# 6.2 Causing Random Reboots?



## CTBrian

We got the 6.2 upgrade as scheduled on both of our HDVR2 units, and one of them has decided to randomly reboot at various times. One night, during a recording of ER and 2 other nights while we were simply watching TV. It goes thru the whole reboot sequence including acquiring data from the satellite. Has anybody else had this happen or know a way to fix the issue?


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## skinnyjm

Don't have that problem here.

50% 6.2..., HNS Yes, RCA No.


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## itgirl

HDVR2s are the worst DVRs ever made. They are going to have problems. Buy a new one.


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## bengalfreak

itgirl said:


> HDVR2s are the worst DVRs ever made. They are going to have problems. Buy a new one.


Don't be silly. HDVR2's are identical to the Phillips DSR7000 and RCA DVR39. They all came off the same assembly line. The only difference between any of the units is the faceplate.


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## beanpoppa

Most likely is that you have some errors on your drive. They are on your active partition, which, until the upgrade, was inactive.



CTBrian said:


> We got the 6.2 upgrade as scheduled on both of our HDVR2 units, and one of them has decided to randomly reboot at various times. One night, during a recording of ER and 2 other nights while we were simply watching TV. It goes thru the whole reboot sequence including acquiring data from the satellite. Has anybody else had this happen or know a way to fix the issue?


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## TivoGuy30

The random rebooots could be a problem with the 6.2 software. my hughes dvr-40 randomly rebooted with the 6.0 Beta software, and was updated to 6.1 and the reboots stoppped. so it could be a problem that wasnt fixed for other units.


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## dtremain

TivoGuy30 said:


> The random rebooots could be a problem with the 6.2 software. my hughes dvr-40 randomly rebooted with the 6.0 Beta software, and was updated to 6.1 and the reboots stoppped. so it could be a problem that wasnt fixed for other units.


See Beanpoppa's post immediately above your own. It applies to your situation as well as the op's.


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## rminsk

TivoGuy30 said:


> The random rebooots could be a problem with the 6.2 software. my hughes dvr-40 randomly rebooted with the 6.0 Beta software, and was updated to 6.1 and the reboots stoppped. so it could be a problem that wasnt fixed for other units.


6.1 does not work on a dvr-40. 6.1 was for the R10 only.


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## fides7

i've had the same thing happen to me 3 times....i just got off the phone w/ tech rep...he told me to reboot, wait a few days...if it does it again, then reset and re-install 6.2. If random reboots still occur, then it will be replaced. BTW, I have Phillips DSR7000.


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## shaady

I've had two reboots (while I was watching TV) in the past two days. Perhaps more while I was not watching TV (not sure). Exact same as you described with the loading software, long delay, blah, blah, blah...

I've had 6.2 since Thur 5/19.


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## aristoBrat

FWIW, 3 HDVR2s running 6.2 for over a month with zero unexpected reboots.


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## Mikegia5

I got 6.2 today and it rebooted for the first time a few minutes ago. We've had this HDVR2 for probably two years now and it's never rebooted before. If it happens again, I'll be calling the tech rep. Luckily I've got the extended service plan and they should replace it for free.
Mike in Phoenix, Arizona


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## rogue5

I have one of the hughes units and mine started to reboot at random also. Not only that but I haven't been able to get through to the daily call. I ran a test call and after 2 tries in connected but I couldn't do the daily call. The last good call was when it DL the 6.2 upgrade. How do I manually reload 6.2 (if possible), I have tried rebooting at least twice (not counting the random reboots). It has done the random reboot at least 3 times since sunday morning, after the update. I hope my DVR isn't corupted, I will be pissed if it was.


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## captenblack

My DirecTV Tivo receiver is also rebooting at random times since Saturday when the 6.2 upgrade occurred. 

Thus far I've noticed it happening once each evening.


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## itgirl

bengalfreak said:


> Don't be silly. HDVR2's are identical to the Phillips DSR7000 and RCA DVR39. They all came off the same assembly line. The only difference between any of the units is the faceplate.


 and those models suck too.


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## itsmeitsmeitsme

itgirl..........what is your problem????? you go from thread to thread spreading such joy.....and since all these models suck then what do you reccomend? (can't wait to hear this one)


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## happyharry

Used to reboot maybe once a month and the reboot was quick.
Last 2 nights my HDVR2 has died every evening. Reboot seems to take more than an hour - can that be.
What do I do?
Is my HDVR2 dying and this is just making it worse or???


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## Gunnyman

2 units HDVR2 and a DVR40.
Neither one has had any reboot issues. When I was running 4.01b on my HDVR2 it would reboot once in a while. 6.2 seems to be very solid.


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## rminsk

New software releases tend to expose more dying hard drives. The TiVo has two different boot partitions, an active partition and a non-active partition. When new software is installed it is installed on the in-active partition. The TiVo than swaps the boot partition making the in-active the active partition and vise-versa. Then the machine reboots using the new software. If your drive has a flaw in the previously in-active partition then you may get reboots. 

I am not saying this explains all the reboots but it could explain some. It seems with every software release there are a few machines that suffer reboot problems.


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## bengalfreak

itgirl said:


> and those models suck too.


Nope, I've had HDVR2's and DSR7000's for over two years and haven't had the first problem with any of them. Series 2 is the way to go. Maximum upgradeability coupled with maximum hackability. The best of both worlds.


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## itgirl

I'm sorry if I am blunt. I don't mean to be, I just call it like I see it. I work with this stuff every day, day in and day out for quite some time now. So I kinda know which receivers work fairly well, and which don't. All DVRs have the same interface, but those aforementioned are virtual dinosaurs at this point and continually have problems. Of course, all models have had some issues so I couldn't tell you a specific model that is guaranteed to work, that is just not realistic. I'm sorry if I offended you, I really didn't mean to I just tend to be very blunt.


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## happyharry

Talked to tech rep at D yesterday. Checked with database and others and then said there are no problems with 6.2 that they know of or that would cause reboots. I guess we are all "wrong". Their suggestion to me was try a complete reset (lose everything) and if that doesn't help - buy a new DVR - mine is dying. 
Since most of my season pass stuff is done for the year - I'm trying the full reset. Really not losing a lot and I can't continue. Rebooted twice during 2 hour period yesterday. 
Reset took a lot longer than the hour it said it would and haven't had chance to resetup everything yet. Hope this fixes it.


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## aristoBrat

itgirl said:


> I'm sorry if I offended you, I really didn't mean to I just tend to be very blunt.


IMO,

Being blunt = "those aforementioned are virtual dinosaurs at this point and continually have problems" :up:

Being [rude, condescending] = "and those models suck too" :down:


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## aristoBrat

happyharry said:


> Talked to tech rep at D yesterday. Checked with database and others and then said there are no problems with 6.2 that they know of or that would cause reboots. I guess we are all "wrong".


Well, I guess from their point-of-view, a hard drive failing isn't technically a 6.2 specific issue. If the partition that your 6.2 installed on is really on a bad part of the disk, any version update that installed there would probably have reboot problems. 

FWIW, I'm not sure how good your computer skills are, but it might be less expensive to buy a new, larger hard drive for your current DTiVo vs. buying a totally new DTiVo. I'm guessing that it's out-of-warranty if you mentioned having to buy a new one...


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## rminsk

itgirl said:


> All DVRs have the same interface, but those aforementioned are virtual dinosaurs at this point and continually have problems.


They are all the same and are not dinosaurs at this point and do not continually have problems. All of my machines are series 1 (which are getting to be dinosaurs) or series 2 (non-R10) and have been rock solid. Most people on these groups will report the same. The only problem people have with them is the disk drive dying which happens on all DVR reguardless of make, model, or series.


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## makeen

My DVR started rebooting this morning at a rate of about every 35 minutes. Then it started getting farther apart. At least 8 reboots so far. This has never happened before. I too talked to directv tech support and they said I should unplug it and wait 15 seconds and see if that works. Well it rebooted about 40 minutes after that. 

Did I mention that this is the first problem I've encountered with this DVR 

I have 6.2 but I don't know exactly when it upgraded to that possibly 2:36am this morning. 

I've had this unit since Dec2003 Model Samsung SIR-S4120R.


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## shaady

makeen said:


> Did I mention that this is the first problem I've encountered with this DVR


That's a good point that I forgot to make, makeen. This rebooting is the very first problem I've had with this unit (series2, for 2+ years). I had many other problems with my first TiVo (series1, for 2+ yrs also), stuttering, freezing, skipping, sound droppin out...etc.


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## tonering

My Hughes HDVR2 started rebooting just after 9 pm this past Monday. Sometimes it reboots during the "Almost there, just a few more minutes" screen. Once in about every dozen reboots it gets to the "acquiring information from the satellite" screen, then reboots. I found that if I disconnected the cables from the dish, I can get into Tivo Central and gain access to my recorded programs. However, as soon as I reconnect the cables to the dish, the receiver reboots. 

I called DTV tech support yesterday afternoon and explained the problem and what had been done so far. The csr then transferred me to an upper level technician. We tried a couple of things, but he didn't request that I run a bunch of silly tests or a full reset. Much to my surprise, he decided to send me a new DVR. He said they want to look at my old receiver to see if they can isolate the issue, and understand why some receivers apparently have problems with the 6.2 software install. 

I am very pleased with the total tech support experience, and should have the new D*Tivo by this coming Monday. (They are even paying the shipping to return the defective box.) In the meantime, I am transferring the "now showing" programs to a Pioneer DVR-510H recorder.


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## apollo8fan

I got my upgrade on Monday, everything was going smoothly, then yesterday afternoon, the HDVR2 just decided to reboot and locked-up during the reboot while my wife was watching a pre-recorded. When I got home from work, my wife said it sat at the "powering up...." screen for a "long time". I let it sit there for another 10 minutes without any progress. I pulled the plug and it restarted without a hitch.

