[usmaak]

Hi,

I have two Tivo series 2 540s. One of them is fine. The other one seems to lock up once a week. I just got done rebooting it now. My wife was wondering why it wasn't recording Big Brother, and when I turned on the TV, it was frozen. I had no choice but to pull the plug on it.

Any idea what could be happening with it? Other than this, it's showing no signs of problems at all.

 

[jabez_reynolds]

I don't know but I can tell you that you will have a lot of people saying that your hard drive is going out. That was a response that I got a lot of when I was having similar problems. I finally accepted their advice and replaced the hard drive. A week later the problems came back only now they were getting worse in that it now would get stuck on powering up. I gave up and sent it to DigitalRecorder.com and they charged me $200 to repair the "main board". Got it back from them and the problems started all over again about a week or two later. They guarantee their repairs to I sent it back to them (had to pay for shipping it back to them) they "fixed" it again and I again had to pay to ship it back to me. I can't say if it is working properly now because it's not connected to anything because we switched to FiOs. I can tell you that DigitalRecorder.com tried to tell me that "it must be the hard drive" because they had repaired the bad main board. I kept telling them that it couldn't be the hard drive because I just replaced the drive and was still have the same problems that I was having BEFORE I replaced the drive. (You can't tell me that two different drives, in a matter of a few weeks were having identical problems... oh and the original drive was only about 6 months old when I started having problems.) I think they just gave up because they said that they would replace all three components, the hard drive, the main board and the power supply.

Regardless, one bit of advice that no one gave me. If you do replace the hard drive, SAVE your original drive!! You'll need to put it back in the box before you send to TiVo for repair if the new drive does not solve your problem. Speaking of which, have you called TiVo to see if there is still a warranty on the box?

Good luck.

 

[jabez_reynolds]

You can read the posts here:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=325709

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=349731

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=292690

 

[mchips]

It may not be the physical drive itself, but the file system and/or fragmentation on the drive that a reimage, with a good image, may fix.

If someone replaces the drive with an image off the drive that's having problems, then the problems can very likely get carried over to the new drive, which is why I always keep an original image for each TiVo that I have, and when it begins experiencing problems, I just reimage the drive from the original image. In over four years with seven TiVo's, I've only had to replace the drive once, and that's because it died and would no longer even spin up. I've had great success with just reimaging all of my TiVo's.

But hard drives do fail, and if your drive is beginning to get bad spots, then the drive will need to be replaced. I usually run a diagnostic program on my drives first, and if there are no bad spots, I just reimage.

You might also want to check out this thread:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=150747

A reimage or new drive solves these types of problems for most people. As with anything, there are exceptions.

And, of course, if your TiVo is still under warranty, you can give TiVo a call. If it's not, they often offer good deals to replace them. You may even be able to find another 540 for free... I've seen ads at the top of these forums offering a 540 for $170 with a $170 rebate essentially making it free... others may even be able to point out other deals...

 

[usmaak]

I don't know but I can tell you that you will have a lot of people saying that your hard drive is going out. That was a response that I got a lot of when I was having similar problems. I finally accepted their advice and replaced the hard drive.

Yea. I see that a lot. My other TiVo had problems with stuttering and the hard drive was the popular idea for the problem. But since I got Dish and ditched Comcast, I haven't had a single stuttering issue. So I'm glad that I didn't replace the HD on that one (though it would be nice to have more than 80 hours storage... )

At first I thought that the issue might be related to what I was recording, because it seemed to happen frequently on Sunday nights. I don't know if that's even a possible cause. But it happened tonight on a completely different channel, so I guess that blows my idea out of the water, even if it is a valid idea.

I've had my TiVos for > 2.5 years now. What's the warranty on them?

 

[jabez_reynolds]

From TiVo's site:
TiVo Series2 and Series2 DT DVRs have a 90-day warranty on labor and a one-year warranty on parts. To see our warranty, go to the TiVo DVR Limited Warranty document.