Rebuilding a TCD746320, with lifetime

bw1951 said:

I am very happy with my Premiere 4 mostly because my technology adverse wife knows how to use it. We recently had a power outage and while the power was out I unplugged all the electronics - including the TiVo 4. When things came back a day later I plugged everything back in and the TiVo box stalled on the gray start-up screen on several tries. I removed the TiVo cover, removed the HDD & tapped it on the table, re-installed, and successfully started TiVo. I'm guessing the ten year hold HDD is dying.

On eBay I found a brand new, sealed box TCD746320 and bought it for about $100. Yes, it is what it claimed to be - brand new, in the original sealed box, never been opened. My plan is to swap the new HDD, power supply, and fan to the old Premiere, getting the benefits of new major components and keeping the lifetime plan.

So far, I have swapped the HDD, but am having problems. I did not clone the replacement drive, assuming that it was already TiVo formatted. Now, when I start up the TiVo, it continually goes into the guided set-up, keeping all the information I have entered and walking me to the "network connection"/ "Getting Setup info" screen. It connects, gets info, disconnects, loads, and then reboots into starting up all over again. It's done it about a dozen times already. Is it just downloading software updates a little bit at a time? Should I give up on doing the guided set-up and just clone the drive?

One other question. There's a lithium button on the motherboard. Should I put in a new one while I'm at it? Anybody ever have one go dead?

thank you

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lhvetinari said:

The drive you installed (from the new in box TiVo) is running an OS too old for the new guide data. It will get stuck in a loop of trying to update and failing. You can either back up the old drive and restore to the new one, or request an image for your model in one of the image threads here and restore it that way.

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