Weird.


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## hokiepolk

Received 6.2 late last night and mine has rebooted twice in the past three hours (HDVR2). If it happens again, guess I'll call D*. 

That, and the goofy remote control issues


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## soccergrunt

rminsk said:


> New software releases tend to expose more dying hard drives. The TiVo has two different boot partitions, an active partition and a non-active partition. When new software is installed it is installed on the in-active partition. The TiVo than swaps the boot partition making the in-active the active partition and vise-versa. Then the machine reboots using the new software. If your drive has a flaw in the previously in-active partition then you may get reboots.
> 
> I am not saying this explains all the reboots but it could explain some. It seems with every software release there are a few machines that suffer reboot problems.


Apparently 6.2 exposed my bad hard drive on my Philips DSR708. I received the upgrade last Sunday afternoon. Everything looked fine until Monday morning when the video froze while watching a recorded program. After performing a reset, it looked fine again for about 20 minutes. Same thing. After about three more resets, the unit froze on the Welcome...Powering Up screen. Monday night, I called D* CSR. They promptly moved me on to tech support. Tech told me to wait out the night and see if it would correct itself. After I chuckled, I went ahead and left it at that and called the next morning.

On Tuesday, called D* tech and it took me about 10 minutes to convince them it was a bad unit. This unit is 4 months old and just out of the initial warranty period. They offered to replace with no fee and paid shipping on the return unit without me asking. New unit is due tomorrow. The interesting comment by the tech was that he has taken several calls from customers with the same drive failures after upgrading to 6.2 on units less than 90 days old.


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## happyharry

Did the full reset as directed. Takes a while!. Hasn't rebooted since but it is too early to determine. I find it interesting that this reboot seems to be a "recent" problem - did the version of 6.2 change. Just a little code that won't hurt anything. Heard that before.


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## rogue5

Well I got home this afternoon and my hughes started to reboot every 5 minutes, I amin the process of clearing the thumbs suggestions and then I will see what happens. I also am scratching my head about the change in the remote button assignment? I hadn't had any problems with mine, and I have had it 2+ years. I am glad I have the Tivo insurance so D* will just have to give me a new one for screwing the one I had. At least I will recoop some of my insurance money  ! Has anyone seen or heard elsewhere about this problem and a possible solution?


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## Breezy

I got 6.2 last week sometime and I've been experiencing problems w/ my 
DVD recorder remote controlling my TiVo.
When I record something from the Tivo to my dvd recorder and then insert 
chapter titles, it does things to my tivo. Like deletes, records, set season passes, etc. I can't see what is happening because the screen is on, the screen for the dvd recorder is on showing me what chapter I'm making. Every time I press a letter on my dvd recorder remote, it's doing things to my Tivo. 
I called Directv the other day and they transferred me to Tivo and I thought they were very helpful and fixed the problem. She had me readdress my tivo remote control. Well, that seemed to work for about 2 hrs., now I'm back to where I started from. 
I tried resetting it, that didn't work.
Any ideas?


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## makeen

Has anyone tried clearing out all the data, recordings, etc. to see if this helps. I am trying to save some of my programs before I do that. I was hoping to see if someone has already tried that.

That is what diretv tsr is recommending I do next.


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## rminsk

makeen said:


> Has anyone tried clearing out all the data, recordings, etc. to see if this helps. I am trying to save some of my programs before I do that. I was hoping to see if someone has already tried that.
> 
> That is what diretv tsr is recommending I do next.


If it is a failing harddrive that will only postpone the problem. Eventually it will try to write data again to the bad spot on the disk. DirecTVs responce to any problem on the DirecTiVo is do a clear and delete everything.

It seems the DirecTV guide for diagnosing problems on the TiVo:
1. Listen to users problem
2. Say "I have never heard of anyone else having <problem>"
3. Do a "Clear and Delete Everything"


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## captenblack

Called tech support late last night, the lady who helped me said she's gotten tons of calls about problems with the 6.2 software, and she's just sending people new units right and left. Before I could even finish explaining the problem with my system rebooting every once in a while, she said, "ok, I'm sending you a new unit". I had the Hughes SD-dvr40 and will probably get the R10. Problem is, I bought the dvr40 as an upgraded unit from weaknees. I tried to explain that to her, she didn't seem to care. I guess I simply upgrade the R10 on my own? Does anybody have suggestions on how to handle this? I don't mind doing it on my own.


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## newswatcher

itgirl said:


> I'm sorry if I am blunt. I don't mean to be, I just call it like I see it. I work with this stuff every day, day in and day out for quite some time now. So I kinda know which receivers work fairly well, and which don't. All DVRs have the same interface, but those aforementioned are virtual dinosaurs at this point and continually have problems. Of course, all models have had some issues so I couldn't tell you a specific model that is guaranteed to work, that is just not realistic. I'm sorry if I offended you, I really didn't mean to I just tend to be very blunt.


So, you recommend (fill in the blank) instead of the other DVR?


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## dressiv

Good to hear Im not the only one with this problem....I got the 6.2 upgrade sunday and my Hughes has just started rebooting at random


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## Dkerr24

My RCA unit isn't rebooting, it's simply freezing while recording a program. The 120gb drive is about 6 months old. I bought the drive online from Tiger electronics, and it was packaged for shipment very poorly. I suspect the drive may have taken quite a beating just getting shipped here.

However, these problems began after the 6.2 upgrade. I'm doing a "Clear and Delete" everything to see if that clears it up.


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## happyharry

After doing the complete reset Tues night / Wed morning I have not noticed any reboots. Watched all last evening and it ran fine which is first time since 6.2 upgrade it has run more than a couple of hours of watching without reboot. Hated to lose stuff although not a lot and the time was a pain but if it delays a purchase until I'm ready for HD - this is fine with me. 
There has to be something in this latest 6.2 code that is causing these issues.


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## makeen

I haven't cleared out everything yet but I am experiencing a lot less reboots. It is now friday 5:30pm and I haven't had a reboot since Thursday 9:30pm.

Are you all seeing improvements also?


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## CTBrian

Since I began this thread, our HDVR2 had been behaving...of course I probably just jinxed it. I'll keep my eye on it and see if DTV needs to send me a new unit - we've got the insurance too. Thanks everyone for your responses so far....hopefully it's an issue that will be addressed quickly!


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## alan

My SAMSUNG SIR-S4120R got the 6.2 version on Monday and has been rebooting about 4-5 times a day since. Tried to call tech support on Wednesday, but it was around Midnight on the east coast and they take the database down (or at least that's what the CSR told me) so the CSR couldn't do anything that night.

I just got off the phone with another CSR and he told me that they haven't seen this problem with 6.2 yet. I think that's a standard response.

He had me remove the two sat-inputs and pull the power plug and then put it all back together. It booted up and he basically told me that if it happens again that I would have to do an ERASE ALL and see if that cleared up the problem. If not, then they'll ship a replacement unit.

They asked a lot of questions about the UPS that I have the TiVo plugged into. I think they were hoping that it was just a loose power cord. The guy told me that unplugging the SAT-Inputs and the power cord was good to do just to make sure they are reseated.

He told me that I should watch all those programs that I've recorded so that I would be ready to do the ERASE ALL if it came to that. Needless to say, I probably won't be calling them back anytime soon.

I do have to say that the 6.2 menus are blazingly fast in this version and I haven't seen the menus freeze for several minutes like I did in the last version. Seems like the User Interface in 6.2 is so much better than it was.

If they would fix the reboot problem and the Lifetime TiVo stuff that I paid $249 for then I'd be a happy man.

SAMSUNG SIR S4120R (not hacked)
Version: 6.2-01-2-381
Uptime: about 50 minutes
71 Season Passes and Auto Record Wishlists

Sony SAT-T60 (Hacked)
Version: 3.1.0c2-01-1-011
Uptime: 59d 10h 00m 15s
57 Season Passes and Auto Record Wishlists


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## rogue5

Well I have somewhat good news, since I deleted all the thumb suggestions (kept my recorded stuff and passes) I have not had any problems. I also made a call after that also, hopefully the combination of all that stuff and maybe D* dropping a hot fix without saying anything will fix it. I would rather not have to replace it untill the new stuff comes out for the MPEG4 transmissions.


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## Dkerr24

To followup my earlier post, doing the "Clear and Delete Everything" seems to have cleared up the daily freezes on my RCA unit.

I was also sucessful in restoring my backup image of my Samsung using a LBA48 boot disk. The DTivo now reports 144 hours of recording time instead of the 120 hours.


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## Galley_SimRacer

I have had the 6.2 update for several days now. I came home from shopping to watch the Indy 500 and my HDVR2 is stuck in a reboot loop! I have unplugged the power cable and the satellite cable, and that has had no effect. Aaargh!


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## makeen

The reboots have increased a lot today. Some days they are much better though. I find improvement when I delete some of my recordings. It also improves after a forced call. I don't want to do a total clear because I can't part with some of the recordings and it is so difficult to save to VCR when it keeps rebooting several times during the save. 

I thought my reboots had stopped a few days ago, but when I vacuumed the back of the unit after seeing a lot of dust there the reboots came back with a vengeance.


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## Galley_SimRacer

I called tech support and they said my hard drive had most likely died. They are sending a replacement for my two year old HDVR2 for $50. If only I had $700, I would've just bought the Hi-Def unit instead.
Edit: I don't suppose they sell me one for $50/month, would they?


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## stevel

I have 6.2 on a brand new drive, and it has been rebooting rather frequently. A check of the log does show what could be disk problems, so I will pull the drive for some diagnostics and see what I get.


