# 24 hours to activate



## markwill

I rushed home with my new Tivo Mini tonight, to connect to my new Roamio Plus. The installation went fine, with just the delay for downloading stuff (update, etc). Then after that 30 minute process, I get a message saying it can't connect to the Roamio. The reason would appear to be the following, as indicated on My Account on the Tivo site:

"We're still processing your activation. Try again in 24 hours."

Really? Unlike every other online purchase these days which is immediate, Tivo wants me to wait 24 hours to verify a $6 / month fee? Tell me no....

I am outside of business hours for Tivo and I missed the Chat service by 8 minutes. While I guess and hope I can work this out tomorrow it is a pretty frustrating experience to not be able to complete the setup - all for the sake of $6.

Mark


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## Dan203

Force a couple of calls on both the Roamio and the Mini. It'll probably pick up the connection. It doesn't actually take 24 hours, it just takes a few calls on each so that they both know they are allowed to talk to one another.


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## sbiller

Dan203 said:


> Force a couple of calls on both the Roamio and the Mini. It'll probably pick up the connection. It doesn't actually take 24 hours, it just takes a few calls on each so that they both know they are allowed to talk to one another.


Concur. It took a few calls on my Roamio after I activated online last night. Probably about 30 minutes before the Roamio picked up the activation. I was receiving a C501 error for a little while after it received the activation but that resolved itself as well.


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## ellinj

One benefit of ordering online from tivo, the mini was already activated at shipment so my xl4 knew about it already.


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## markwill

Just following up on this, forcing a call from the Roamio resolved this (the penny dropped for how this work as soon as the suggestion as made ).

That said, I think the instructions, on-screen help and web status could have been a little more specific (rather than the "we are still processing your request - may take up to 24 hours" suggestion).

Thanks.

Mark


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## untfan

Another thing I experienced when I setup a couple of Mini's back in April at my parents house was that I had to force the host to reboot. I activated one Mini at a time and forced at least three connections on each the host / satellite in different orders. The Mini would never recognize a host until I rebooted the host and then everything was just fine.


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## yokito

Yes, I had to reboot the host as well - that did it.


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## jaynyc

How do I "force" a call to get my Mini activated sooner than XX hours?


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## mjcxp

jaynyc said:


> How do I "force" a call to get my Mini activated sooner than XX hours?


Tivo Central -> Settings & Messages -> Settings -> Network -> Connect to Tivo Service now.


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## ToastyZ71

No dice here yet. Activated my Mini last night at about 9:45. multiple forced connections and a few forced reboots on my Roamio plus ( and of course a few power cycles of the Mini) and no dice. Frustrating to say the least.


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## dianebrat

ToastyZ71 said:


> No dice here yet. Activated my Mini last night at about 9:45. multiple forced connections and a few forced reboots on my Roamio plus ( and of course a few power cycles of the Mini) and no dice. Frustrating to say the least.


Official company line is that activation takes 24-72 hours, whenever someone gets antsy that it's not happened in 24, they'll come back a day later and say it's fine now.


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## ToastyZ71

dianebrat said:


> Official company line is that activation takes 24-72 hours, whenever someone gets antsy that it's not happened in 24, they'll come back a day later and say it's fine now.


Yeah I called Tivo this evening just to check, and they said yeah, wait the full 24 hours, but didn't mention anything about 72. I'll try and be patient 

That being said... it seems completely nuts that it takes that long for the system to update. It shouldn't be that hard for them to even manually add the MAK of the host Tivo to the Mini.


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## todd_j_derr

Given the devices discover each other on the local network using Bonjour or Beacon or whatever, you'd think it would be pretty simple for the software to just trigger a call when a new device shows up on the network.

Although, I think that is only half the issue - I got the impression from my long activation ordeal that there's also some processing delay on the server side.


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## CrispyCritter

AFAICT. the problem is that not only does the Mini have know the TSN of the Roamio, the Roamio has to know the TSN of any Mini that is allowed to connect to it. For what ever reason (distributed servers, or pre-packaged info), when the Roamio calls, it doesn't get a completely up-to-date list of machines on the account. It can take several hours before that info is available to the Roamio. And then the Roamio has to make its daily call after that to actually get the info.


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## ellinj

One advantage of buying both my minis from Tivo. They were reactivated and ready to go by the time they got here.


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## eboydog

When I activated my Mini's, I just forced several call in's on my Roamio and Mini's made, I had them all up running in less than an hour. I bought the Mini's at BestBuy so they weren't already activated. Also used ethernet to set the Mini's up, after I put them in place they switched automatically to MoCa. 

Just got lifetime added to a Premiere, despite the online screen saying it would take 24 hours, after 2 forced call in's on the Premiere, lifetime shows up in the info screen.

The trick I believe is not just a couple or more forced call in's on the Mini but also the host they are running off of.


