return make sure to unplug your phone
line so that your system remains on a pre-6.3e software
version. There are people out there having no issues
with freezing/rebooting that are using 6.3e but there
are also quite a few people that have problems return
when they allow their pre-6.3e software to update to
6.3e.
_
There are also now some people reporting that their
freezing/reboot issues seem to have gone away due to
a change coming down via the phone connection so you
could have your unit make a service call to see if
your issues go away afterward. I personally won't
risk a service call right now as my unit is working
just fine using 6.2a software.

 

[rbtravis]

I would just leave the battery alone, there is no evidence it is even required anymore.

That is true, but if it is not required why would Tivo place batteries on 3 million units? Maybe because they like wasting money? I do not know but for $2.00 I wont take the risk. TiVo is a business, suppose to make money and I will assume that seeing this was not their first product and it works so well as indicated by its longevity, I wont take any unnecessary risks.

 

[vonbismarck]

Although it might be your hardrive there is also plenty
of evidence that DirecTV is having problems causing
freezing and rebooting. See 4 other threads on this
forum to read about others with problems similar to
yours. Thread titles are:
_
DTivos that are "rebooting"
-
Since 6.3e, Tivo's freezing
_
6.3e on standard-def units -- is it really a problem?
_
OK people, We need to organize and push DirecTV for a fix!
_
The Instantcake suggestion will work (use a different
drive if you still have recordings to watch on your
current drive). However, if you want to ensure the
problem doesn't return make sure to unplug your phone
line so that your system remains on a pre-6.3e software
version. There are people out there having no issues
with freezing/rebooting that are using 6.3e but there
are also quite a few people that have problems return
when they allow their pre-6.3e software to update to
6.3e.
_
There are also now some people reporting that their
freezing/reboot issues seem to have gone away due to
a change coming down via the phone connection so you
could have your unit make a service call to see if
your issues go away afterward. I personally won't
risk a service call right now as my unit is working
just fine using 6.2a software.

I had read some parts of some of those threads but since most dealt with 6.3, which I don't have, I am not effected by them. I one person was having a problem that he thought might be a voltage through the cables problem. He changed his multi-switch and fixed his problem. I am wondering if I might just need to change my multi-switch.

Also, I took out the hard drive because I wanted to run a diagnosis on it to see if it would tell me if there are any problems with it. When I installed the hard drive in the computer, it is recognized by the bios and I can see it in disk management but not in my computer. In disk management, it shows it as unallocated and all it will let me do is write a signature to it. What would I need to do so that I can run a test on it without losing the saved episodes that are on it?

Thank you.

 

[rbtravis]

I hope you did not let it write the signature it may damage your drive? The reason you did not see any thing on the system it is not an Intel based system. It is a MIPS based system. It would appear blank to an Intel based system. If you did write the signature but you did nothing else your only hope is go to MFSlive.org download MFSlive-1.3b.iso burn it to CD and attempt to recover the boot track. You will have to read up to do that and go to their Forum for help.

 

[vonbismarck]

I hope you did not let it write the signature it may damage your drive? The reason you did not see any thing on the system it is not an Intel based system. It is a MIPS based system. It would appear blank to an Intel based system. If you did write the signature but you did nothing else your only hope is go to MFSlive.org download MFSlive-1.3b.iso burn it to CD and attempt to recover the boot track. You will have to read up to do that and go to their Forum for help.

Luckily I did not write the signature. How would I go about testing the hard drive? Would I need to download the MFS program from that forum or is there something else I could do?

Thank you.