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## shplatt

I'm wondering if the reboot problem might be related to boxes w/ expanded hard drives. Particularly, as in my case, HDs > 137 Gb. I have a 704 w/ two 160 Gb drives. I have not upgraded it to 6.2 yet, because I'm waiting to see how other people's upgrades go. I read a post about 6.2 supporting LBA48 (my first post, so I can't link yet). I have not substantiated this. However, if this is true, perhaps there could be an issue with a DTiVo that has been using 137 Gb of a 160 Gb drive one day and then attempts to use the entire drive the next.

For those who have been having reboot problems: what size/number of drives are you using?


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## rminsk

shplatt said:


> However, if this is true, perhaps there could be an issue with a DTiVo that has been using 137 Gb of a 160 Gb drive one day and then attempts to use the entire drive the next.


This is not possible without adding partitions to the drive.


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## mphare

I have a stock 704 that is less than a year old. Never had a problem with the unit before. I got 6.2 on the box late last week. I had my first and only reboot (that I've seen) today. I've asked my wife to monitor it as she's home with the kids and uses it more than I do.
If it goes cronic I'll notify DTV and see what they say about it.


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## john-duncan-yoyo

captenblack said:


> Called tech support late last night, the lady who helped me said she's gotten tons of calls about problems with the 6.2 software, and she's just sending people new units right and left. Before I could even finish explaining the problem with my system rebooting every once in a while, she said, "ok, I'm sending you a new unit". I had the Hughes SD-dvr40 and will probably get the R10. Problem is, I bought the dvr40 as an upgraded unit from weaknees. I tried to explain that to her, she didn't seem to care. I guess I simply upgrade the R10 on my own? Does anybody have suggestions on how to handle this? I don't mind doing it on my own.


First off- If they don't care don't bother them with the details.

Weaknees has a guide for the R10 upgrade but the twinbreeze bracket is different for the R10 and may not be compatible with the one for the Hughes SD DVR-40.

It was pretty painless when upgraded my Hughes SD DVR-40. There isn't much difference from the pictures. Take your time, ground yourself and make sure all the cables are in place.

Are you planning on salvageing your second hard drive from the Hughes?


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## stevel

Grumble - full diagnostics gave the drive a clean bill of health. Think I'll start over and see what happens...


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## captenblack

john-duncan-yoyo said:


> First off- If they don't care don't bother them with the details.
> 
> Weaknees has a guide for the R10 upgrade but the twinbreeze bracket is different for the R10 and may not be compatible with the one for the Hughes SD DVR-40.
> 
> It was pretty painless when upgraded my Hughes SD DVR-40. There isn't much difference from the pictures. Take your time, ground yourself and make sure all the cables are in place.
> 
> Are you planning on salvageing your second hard drive from the Hughes?


Thanks for this advice, had a good conversation with DirecTV support earlier today. You're right, they don't seem to care about what you send back and basically said they've been sending a ton of replacement DVRs the past week or so. I asked why they were so quick to offer me a replacement (without even troubleshooting my reboot problem), and she just said as a good standing customer its easier to just request a replacement, especially since there has been widespread problems with the software upgrade.

So, I got the replacement DVR and its a Philips DSR708! I find it odd they didn't send the R10 since (I thought) it was the current model. I assume the Philips is basically the same thing as the Hughes I'm sending back!

I do not have a second hard drive in my Hughes, just a single 160gb. However, I had a 40gb lying around and I was successful with my first Tivo hardware adjustment. I switched it out so I can put the 160 in the new Philips. Worked perfectly, used the Hinsdale instructions. I was most worried about doing the linux commands correctly based on my situation, but it worked out fine and now I feel comfortable playing around with this stuff more in the future.

I assume I'll get the 6.2 upgrade again with the Philips... Question: When I go to upgrade the philips (probably will do in a couple weeks) will I be able to use the full 160gb now with the 6.2 software? Should I be using the special BootCD with large drive support that Hinsdale's instructions mention?

I'm hoping this summer to finally pick up the HD tivo receiver.


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## stevel

Yes, 6.2 can use the full 160GB. Yes, you should use the special boot CD with large drive support.


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## rmassey

I noticed a reboot today while watching a pre-recorded show. Boom , there it went to "powering up" My DTivo is a Hughes HDVR2 and I have a single 120 HD (Samsung 5400) which replaced the stock 40gb HD. 

I find it hard to believe we all have bad hard drives. This seems like a 6.2 bug IMO. I really hate to do a clear and reset and loose all my recordings. So if I call and they offer a replacment, I'll have to put the stock 40 back in and it doesn't have 6.2 on it. Do they still ship out HDVR2s or will I get an R10 or philips or ???. 

If this gets cronic, I will prob put the 40 back in, let it upgrade to 6.2 and see if the problem persists. If it does, I can swap it out with Direct for a new unit. 

BTW, I also have a five year extended Warr with Circuit City. I already used it once when I got hit by lightning and it took out the Tivo. I wonder if CC will be able to provide an HDVR2 (my preference)?


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## rminsk

rmassey said:


> This seems like a 6.2 bug IMO.


Every release there are complaints that "this new software killed my TiVo". In only one case has it been a bug with the software, 3.1.1d. There may be a problem with this release but so far it seems about the average number of complaints.

Your machine has rebooted once. I would not worry unless you start to see slow downs or more reboots.


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## rmassey

rminsk said:


> Every release there are complaints that "this new software killed my TiVo". In only one case has it been a bug with the software, 3.1.1d. There may be a problem with this release but so far it seems about the average number of complaints.
> 
> Your machine has rebooted once. I would not worry unless you start to see slow downs or more reboots.


Well, It has happened more than once on my machine. I only actually saw it happen once. I have noticed that I've lost the 30 sec skip a few times since the 6.2 upgrade, which indicates it has reboot.

Just becuase you may not have seen this problem on you DTivo, doesn't mean it isn't a bug affecting other users. Since many of us have reported the same exact problem just after 6.2 is released is a very clear sign of a sw bug.


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## rminsk

rmassey said:


> Just becuase you may not have seen this problem on you DTivo, doesn't mean it isn't a bug affecting other users. Since many of us have reported the same exact problem just after 6.2 is released is a very clear sign of a sw bug.


I'm not saying that I have not seen it. Just from experience, we have this exact same thread every software release... even back in the 2.5.2 days. It is usually not a software bug... most of the time it is a bad hard drive. When new software gets installed the TiVo switches boot partitions. But it could be another problem...


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## aristoBrat

rmassey said:


> Since many of us have reported the same exact problem just after 6.2 is released is a very clear sign of a sw bug.


Maybe it is, maybe it isn't (although the only difference between our machines is the hardware -- the 6.2 software is the same on all of our machines), but I'm going to have to agree with rminsk that after every upgrade that DTV's done, there's been threads like this. <shrug>


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## Stephen M. Smith

I had this same reboot problem right after the 6.2 upgrade. My Tivo is un-modified except for a 120GB hd replacement. After 6.2, I had probably 8 or 9 spontaneous reboots over the next 2 days, but luckily, it stopped after that.


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## shaady

shaady said:


> That's a good point that I forgot to make, makeen. This rebooting is the very first problem I've had with this unit (series2, for 2+ years). I had many other problems with my first TiVo (series1, for 2+ yrs also), stuttering, freezing, skipping, sound droppin out...etc.


OK, no reboots in about a week. I hesitated in even posting this so as not to jinx myself.

We'll see... *fingers crossed*


----------



## Abiding Dude

I am getting the random reboot problem now too. It's rebooted 3 times since getting the 6.2 upgrade. I also have a Samsung 120gb drive in there. I wonder if the problem is related to this particular drive?


----------



## Scott D

My HDVR2 rebooted twice but I think it has to do with transferring a particular program. It seemed to have a glitch in that program whereas all other transfers worked just fine. No other notable times of reboot I know of unless they have logs of such an event.


----------



## llurgy

I witnessed a random reboot on my HDVR2 unit this AM at 1.30. I have had 6.2 on this unit since around the 21st of May and not seen any reboots until the early hours of this morning. It could have done it before then but I havent witnessed it doing so.
My Directivo has an upgraded 120 gig drive in it on which until this point has had nothing wrong with it whatsoever.

I cant bring myself to believe that it is a bad partion that is causing all of these reboots......just doesnt seem plausible that all these hard drives that have worked near perfectly until 6.2 are suddenly showing bad partitions....I mean, how likely is that? Really??
Sorry, just dont buy it!

What I do buy however is that there is some inconsistency in the 6.2 software that is causing these reboots.

Up until yesterday I was one of those people that could say that they had no problems with 6.2, after this AM I am now a person that IS having some sort of problem and for all I know my system could have been rebooting itself every morning at 1.30 since it got the software, I dont know, I am asleep at that time usually and I dont record at that time in the morning either.

What I do know is that until the reboot I considered my HDVR2 to be in perfect working order with no problems, no stuttering or clicking with all recorded programs playing back without incident or artifacts (except in thunderstorms).

Mandy


----------



## aristoBrat

120gb drives are apparently evil.


----------



## rogue5

Well, while trying not to jinx myself I have been reboot free since I erased my thumb recomendations and did a call in. That was about 3 days after I got 6.2 and 2 days after the reboots started, but the unit hasn't completed a call since, and it was hard before I made the call on the 24th of may. I keep getting service not answering as the error for the failure, I have tried a few of my numbers without any luck. I can do the test call but that is it. My HDTivo isn't having any problems calling so I don't know what it is...


----------



## shaady

shaady said:


> OK, no reboots in about a week. I hesitated in even posting this so as not to jinx myself.
> 
> We'll see... *fingers crossed*


Spoke too soon....another reboot last night...


----------



## rmassey

aristoBrat said:


> Maybe it is, maybe it isn't (although the only difference between our machines is the hardware -- the 6.2 software is the same on all of our machines), but I'm going to have to agree with rminsk that after every upgrade that DTV's done, there's been threads like this. <shrug>


OK, so if this is correct (bad partition causing reboots) and I want to fix this, what is the preferred plan of attack.