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## ToastyZ71

eboydog said:


> When I activated my Mini's, I just forced several call in's on my Roamio and Mini's made, I had them all up running in less than an hour. I bought the Mini's at BestBuy so they weren't already activated. Also used ethernet to set the Mini's up, after I put them in place they switched automatically to MoCa.
> 
> Just got lifetime added to a Premiere, despite the online screen saying it would take 24 hours, after 2 forced call in's on the Premiere, lifetime shows up in the info screen.
> 
> The trick I believe is not just a couple or more forced call in's on the Mini but also the host they are running off of.


Oh yeah I lost count of the number of forced connections on the Roamio and reboots of the Mini. Finally the morning after the 24 mark, it picked up and is working.


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## dianebrat

ToastyZ71 said:


> Oh yeah I lost count of the number of forced connections on the Roamio and reboots of the Mini. Finally the morning after the 24 mark, it picked up and is working.


Patience grasshopper...
It isn't that uncommon an occurrence  
glad it worked out as expected, you just can't force this one, I suspect there's a series of internal Tivo DBs the account change has to go through before everything clicks, and some days take longer than others.


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## ToastyZ71

dianebrat said:


> Patience grasshopper...
> It isn't that uncommon an occurrence
> glad it worked out as expected, you just can't force this one, I suspect there's a series of internal Tivo DBs the account change has to go through before everything clicks, and some days take longer than others.


Yeah, apparently. I just am impatient, lol... That, and since I work in IT, I am familiar with the tech side of stuff, and know there must be a better way, hahaha. Also realizing I should have activated Mini #2 before leaving home for the weekend. Oops!


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## eboydog

ToastyZ71 said:


> Oh yeah I lost count of the number of forced connections on the Roamio and reboots of the Mini. Finally the morning after the 24 mark, it picked up and is working.


I'm just repeating what my success was which is on par with pretty everyone else have had, one question, when you forced the calls did you check to see if it was successful? It's not just a matter of forcing the connection but also having a successful connection which will be displayed in the connection time screen of when the last successful connection was made. The issue of having a successful connection was not mentioned as such is unusual and it was assumed that if you force the connection that the result was successful.

When you log into the online account it always show the "we are processing your order", that doesn't mean anything, what matters is the status on your devices locally. I'm too an IT professional and many times such is creates problems as for example at one point I clamped down my home Internet firewall and while my TiVo's were attempting to make their daily call in's, my firewall prevented them from doing so successfully, there are a series of ports the TiVo's use that must be open to accommodate successful service updates which typical nonmodified home Internet firewalls permit without issues. With being knowledgeable about different information technologies, personally I try to be very respectful about those systems such as TiVo which I know hardly anything about their internal workings, such is part of being professional.

The fact remains that the Mini's and Roamio will activate successfully within a few minutes or an hour at the most as long as they forced to call in manually. The online web status when a change is made is only cosmetic. The normal activation process CAN take 24 hours if your TiVo's do not successfully make a service connection as they do this automatically every 24 hours which is why the website shows such a status.

In the worse case, you should have called Tivo support and they would have helped, this forum is secondary support forum. With all things considered, your situation was a rare exception and waiting 24 hours is not normal by any consideration.


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## ToastyZ71

eboydog said:


> I'm just repeating what my success was which is on par with pretty everyone else have had, one question, when you forced the calls did you check to see if it was successful? It's not just a matter of forcing the connection but also having a successful connection which will be displayed in the connection time screen of when the last successful connection was made. The issue of having a successful connection was not mentioned as such is unusual and it was assumed that if you force the connection that the result was successful.
> 
> When you log into the online account it always show the "we are processing your order", that doesn't mean anything, what matters is the status on your devices locally. I'm too an IT professional and many times such is creates problems as for example at one point I clamped down my home Internet firewall and while my TiVo's were attempting to make their daily call in's, my firewall prevented them from doing so successfully, there are a series of ports the TiVo's use that must be open to accommodate successful service updates which typical nonmodified home Internet firewalls permit without issues. With being knowledgeable about different information technologies, personally I try to be very respectful about those systems such as TiVo which I know hardly anything about their internal workings, such is part of being professional.
> 
> The fact remains that the Mini's and Roamio will activate successfully within a few minutes or an hour at the most as long as they forced to call in manually. The online web status when a change is made is only cosmetic. The normal activation process CAN take 24 hours if your TiVo's do not successfully make a service connection as they do this automatically every 24 hours which is why the website shows such a status.
> 
> In the worse case, you should have called Tivo support and they would have helped, this forum is secondary support forum. With all things considered, your situation was a rare exception and waiting 24 hours is not normal by any consideration.


Oh, They were definitely successful attempts, I checked.... And I spoke to Tivo support, but they wouldn't do anything until after the 24 hour mark. In any case, hopefully Mini #2 will go better


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## jshayy

had this error. did as described. made the manual connection to the tivo service twice on the host box. then re-booted the mini through guided setup. gave me some gripe on connection but selected re-try and good to go!


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