Tivo HD dead?

Poke around here for instructions on running the various "Kickstart" programs and run them to check your hard drive.

HDD failure most likely but could also be the PS. Some important information to get advice here is:
1. How old is the TiVo?
2. Is the HDD newer?
3. Do you use an expander drive?
4. Does the TiVo have lifetime sub?

ciscokid said:

Poke around here for instructions on running the various "Kickstart" programs and run them to check your hard drive.

Click to expand...

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5643823#post5643823

http://www.weaknees.com/tivo-kickstart-codes.php

But kickstarts don't catch all problems. Measure the 5V and 12V going to the HDD.

ciscokid said:

Poke around here for instructions on running the various "Kickstart" programs and run them to check your hard drive.

Click to expand...

Already tried, I can not get to the Kickstart part, the green Power Up screen comes on for a second, then the screen goes dark, the red and blue lights never come on, like in the Kickstart guide. I held down the remote, and nothing on the Tivo's front panel come on, like usually when the remote press cause a yellow light on the front to come on.

dlfl said:

HDD failure most likely but could also be the PS. Some important information to get advice here is:
1. How old is the TiVo?
2. Is the HDD newer?
3. Do you use an expander drive?
4. Does the TiVo have lifetime sub?

Click to expand...

3 year old Tivo, I put in a new 750 GB HDD pretty much as soon as I got the Tivo, no expander drive, yes it's on lifetime, otherwise I wouldn't have cared.

Thanks!

yunlin12 said:

3 year old Tivo, I put in a new 750 GB HDD pretty much as soon as I got the Tivo, no expander drive, yes it's on lifetime, otherwise I wouldn't have cared.

Thanks!

Click to expand...

Install the original drive and see if it will boot.

shwru980r said:

Install the original drive and see if it will boot.

Click to expand...

Thanks! I thought I had lost or re-purposed the 160GB original but lo and behold it's still there. I put it in and it got a little further, it's going back and forth between the Power Up and the Almost There screen. I put the 750 GB HDD back in and it's back to the old behavior. So imaybe HDD is the root cause, unless if the 2 different HDD would respond differently if the power supply to the HDD is not good enough.

I'm going to tinker with the 160GB more and see if I can get it to work. Should I kickstart it? I don't think I've actually ever used the Tivo HD with that original HDD, as soon as I got the TivoHD I upgraded the HDD.

Assuming it was working OK when you removed it, the original HDD should have allowed a successful boot. I think it's the PS or something else.

The original HDD may not have been used before. I swapped it out of right after I took the Tivo out of the box. But theoretically the original HDD should be good, since the 750GB HDD was imaged from it, and it worked fine, till now.

Oh well. I'm not sure if I'm up for scrounging around to figure out how to fix the PS or something else. Maybe I'll wait and see if Tivo comes out with the new 4 tuner box, and see if I can get an upgrade deal. I still have a Tivo PXL working as my primary Tivo, so I just lost my 2 backup tuners.

Thanks for all the quick help!

Power supplies are available online, or you could have someone repair it for you.

Now this is really weird! I left it unplugged for several hours, and now it's working again, with both the 160GB original HDD and the 750 GB upgraded HDD. Any idea why this would happen?

yunlin12 said:

Now this is really weird! I left it unplugged for several hours, and now it's working again, with both the 160GB original HDD and the 750 GB upgraded HDD. Any idea why this would happen?

Click to expand...

Probably not that weird for a power supply on the blink.

dwit said:

Probably not that weird for a power supply on the blink.

Click to expand...

That's my suspicion as well. I had been away for several days so the Tivo was off. A month ago I had another 1 week trip and the Tivo froze after my trip, but a simple reboot solved the problem that time. There was another thread in the general forum today about a guy swapping out a bad capacitor in his Tivo, I wonder if there is some capacitor in the PS that is related to this behavior. Maybe some residual charges that is messing up the unit.

Look for a used Tivo HD without service on-line and try the power supply with your Tivo.

dwit said:

Probably not that weird for a power supply on the blink.

Click to expand...

I agree, I had power supply problems with 2 different electronic devices (flat panel TV and PS) and while I could kind of sort of coax them into usefulness, bothe would eventually ie in strange ways. In both cases the units had "busted caps".

shwru980r said:

Look for a used Tivo HD without service on-line and try the power supply with your Tivo.

Click to expand...

Looks like weaknees has it for $100. I don't see a lot of TivoHD on craigslist in my area, cheapest is ~$50. I don't know how reliable THD's PS is on an used unit. I think when my THD finally goes, I'd rather pay for a new PS.

I wish Tivo had built more reliable stuff. Especially if the failure mode is a simple capacitor. I'd pay the extra $5 up front if they used a capacity with higher quality and lasted longer. My ReplayTV which I bought with lifetime service in 2000, is still working, and even had correct DST adjustment thru special dial-up.

yunlin12 said:

Looks like weaknees has it for $100. I don't see a lot of TivoHD on craigslist in my area, cheapest is ~$50. I don't know how reliable THD's PS is on an used unit. I think when my THD finally goes, I'd rather pay for a new PS.

I wish Tivo had built more reliable stuff. Especially if the failure mode is a simple capacitor. I'd pay the extra $5 up front if they used a capacity with higher quality and lasted longer. My ReplayTV which I bought with lifetime service in 2000, is still working, and even had correct DST adjustment thru special dial-up.

Click to expand...

In fairness to Tivo, almost everybody in the industry has been hit by capacitor disease to a greater or lesser degree since the late '90s (lots and lots and lots of BX chipset Pentium II/III/Celeron motherboards died prematurely because of it). I'm using a Hewlett-Packard HP vs17e lcd monitor right now that was sitting on the curb down the street waiting for the trashman back in February. All I had to do was replace the 5 largest capacitor's in the power supply with better quality ones (from lcdalternatives, they make up monitor kits).

You can find out more about the problem at badcaps.net

Looks like the PS finally went this morning. I really appreciate the resources and knowledge on this forum :up:

lrhorer said:

Power supplies are available online, or you could have someone repair it for you.

Click to expand...

Who repairs Tivos, except weaknees? (and they have the $100 power supplies!)