For both of my HDVR2s, I have the original 40 GB drives with 3.xxx on them from 2002. Should I try -

1) clear and restore the existing 120 GB drive - will this help at all or will I just see the problem again later on?

2) Replace the 120 with the original 40 GB, force a call, update it to 6.2.

3) clear and restore this 40 GB

4) reImage the 120 from the newly updated 40 GB with 6.2.

Will any of this get me past the bad spot on the new boot partition? I'm getting tired of random reboots and lack of relibility. I am willing to swap drive, reimage, clear/Restore, but I am not going to buy new 120 GB drives and I'd really not like to just go back to the stock 40 GB drives for any length of time.


----------



## rmassey

bumpola - anyone ?


----------



## Abiding Dude

I haven't had any issues since I last posted (several days back). I wonder if there are some house-keeping chores that need to be performed after the upgrade takes place that may interrupt the normal operation of the unit. I will keep my fingers crossed and hope it was just a fluke


----------



## stevel

I too haven't seen any spontaneous reboots in the past few days. In addition to running diagnostics on the disk, I forced an MFS check just for good measure. (Was amused to get the "installing new software" screen instead of the usual GSOD for this.) I have no idea if this made a difference or not.


----------



## swkenney

I have a Hughes SD-DVR120 100 hour DTV. It started rebooting after 6.2 was installed. Service tech had me force a call to perhaps complete the installation. It has not rebooted since.

Actually, I had already forced a call once after the install, so I don't know why the second call would do anything.


----------



## rogue5

I think the call did have something to do with mine cause since the call I ahve been good to go. Although now I have had to force the last two calls cause my system kept gettting failed calls each time it tried, not sure if it was just that the phone number was busy or if it was a problem with my unit. Oh and I have a hughes sd-40 (non-tampered) and I never had a problem with it until I got the download. Knock on wood I won't have anymore problems!


----------



## jfuredy

I too am now experiencing the random reboot problem on my unit that received 6.2 from satellite, but my reboot is accompanied by video stuttering and pixelating prior to the reboot.

I am willing to consider the possibility that the "new" boot partitions could have bad sectors in them. Does the TiVo software repair identified bad sectors on the hard drive each time it reboots? I am thinking that this would be the only way that the problem would just "go away" all by itself.

Does anyone have any knowledge of what the TiVo does during the reboot?
Joe Furedy
Hughes SD-DVR40 running 6.2 (from AlphaWolf's 62small.mfs) on 200GB with HMO (no problems yet...)
Hughes SD-DVR40 running 6.2 (from satellite) on 40GB + 137GB (video problems with reboots)


----------



## Diana Collins

aristoBrat said:


> IMO,
> 
> Being blunt = "those aforementioned are virtual dinosaurs at this point and continually have problems" :up:
> 
> Being [rude, condescending] = "and those models suck too" :down:


And both comments contributed soooo much to the advancement of the OP's problem. 

That is the real problem itgirl, you bomb in with sarcastic and/or rude comments that are pointless, and contribute nothing to the process. There are a half dozen DirecTV CSRs that post regularly on my board and they are generally helpful and friendly. You have been neither in any thread in which I have seen you post. If the attitude you present here carries over into your work, I sure hope I never have to talk to you.


----------



## stevel

Yes, the TiVo does try to do some disk structure repair during a boot - you can see this if you have access to the kernel log or have hacked to enable a serial console output.

Try this. Reboot the TiVo and wait for the green power light to change to yellow (it will be a minute or so before it does this.) At that time, press Pause on the remote and the record light will also change to yellow. Now press 58 on the remote. You SHOULD get either a "green screen of death" (misnamed), or perhaps a message that new software is being installed. Let it sit for a while - this may take 20 minutes or several hours. What you have done is request a check and repair of the MFS partitions. It will resume normally when it is done.


----------



## Human123

stevel said:


> Yes, the TiVo does try to do some disk structure repair during a boot - you can see this if you have access to the kernel log or have hacked to enable a serial console output.
> 
> Try this. Reboot the TiVo and wait for the green power light to change to yellow (it will be a minute or so before it does this.) At that time, press Pause on the remote and the record light will also change to yellow. Now press 58 on the remote. You SHOULD get either a "green screen of death" (misnamed), or perhaps a message that new software is being installed. Let it sit for a while - this may take 20 minutes or several hours. What you have done is request a check and repair of the MFS partitions. It will resume normally when it is done.


My Tivo is 6.2 with ftp and telnet enabled. It is rebooting randomly at night and leaving partial recordings. This seems to happen 2 to 3 times a night.

I am considering doing the above, but first I am wondering if I can be pointed toward logs files to look at and how do I look at them. Can you look at them while on the Tivo without Tivoweb?

Thanks for any help with viewing log files


----------



## stevel

Sure. Ftp to the TiVo and copy file /var/log/kernel (in ASCII mode) back to your PC and peruse it there.


----------



## Human123

In the kernel log I keep seeing this line and then the date reverts to Jan 2 then goes through some more logging lines and sets the system time back (Reboot?)

Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: Tmk Fatal Error: Thread HandleDataChanged <7716>: unexpected signal 10 
Jan 2 00:00:15 (none) kernel: klogd 1.3-3, log source = /proc/kmsg started.

Any advice? Or can I provide better info from other log files?
Thanks

Edit

This appears to be a complete log of an event

Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: emulate_load_store_insn: sending signal 10 to myworld(7716) 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: $0 : 00000000 fefefeff 00c74774 00000000 deadbeef 5ed2d21c 5ed23814 00000000 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: $8 : 00000000 00000000 2ae421cc 00000002 00000000 ee6b2800 3e164e81 fa860000 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: $16: deadbeef deadbeef 5ed2d21c 5ed3ebc8 00000004 100d4f00 00000001 5ed2d21c 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: $24: 00000000 00cd8ab0 1006d910 7b5ff150 00030021 00c747b8 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: Hi : ecbba7e2 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: Lo : ec074567 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: epc : 00cd8ad8 Not tainted 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: Status: 8001bc13 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: Cause : 00000010 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: 8001e9fc 8001eac0 80022bb4 800215b4 8001d6b8 00cd8ad8 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: 00cd8ad8 00c747b8 00c39e24 013bbbc0 013bb1b8 00c388c0 00c398d0 00c350e0 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: 00c3105c 00c30f6c 00c22898 00c337f0 00c70e0c 00c70910 00c72040 00c71714 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: 00c70bc4 00c6ffcc 00c62d54 00c5a634 00c613bc 00c6ced0 00c6c97c 00c6c418 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: 00c6b940 00c6b790 0123e850 013a706c 013ce190 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: Tmk Fatal Error: Thread HandleDataChanged <7716> strayed! 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: pc 0xcd8adc status 0x8001bc13 cause 0x000010 bva 0xdeadbeef hi 0xecbba7e2 lo 0xec074567 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: R00 0x00000000 R01 0xfefefeff R02 0x00c74774 R03 0x00000000 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: R04 0xdeadbeef R05 0x5ed2d21c R06 0x5ed23814 R07 0x00000000 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: R08 0x00000000 R09 0x00000000 R10 0x2ae421cc R11 0x00000002 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: R12 0x00000000 R13 0xee6b2800 R14 0x3e164e81 R15 0xfa860000 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: R16 0xdeadbeef R17 0xdeadbeef R18 0x5ed2d21c R19 0x5ed3ebc8 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: R20 0x00000004 R21 0x100d4f00 R22 0x00000001 R23 0x5ed2d21c 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: R24 0x00000000 R25 0x00cd8ab0 R26 0x0001a338 R27 0x00000000 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: R28 0x1006d910 R29 0x7b5ff150 R30 0x00030021 R31 0x00c747b8 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: Paste the following into a shell to get a backtrace... 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: bt -t /tvbin/tivoapp <<END_OF_BT 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: read 0x2aaa8000 /lib/ld.so.1 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: read 0x2ab04000 /lib/libutil.so.1 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: read 0x2ab48000 /lib/libdl.so.2 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: read 0x2ab8c000 /lib/libpthread.so.0 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: read 0x2abe8000 /lib/libm.so.6 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: read 0x2acb0000 /lib/libc.so.6 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: 0x00cd8adc 0x00c747b8 0x00c39e24 0x013bbbc0 0x013bb1b8 0x00c388c0 0x00c398d0 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: 0x00c350e0 0x00c3105c 0x00c30f6c 0x00c22898 0x00c337f0 0x00c70e0c 0x00c70910 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: 0x00c72040 0x00c71714 0x00c70bc4 0x00c6ffcc 0x00c62d54 0x00c5a634 0x00c613bc 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: 0x00c6ced0 0x00c6c97c 0x00c6c418 0x00c6b940 0x00c6b790 0x0123e850 0x013a706c 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: 0x013ce190 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: END_OF_BT 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: 
Jun 9 16:28:08 (none) kernel: Tmk Fatal Error: Thread HandleDataChanged <7716>: unexpected signal 10 
Jan 2 00:00:15 (none) kernel: klogd 1.3-3, log source = /proc/kmsg started.
Jan 2 00:00:15 (none) kernel: Cannot find map file.


----------



## stevel

I have found that my 6.2 system is stable if I don't "play" with it through TWP. But if I do something such as try to add a season pass through TWP, I can crash it readily. Which I did last night - sigh. It had been up for five days (since I had deliberately rebooted it) up until then.


----------



## rmassey

stevel said:


> Yes, the TiVo does try to do some disk structure repair during a boot - you can see this if you have access to the kernel log or have hacked to enable a serial console output.
> 
> Try this. Reboot the TiVo and wait for the green power light to change to yellow (it will be a minute or so before it does this.) At that time, press Pause on the remote and the record light will also change to yellow. Now press 58 on the remote. You SHOULD get either a "green screen of death" (misnamed), or perhaps a message that new software is being installed. Let it sit for a while - this may take 20 minutes or several hours. What you have done is request a check and repair of the MFS partitions. It will resume normally when it is done.


Thanks Steve, I am trying this right now (pause, 58). I also reinstalled the original 40 gb, forced a few calls and got it upgraded to 6.2. if the check and repair doesn't do the trick, I will reimage the Samsung 120 from the updated 40 and see if this fixes the problem. I'm hoping the check and repair works, as I'd rather not loose my recordings, season passes, etc.

Thanks for the tip.


----------



## NatasNJ

Add me to the list of my first random reboot with my HDVR2 unit about 2-3 weeks after my 6.2 upgrade. 

Only one so far. Will monitor closely.


----------



## rmassey

rmassey said:


> Thanks Steve, I am trying this right now (pause, 58). I also reinstalled the original 40 gb, forced a few calls and got it upgraded to 6.2. if the check and repair doesn't do the trick, I will reimage the Samsung 120 from the updated 40 and see if this fixes the problem. I'm hoping the check and repair works, as I'd rather not loose my recordings, season passes, etc.
> 
> Thanks for the tip.


No luck, I tried a pause/58, it began the "loading new sw" routine, but I am still getting the reboots. I've done this about three times so far.

I'm gonna pull the 120 drive, run spinrite on it and reimage it, and see if this cures my ills.


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## Diana Collins

I'm wondering if the bitmap tree for a 120GB drive is taking up more memory than is available under 6.2? This would be particularly true if the original unit had a 40GB drive, and so those partitions have a 1MB allocation size.


----------



## stevel

Well, I have a 300GB drive that is running fine (if left to its own devices) under 6.2.


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## Diana Collins

And I have a 250Gb and a 120GB, but I ran mfsadd -x -r 3 /dev/hdX...which set my allocation size to 8Mb. The mfsadd default is 4MB for expansion partitions, but I don't think it changes the origianl partitions.

Just a thought....


----------



## makeen

No reboots for about a week now after 3 weeks of on and off frequent and infrequent reboots. I think the problem seems to go away for at least some of us. 

Good luck to all.


I've had this unit since Dec2003 Model Samsung SIR-S4120R never upgraded or hacked.


----------



## spartanstew

I've had 6.2 for about 2 weeks and today I started getting reboots. My unit is unmodified. It rebooted late this afternoon (3PM) while my wife was watching a recorded show. About 30 minutes ago (7PM) it did it again while we were watching live TV (yes, we do that occasionally). I guess I'll call DirecTV tomorrow and see what the odds are of getting a new unit (maybe an R10 to match my other one).



Stew


----------



## Abiding Dude

Darn-it, after 2 weeks without a reboot I started getting them again. I thought maybe it was just a once-in-a-couple-weeks thing, but I got another one this afternoon. In checking the System Information screen, I see that the reboots seem to appear around the time that there is Indexing activity going on (although I'm not sure what that is). I keep hoping that the problem will somehow magically resolve itself .


----------



## alan

I deleted all my Thumbs Ratings and I haven't had a problem since that time. It was rebooting several times per day. It's not rebooting anymore.


----------



## rogue5

Did the same thing as Alan, and have been reboot free for over a month. I posted this earlier but i don't know if anyone tried it then.


----------



## skinnyjm

5 weeks now with 6.2 on both, things seem to be going well.
Only had to reboot once since 6.2 installation. (KNOCK on wood) 
I would suggestion a reboot to anyone having issues,
but you all knew that already. :up:


----------



## alan

rogue5 said:


> Did the same thing as Alan, and have been reboot free for over a month. I posted this earlier but i don't know if anyone tried it then.


Rogue5, your post right after mine a long time ago that suggested this is the reason that I tried it. So I have to say thank you for your suggestion. I thought I'd wait to see if it worked, but when it did wait so long I forgot to come back and say so.

(Here's my "Debugging the black box" take on the situation) My wild a** guess is that the thumbs data objects for the new version is kept in a different format or something and the new version should have had a method for converting the old thumbs data to the new format. Just a guess, since zapping the thumb ratings seemed to fix the reboot problem.

An interesting test would be to see if someone that got the new version and hasn't had a problem has the suggestions turned off. If they turn suggestions on, I wonder if they would start having a problem? Of course, why would they read this thread and try it? 

I guess the other way around would be an interesting test too. What if someone that has reboot problems turns suggestions off, I wonder if it would stop the rebooting. It would be an interesting test. Of course it might not be a valid test, but maybe it would mean something. (Like stop trying to debug a black box). 

Oh well, rogue5's suggestion of deleting the thumbs ratings seemed to work for me. So, Thanks rogue5! :up:


----------



## SteveInNC

I'm not sure this exactly what you mean, but I have a Hughes and have had suggestions turned off for at least six months if not a year. Since 6.2, I get random hangs as described elsewhere. One of the stronger opinions is that this is a function of the upgrade causing the DVR to use a new area on the disk which may have bad blocks. I'm still running with the original 40 hr disk, so this is sufficient motivation for me to upgrade now. Unfortunately, all of the Best Buys around here are sold out of the WD 160s that were on sale.


----------



## alan

SteveInNC said:


> I'm not sure this exactly what you mean, but I have a Hughes and have had suggestions turned off for at least six months if not a year. Since 6.2, I get random hangs as described elsewhere. One of the stronger opinions is that this is a function of the upgrade causing the DVR to use a new area on the disk which may have bad blocks. I'm still running with the original 40 hr disk, so this is sufficient motivation for me to upgrade now. Unfortunately, all of the Best Buys around here are sold out of the WD 160s that were on sale.


Even though you don't use suggestions, have you tried dumping the thumbs data (ratings and suggestions) on your TiVo? If you just turned off Thumbs data, you might still have some. My guess would be that the thumbs data gets generated anyway even though suggestions are off.

If you really think it's a disk problem, you could also try the suggestion above by stevel that's quoted below. Have you tried that?



stevel said:


> Yes, the TiVo does try to do some disk structure repair during a boot - you can see this if you have access to the kernel log or have hacked to enable a serial console output.
> 
> Try this. Reboot the TiVo and wait for the green power light to change to yellow (it will be a minute or so before it does this.) At that time, press Pause on the remote and the record light will also change to yellow. Now press 58 on the remote. You SHOULD get either a "green screen of death" (misnamed), or perhaps a message that new software is being installed. Let it sit for a while - this may take 20 minutes or several hours. What you have done is request a check and repair of the MFS partitions. It will resume normally when it is done.


----------



## rogue5

Thanks for the pat on the head Alan !  I am not to familiar with the inter workings of the TIVO software so I can't weigh in on your theory. I think it my be a combination of your theory and the harddrive bad sections only because not everyone is getting the exact same symptoms. Some are getting random reboot while others are getting hangs or complete crashes which leads me to beleive that there might be multiple issues. Again this is just my speculation cause I am not a software guy.  Well my suggestions for anyone else having this problem is to delete the thumb rating completely regardless of wheather they are on or not. If the problem countiues then looking into the HD or a possible bad load of the 6.2 software. Just on a side note I also forced a call after I deleted the thumb rating, I don't know if you did the same or not Alan but that is all I did and haven't had a problem since!


----------



## Declan

I would like to put my 2 cents in. I have never had the suggestions turned on the life of my Series 2. I learned with my Series 1 that I didn't like the auto record stuff. Mine not only locks up on occasion but also reboots.
I find that if I keep very little recorded then it doesnt happen often. I work in the Computer field and yes I know that a lot of people say that and I know it means nothing to anyone but I belive it is hard drive related. I bought Series 2 from Weaknees already upgraded with a 120gb drive. I have since bought another drive and I am waiting to swap the drive.

Any comments.

Declan


----------



## rogue5

Well D,

I didn't have the auto record set on mine either, I have a series 2 by the way, but I did have the thumb ratings on. Like I said earlier, once I cleared that and made a new call I have been good to go. The more I read here the more I feel there are multiple issues causing this reboot problem, at least IMHO.


----------



## theCheese

Checking in...
HDVR2 w a WD120 for 2+ yrs.
Never a problem, but getting 2-3 reboots a day since 6.2.
Will no longer connect on a forced call either.
Suggestions always turned off.

Clearing thumbs data now to see if it fixes it.
I'll report back in a week or so on sucess/failure.


----------



## mzgig

Well, I'm not getting random reboots like everyone else, but I can't connect since the 6.2 software. DTV claims they've had "no problems" with the new software. I guess I should insist they send me a new receiver, based on what I've read above. But I've only had my new hard drive since August and I upgraded to the larger one. I'm sure they will send me the standard 40-hour drive.


----------



## rogue5

mzgig,

Try clearing the thumbs, I couldn't get a call through till I cleared the thumbs. It took me a little while and a few change of numbers till I got a call through but once I did I haven't had any issues (looks for some real wood to knock on). You can try that before having to scrap the whole TIVO. I have seen that some people have gotten replacements for this issue futher up the thread but I would remove the new HDD and update the old one prior to returning it.


----------



## fishboy

Wow. I really wish I had seen this suggestion about clearing the "thumbs" data before mine crashed and I got a new one. Now Im in another 1 year contract for another unit. At least I didn't have to pay for it... But now I've lose any leverage in getting any additional upgrades to my account for another year.


----------



## austin_g

Here is the answer to the rebooting problem.............
...
....
.....
.....wait for it....

Ok here it is. Do a hard reset. This is done by disconnecting the satalite in cable from the back of the receiver. Then unplug the receiver from the power outlet. Wait 15 seconds. this part is very important. wait a full 15 second and then plug only the power cord back into the outlet, not the sat cable quite yet. The receiver will now reset. Now wait another 15 seconds while the receiver resets and then reconnect the satalite in cable to the receiver. Now after the receiver aquires all the gude data, run a clear and delete everything. This could take several hours. This will now solve the issue of the receiver resetting itself. Of course you will lose everything you have on it but it WILL solve the issue.


----------



## greg99

This evening I noticed that I no longer had access to HBO/Showtime/Cinemax. I had an x721 error, so I tried to go to the messages to see if I had received any communications. 

The machine hung for several minutes simply showing the background but no messages. I had to unplug the (Philips) unit. When it finished rebooting, I had my channels back but attempting to review messages resulted in another hang.

I've had issues with it hanging in the menus a number of times since 6.2 was d/led.

Despite everything they did, 6.2 was clearly not ready for prime time.

Greg


----------



## MighTiVo

Mine has also been rebooting, probably twice a day. I finally decided to visit the forum to see if others had the problem.

Anybody call DTV? What was their response.

I have too much recorded on this DVR to clear and delete everything. 
Too bad MRV isn't available so I could simply transfer to another DVR!

*EDIT:
OK, after 3 reboots in one hour, I called DirectTV and they suggested clear and delete everything. I said I wasn't willing to do that because I would lose all my programming. To that they offered sending a replacement unit. How does that help I still lose the programs!
I suggested that ideally the system would support MRV so I could transfer the programs and although the lady is probably misrepresenting the facts she did say they were working on getting the TiVo upgrade out that alows you to transfer programs to the computer. Note I didn't say anything about transferring to the computer, she volunteered that on her own.

Still no help for me now, although she did note my account and said I could call in for a replacement later if I decided to. Perhaps I will try for a HD DVR as a trade in next time I call...
*


----------



## MighTiVo

stevel said:


> Try this. Reboot the TiVo and wait for the green power light to change to yellow (it will be a minute or so before it does this.) At that time, press Pause on the remote and the record light will also change to yellow. Now press 58 on the remote. You SHOULD get either a "green screen of death" (misnamed), or perhaps a message that new software is being installed. Let it sit for a while - this may take 20 minutes or several hours. What you have done is request a check and repair of the MFS partitions. It will resume normally when it is done.


If I understand correctly that should not delete any recordings, right?


----------



## jfuredy

MighTiVo said:


> If I understand correctly that (the procedure originally posted by stevel) should not delete any recordings, right?


That is correct, the "Pause 58" procedure will not delete anything from your TiVo. I did do this procedure on my Hughes DVR-40 and it definitely helped. I have not checked the log, or whatever other method you guys are using to determine when you get reboots, but my shows are no longer interrupted by reboots.

Thanks for the advice stevel!
Joe


----------



## MikeHerbst

alan said:


> I deleted all my Thumbs Ratings and I haven't had a problem since that time. It was rebooting several times per day. It's not rebooting anymore.


Seen several people who've reported success with this, so I'd love to try it. One question: HOW DO YOU DO IT!?!?!

Is this only for people who are getting to a prompt somewhere, or can a "regular" user do this too? Searched through every menu I could think of and the only thing I can find is the "Record Suggestions On/Off" screen, but nothing about deleting the thumb data, etc...

Help!


----------



## llurgy

Mine is still randomly rebooting - Just had another one this past hour. I think that my receiver is mainly doing it's reboots in the middle of the night a 5 times to date I have sat down to watch a program that I left in the middle and it has gone all the way back to the beginning again, so I can tell it has had a reboot.

Up to now I havent lost any recordings but it is bound to happen sooner or later.

Mandy


----------



## MighTiVo

MikeHerbst said:


> Seen several people who've reported success with this, so I'd love to try it. One question: HOW DO YOU DO IT!?!?!
> 
> Is this only for people who are getting to a prompt somewhere, or can a "regular" user do this too? Searched through every menu I could think of and the only thing I can find is the "Record Suggestions On/Off" screen, but nothing about deleting the thumb data, etc...
> 
> Help!


Go to Messages & Settings, Restart Recorder, Clear Thumbs.

I did the pause 58 last night, didn't get the GSOD, instead got installing new software.
Still rebooting...

Will try clearing thumbs today.


----------



## BigBadBob

Clearing thumbs didn't help me. Every indication is that there is a sw bug causing some process to consume CPU time to the exclusion of others. Video stops and starts, it takes forever to go through menus, etc. Also, experience tells me it is extremely unlikely that there is a sudden rash of disk problems even if the update accesses different partitions. Disks just don't work like that.

Possible cause might be problems created when I upgraded to the larger disk back when. 

I'll try various other resets but I'll probably have to put in the original disk and let it upgrade and see what happens.

DTV really knows how to make friends! 

Edit: The pause 58 procedure isn't for the faint of heart. I did it and it went through a screen saying it was installing a software update, rebooted, got to the "aquiring information from satelites", crashed, rebooted, and now I'm at what I guess is the "green screen of death" where it says "a severe error has occurred" and tells me not to touch ANYTHING while it tries to repair itself. We'll see. 

And now it is in a loop of reboot--almost there--GSOD--repeat.  I'm supposed to give it three hours of this, but I'm not sanguine that anything good will come of this.

Update: According to CSR, I was supposed to give it 24 hours of this then reboot and it would all be fine. Of course it isn't. Unit is toast. Don't recommend pause 58 procedure. Still trying to find the old HD from a couple of years ago. May end up just buying a new unit. Booooooo!


----------



## spartanstew

austin_g said:


> Here is the answer to the rebooting problem.............
> ...
> ....
> .....
> .....wait for it....
> 
> Ok here it is. Do a hard reset. This is done by disconnecting the satalite in cable from the back of the receiver. Then unplug the receiver from the power outlet. Wait 15 seconds. this part is very important. wait a full 15 second and then plug only the power cord back into the outlet, not the sat cable quite yet. The receiver will now reset. Now wait another 15 seconds while the receiver resets and then reconnect the satalite in cable to the receiver. Now after the receiver aquires all the gude data, run a clear and delete everything. This could take several hours. This will now solve the issue of the receiver resetting itself. Of course you will lose everything you have on it but it WILL solve the issue.


This has been mentioned already in this thread. It doesn't seem to work. It's one of the first things I tried.

I finally called Directv and told them about the problem. They sent me through a few hoops (try this, try that) and then she told me she's send me a new unit. 2 days later a brand new Philips 70 hour unit was sitting on my door step. I packed up my 35 hour HDVR2 and sent it back. That was about 2 weeks ago and I haven't had any reboots with the new unit and doubled my storage capacity for free. Thanks D*

Stew


----------



## theCheese

Update ... Checking in....
Cleared Thumbs and still have reboots 2-3 times a day.
(Thumbs took about an hour to clear.)


----------



## brad639

I was getting constant pauses/hangs and reboots for the past week,

So on friday I ventured to try the pause 58,

Well over the weekend, NOT ONE pause, hang, or reboot,

Before the pause 58 My tivo would not read Messages, it would just hang and not do anything,

when the pause 58 was done, messages could be read, and everything else worked fine,

Hopefully this will last....


----------



## MighTiVo

brad639 said:


> I was getting constant pauses/hangs and reboots for the past week,
> 
> So on friday I ventured to try the pause 58,
> 
> Well over the weekend, NOT ONE pause, hang, or reboot,
> 
> Before the pause 58 My tivo would not read Messages, it would just hang and not do anything,
> 
> when the pause 58 was done, messages could be read, and everything else worked fine,
> 
> Hopefully this will last....


Although my reboots continued for a while after the clearing and the pause 58 they seem to have stopped.
I hadn't tried messages again until I saw your message.

Nope, still locked up!

Any other ideas for messages?
Not that I want to read them, but I would like to remove the need to reboot in case of accidental selection.


----------



## richierich

austin_g said:


> Here is the answer to the rebooting problem.............
> ...
> ....
> .....
> .....wait for it....
> 
> Ok here it is. Do a hard reset. This is done by disconnecting the satalite in cable from the back of the receiver. Then unplug the receiver from the power outlet. Wait 15 seconds. this part is very important. wait a full 15 second and then plug only the power cord back into the outlet, not the sat cable quite yet. The receiver will now reset. Now wait another 15 seconds while the receiver resets and then reconnect the satalite in cable to the receiver. Now after the receiver aquires all the gude data, run a clear and delete everything. This could take several hours. This will now solve the issue of the receiver resetting itself. Of course you will lose everything you have on it but it WILL solve the issue.


It is interesting that you just became and member and have only had 4 posts and you are so knowldegeable about doing a hard reset for this unit. Where did you learn this technique? Do you work for Tivo or Directv?


----------



## su_A_ve

FYI,

An HDVR2 with a 120 GB (no other mods). Got 6.2 over a month ago.

I had one reboot (out of the blue) serveral months ago. 

This past Sunday, it was at 'Almost there'. A few hours later was at the same place. Unplugged/waited/replugged and was fine since.

Hope drive is not starting to go, though I'll be pulling stuff out of it soon...


----------



## Abiding Dude

Mine is still rebooting every one in a while. It does seem to happen close to the time that Indexing is taking place (whatever that is). It seems strange that this seems to be happening to mostly 120gb drives, but perhaps that is only because these drives are all getting old at the same time. I had no problems before the upgrade. I am sorta hoping they have an upgrade soon so the partition-switch will happen and hopefully the problem will go away. I was hoping to get more than 2 years out of my current drive


----------



## edadave

My HDVR2 started rebooting randomly about once per day when it got the 6.2 upgrade. Never happened once in the preceding year. DTV said it was probably a bad drive, but to first try reset, then try clear everything. Did those - no improvement. 

DTV then sent a replacement unit and behavior is the same. Unit is plugged into a UPS.

Two different HDVR2s and a UPS - can't be the hardware, so what's left? There must be some unlikely combination of events that expose the software bug and cause the reboot given that many owners never see it. I work in software QA and this looks, smells, and tastes like an intermittant and hard to reproduce software bug.

Has anyone changed from an HDVR2 to another box and seen this problem go away? There is always a chance it only affects certain hardware. Otherwise, I'll give DTV/Tivo a couple more months to fix this, and otherwise reluctantly switch to DISH.

For those who say they never get a reboot - are you sure? If you have the 30-second skip programmed in and it is retained, your unit has not rebooted. Otherwise, you may never know unless you happen to be watching when it happens or see a seven minute gap in a recorded show.


----------



## rmassey

> I deleted all my Thumbs Ratings and I haven't had a problem since that time. It was rebooting several times per day. It's not rebooting anymore.





MighTiVo said:


> Go to Messages & Settings, Restart Recorder, Clear Thumbs.


My DTivo was rebooting every day. I cleared the thumbs ratings and it has stopped rebooting.

So much for the theory that a secondary boot sector has a bad spot causing reboots. Unless, of course, the thumbs data is stored on this bad spot of the boot sector.


----------



## Mike_TV

OK, one of my upgraded units (added a 120 GB drive) rebooted twice while watching a saved program since the 6.2 upgrade. This never happened with the older version of the software. I'll have to start making a log and see how frequently this happens.


----------



## 23goober23

I have a HNS SD-DVR40 and i have had it replaced by dtv for the same prob. they sent me the same kind. i've tried to clear the thumbs ratings and they stay deleted for a lil while, but some how they come back. i never use those buttons so i dunno how!!!


----------



## the new guy

I never use the thumbs buttons, either. It appears, however, that any program I record (manual or season pass) is automatically assigned one thumb up. 

Both my units were rebooting daily or more until I ran the MFS cleanup on them. Now I get one reboot every 3-4 weeks.

Tim


----------



## edadave

My 2-3 times per day reboot, on two different units, stopped cold when I took away an IR emitter from a remote control extender. Seems the 6.2 software either has an IR Easter Egg to reboot from a sequence that matches random IR noise, or with the 6.2 speed-up, the unit is more susceptible to IR glitches. I'll experiment with different RF receiver and IR emitter locations, or get a higher-end extender. I have a Terk Leapfrog that worked perfectly before 6.2. It still works, but surprisingly triggers reboots.

For anyone having reboot problems - check to see if you have any unexpected IR sources around, or just for an experiment, cover up the IR receptor when you don't need it.


----------



## rmassey

edadave said:


> My 2-3 times per day reboot, on two different units, stopped cold when I took away an IR emitter from a remote control extender. Seems the 6.2 software either has an IR Easter Egg to reboot from a sequence that matches random IR noise, or with the 6.2 speed-up, the unit is more susceptible to IR glitches. I'll experiment with different RF receiver and IR emitter locations, or get a higher-end extender. I have a Terk Leapfrog that worked perfectly before 6.2. It still works, but surprisingly triggers reboots.
> 
> For anyone having reboot problems - check to see if you have any unexpected IR sources around, or just for an experiment, cover up the IR receptor when you don't need it.


Interesting.... I have two HDVR2s, the one in my HT was doing reboots and I use an X10 powermid to control it from the master BR. The other one in the FR has not suffered the reboots and does not use a powermid. Although since I cleared the thumbs ratings, the rebooots have stopped and I still have the powermid in use.


----------



## the_scotsman

I have 2 DSR7000 machines which both received the 6.2 update after re-activating them (I was in an apartment for 5 months). Prior to 6.2 both machines we rock solid, now both are suffering from random reboots.

I've tried a couple of the suggestions here but nothing has helped so far. As soon as I get a chance I'm going to install some large HDDs to see if that helps.

Paul


----------



## richierich

Use Maxtor 300 gig Quickview hard drives. That is what Weaknees recommends and they should know since they are in the business of upgrading Tivos and adding hard drives.


----------



## the_scotsman

Thanks, but I'm going to use some 160GB drives from my connectstor II until I'm sure that this will fix the reboot problem. I'll restore the previous version if it doesn't. Until then my trusty SAT-T60s will be my primary machines.

Paul


----------



## SteveInNC

I think it's interesting that there appear to be two main problems since the 6.2 upgrade: some (like me) get hang problems, where in the midst of running, the screen just hangs up, often with a still image. Reboot is the only out. Then there is another class of problem where the unit arbitrarily reboots itself (at least that is how it's described). While I can believe that a bad block is now stepped on since the upgrade supposedly caused a partition change, I'm amazed at how many people are reporting problems specifically with *this* upgrade. I know my unit (Hughes) has been upgraded in the past without any ill effects. The coincidence of the number of failures makes me think that there is some intermittent OS bug that just hasn't been nailed down yet, maybe something like a memory leak or a dangling pointer that eventually gets out of hand. Sometimes it causes a reboot, sometimes a hang.

If anyone here has upgraded a drive, while you were poking around there, have you looked to see if the Linux syslog has any "panics" listed?


----------



## richierich

I got the "f" download and my unit started pixellating, freezing, etc. I ran SpinRite and that corrected it. However, I find it amazing that there could be so many alternate inactive partitions waiting for the next download that just happen to be residing on a bad or marginal sector. However, when SpinRite rewrites the data it works just fine. I had 3 bad sectors removed and after that it ran perfectly, in fact the guide and other functions worked a little faster than before.

When the picture freezes it is not reading any more video and is just displaying the last video image that was correctly read. When it reboots it is trying to correct an unrecoverable error such as running out of memory to be able to function so it reboots trying to recover space that was used temporarily and should have been freed up or the CPU gets into an unrecoverable logic loop. This unit should have had a faster processor to handle the extra video data being processed. Maybe it is the way that the download writes the data. SpinRite can write in a lower level way so it facilitates good reads.


----------



## Rych6896

I have a unmodified SD-DVR120 which finally got the upgrade last weekend. (I have Callvantage and I just set up PPP. ) Anyhow I've been getting reboots all week. I did the reset thumbs thing without success. Luckily I have the DTV protection plan and will call tonight to get it swapped out.


----------



## Rych6896

Dam! Directv comes through hard! I called them at 6PM Friday night. they said they'd ship me a new one within 2 business days. I come home today at 1pm and the new unit is sitting in my driveway. How can I complain about 18 hour turnaround? Hopefully the Samsung sir-s412020r is a good unit.


----------



## Rych6896

Oh well. I got a lemon. It's stuck on Welcome. Powering up...


----------



## richierich

Rych6896 said:


> Oh well. I got a lemon. It's stuck on Welcome. Powering up...


You could open it up and see if the hard drive's IDE & Power Cable are securely fastened. That is normally the problem and would only take 10 minutes to take off the top with a #10 Torx wrench (5 screws) and then look at the cables. Sometimes they come loose during shipment or when moved around.


----------



## Rych6896

Yeah, I should have thought of that before calling DTV. My guess is the brown Santa will have a present for me when I get home today.


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## richierich

The only problem with that is that you lose all your recordings, settings, SPs, WishLists, Favorite Channels, etc. and you may get a unit that also has a bad WD drive or HDMI port. I would rather open it up and see if it is a quick fix.


----------



## edadave

Just following up that moving an IR emitter made the difference for me. I had a finger-tip emitter in front of the IR window on my HDVR2 and was getting 2-3 reboots per day. I replaced it with a table-top emitter ten feet away and have had no reboots in over a week. The finger-tip emitter worked fine prior to the 6.2 update, but 6.2 is apparetly more susceptible to IR glitches.


----------



## veener88

I just started to have this problem I noticted last week but I only had it once a week at most. Well Monday when I was home it rebooted twice on my but I have not had it do it since but that is only with about 3 hours a night of it being on. I will see how it does this weekend and go from there. 

D* just gave me a great deal on the HD receiver so I am not sure if they will send me out a new unit or not at no charge. I have the Huese receiver and it is about 1.5 years old.


----------



## kayson712

I have a HNS SD-DVR40 upgraded with second 120GB drive that was solid before 6.2. Since then reboots were occurring as frequently as every 45 minutes and averaged 4 to 5 per day. As you can imagine, this wasn't very much fun when I was trying to save ten episodes of "Roswell" to my DVD recorded in case I got to the point where I was ready to do a complete clear and delete everything.

Customer Service had me pull my power cord out of my surge protector and go straight into another wall outlet - of course this didn't work. Also tried the pause 58 with no luck. 

As suggested here I reset all of the Thumbs ratings and so far no resets for the last two days. Hopefully this will last.


----------



## el Dragon

I just got an R-10 it came with 6.1... IS the R-10 also going to get 6.2 update...


----------



## Davidec

kayson712 said:


> ....As suggested here I reset all of the Thumbs ratings and so far no resets for the last two days. ....


How does one do this type of reset? Did I miss the instructions in the thread?

--David


----------



## aristoBrat

el Dragon said:


> I just got an R-10 it came with 6.1... IS the R-10 also going to get 6.2 update...


IIRC, 6.1 on the R10 is the same as 6.2 is on the other models.


----------



## richierich

Davidec said:


> How does one do this type of reset? Did I miss the instructions in the thread?
> 
> --David


Obviously you haven't read the manual or looked at your Menu. You hit the Tivo Button where "Now Playing" and other functions come up on your screen. You tab down to the bottom of the screen to the obvious function "Messages and Setup". You select that function which takes you the next screen where lo and behold you have "Restart or Reset System" which is what you are trying to do. You then tab down to "Reset Thumb Ratings & Suggestions" and select it. Then you press Thumbs Down 3 times and press enter to proceed. Now that wasn't that difficult to find if you would have looked thru you Menus to see what the options were. Or looked in your manual.


----------



## Davidec

richierich said:


> Obviously you haven't read the manual ....


 

Well you see I had it in the bathroom and ran out of paper so I thought that using it as I did was a better use of the paper than trying to read it.....



I did find the needed info in this forum after my posting and now for the last 24 hour my Philips DirecTivo has not rebooted when before it had started rebooting every 15 hours starting this past Monday [08/01/2005]....

-DEC


----------



## Davidec

Davidec said:


> .....and now for the last 24 hour my Philips DirecTivo has not rebooted when before it had started rebooting every 15 hours starting this past Monday [08/01/2005]....


Well it lasted 26 hours and has started rebooting again every two hours if...
.. watching live broadcasts ... 
'IF' watching an item already on the machine before the upgrade it does not reboot?!?

Well talked to tech support they are to be sending me a new machine at no cost...

'IF' anybody here tracking the machines reporting troubles with the 6.2 update, Older machine was a small Philips DSR704


----------



## richierich

I think it has to do maybe with the "new restructuring" of the database and it runs into trouble reading it and that somehow triggers a reboot. Don't they test this stuff really good before they launch a "new" version of the software? Shouldn't this have shown up in their beta test? AMAZING!!!!


----------



## Abiding Dude

Dang, after not having reboots for 2 weeks I received 2 over the last 24 hours. I suppose I could try deleting suggestion data again, but I'm not sure if that just forestalls the inevitable.


----------



## Mike_TV

My unit rebootted again on Friday after about two weeks from clearing the Thumbs data. Clearing the Thumbs data doesn't appear to fix the problem for me.


----------



## rmassey

My reboots are back..... I have tried the Clear thumbs data suggestion a few times and it still reboots, eventually. I tried the pause 58 method with no success. I am now running spinrite v6 on the 120 GB drive, while my stock 40 is back in the DTvio to keep it running. The spinrite process will take 30-40 hours to run and I'll see what it reports. I do notice that the original stock 40 is much quieter than the 5400/120GB samsung that I upgraded to a few years ago. 

Plan B is to take my kids upgraded DTivo (120GB 5400 Samsung) and give them mine with the stock 40 and call it a day. I'm getting tired of all the fuss with this box. 

Plan C is to use my 5 year CCity warranty and get an R10 replacement, thus avoiding the obilgatory 1 year contract renewal with D*.


----------



## richierich

SpinRite should do it for you, however if you have a really bad drive it will only help you for so long and then the drive as the platter coating degrades you will encounter more bad sectors and you will have to run SR again. I bit the bullet and sent mine off to have the irreplaceable recordings backed up, replace the hard drive with a 300 gig Maxtor or Seagate (avoid the WD drives), add PTVNET, enable the USB port and send it back to me ready to go with Internet capabilities. I Can't Wait to get it back to see how all of this will work, I'm excited about being able to schedule recordings via the Internet, see how much free space is available, have folders on my Now Playing on my PC, check out error message log, be able to re-prioritize Season Passes, WishLists without having to wait or having TV viewing interruption (Yes we do occasionally watch Live TV), also caller-id on screen.


----------



## rmassey

richierich said:


> SpinRite should do it for you, however if you have a really bad drive it will only help you for so long and then the drive as the platter coating degrades you will encounter more bad sectors and you will have to run SR again.


OK, but if SR does not report any bad sectors, what then? So far 15 hours in with 18 remaining on the SR operation, no bad sectors found. if I get to the end and see no errors from SR, I am inclined to leave the stock 40 on the DTivo and call it done.


----------



## BTUx9

I REALLY don't think that the problem most people are reporting here is related to the HD. My dtivo is hacked, so I see all the loggiing info, and it's not reporting any of the normal linux errors related to HD failure. The timing is also all wrong, with the number of people experiencing problems at similar times.

I have a strong suspicion that it relates to misformed guide data... possibly only hitting people who have a certain SP, possibly those who had a power-cycle at an inopportune time. Whatever the case, clearing Program Data (which nukes just about everything except your recordings and settings) is much more likely to work than just clearing thumbs. I did a Clear & Delete anything, and am desperately hoping this will solve the problem permanently. If it recurs, I'll post.

For those with access to the logs, the trouble starts with:


Code:


    Audit, line 31 ()
Tmk Fatal Error: Thread HandleDataChanged <337> strayed!

on my tivo, and others.

p.s. this error can cause either a hang or a reboot, depending on how the tivo reacts, from what I've seen... might have to do with the current state of the tivo when it occurs, dunno


----------



## Diana Collins

I am convinced that it has nothing to do with the hard drive as well. I had a WD 250GB drive in a HDVR2 and experienced a freeze-up about twice a week. I cleared thumb ratings - no joy. I did a "clear and delete everything" and still it froze up (although it took a while to happen again). I finally called DirecTV and they sent me a refurbished Philips DSR-704. The SAME 250GB drive has been in the Philips now for 3 weeks and no problems.

I believe that some units (most notably the HDVR2s) are tripping over database errors when logging data at the end of a recording (my HDVR2 always froze with the record light on).


----------



## BTUx9

Dan Collins said:


> I did a "clear and delete everything" and still it froze up (although it took a while to happen again).


I'm *very* unhappy to hear THAT part of it... I've got 2 HDVR2s, and if there is a hardware issue with them, I'm up a certain creek. (it does somewhat explain why DTV is so blithely swapping out boxes without much tech support).

It's odd that it only seems to affect certain s/w versions... the one that is still running 3.1.1c has shown no sign of the bug.

People have said repeatedly that there's no significant difference in the h/w between same-era models (non-RID s2) and that the boards are actually made at the same factory. That makes me wonder if there could be a mistake/bug in the HDVR2 - specific pieces of the s/w slice.

I REALLY don't want to go through the hassle of trying to replace my boxen (and extending my contract) and with my luck, I'd end up with the almost unhackable R10 as a replacement  .


----------



## veener88

Well I am having to do a full reset of the system removing everything. If this does not work they are going to replace it for nothing. I am kind of shocked since this receiver is the hughes 40 hour one for almost 2 years ago. 

They did agree their is a problem with the software though and something this fixes it and some times it does not. From what I have read this has not fixed this for anyone.

Kind of shocks me thought about this is I just said I had this problem and they said they would replace it as long as I did the reset if I still have the problem no matter how radom it is even if it is just once a week. They are very trust worthy of their customers I guess I just got use to other companys were you have to pull teeth to get anything fixed. 

I will be at the old software tonight and at 2 am it should download the 6.2 again.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well I did the reset and 3 hour latter it is reset. All I have to say is that I am worried about this thing now. It took the box 3 times to get my local stations downloaded. At first I had only some stations, then the second try I had everything but the locals, and then the 3rd try I finaly was able to get my local channels. I just got a box that said channel not available. 

I am going to see what it does durring the week and go from there. It seems like this thing is starting to die or the software is starting to go bad.


----------



## the_scotsman

I too have gone the C&D route on both of my DSR7000s. They are not fully online yet as I am still "tweaking" them (250GB + mods). If I still suffer reboots I'm going to just reload the older 3.x s/w. Pity, I like the folders, the speed, and the other features.

Paul


----------



## veener88

Well my system downloaded the 6.2 last night so I will see what happens.


----------



## rmassey

Well, as I suspected, Spinrite did not find any Bad sectors on the 120 GB Samsung 5400 drive. I ran level 4 for 30 hours and the process completed.

I put the 120 back into the DTivo and will see if the reboots reoccur.

I did notice that spinrite complained about excess heat/temp from the SMART sensor on the SS drive. I put a big fan (12") directly on the drive during operations and it ran at 41C, if I take the fan off, it reported 92C and at the beginning of the SR op, it reported 345C, which is hard to believe. This drive was sitting out of the PC case in complete open area. If it hit 345C, I think the cardboard box it was sitting on would have ignighted into flames. I will also check the temp while running the SS HD in the Tivo. Perhaps the 6.2 sw has enabled use of the SMART info and this is causing the reboots?

So far....

Pause 58 - no success
Clear & Delete Thumbs ratings - temporarily stopped reboots
Ran SpinRite 6 - No bad blocks detected, will watch for reboots this week.

[EDIT] - OMG, I was just doing a clear thumbs rating with the 120 GB drive I just did the SR op on, and the Tivo rebooted again.... or is this part of the C&D thumbs process? It went to powering up mid way into C&D. Oh BTW, internal temp is 45C.


----------



## Diana Collins

It would be interesting to see the general ages of the effected units. So far, I know I've seen HDVR2s and Philips DSR7000s being reported as problematic. I've got a SD-DVR80 and a Philips DSR-704, both of which have been fine. The Samsung SIR-4040 has not been online long enough to be sure of, but so far it has had no trouble as well. The only other model that goes back as far as the HDVR2 and the DSR-7000 is the RCA DVR-40. If this is isolated to such first generation Series 2 DirecTiVos, it may be a firmware problem.

I assume that this was the "compatibility problem" that stopped the 6.2 rollout for several weeks in the spring. I know that they did hit a problem with some units and decided that the numbers were small enough that they would just replace any bad units.


----------



## rmassey

Dan, my HDVR2s (both of them) are the very first batch from Dec. 2002. I was on the CircuitCity pre-Order waiting list when this model was first introduced. I upgraded both in about March 2003 to 120 GB Samsung 5400 drives and shelved the originals. My house was then stuck by lightning in 03 or 04 (can't remember) and it turned my HT Dtivo into a doorstop. I have a five year extended warranty with CC, so I had the unit replaced with a refurb HDVR2 and then used the same SS 5400 120 drive to upgrade again. This is the unit that is causing me reboots today. 

I could prob call CC warranty and swap it again, but I suspect I'd get an R10 and not an HDVR2. If so, I'd leave it stock with the 80 and give it to the kids and take their upgraded HDVR2/120GB one that is not causing me reboots. Hopefully, this would not cause me to re-up for another year contract with D*. Franlky, I'm about ready to drop all Sat service and just use HD-OTA for free, getting tired of a $72/mo Sat bill. Because of this option, I really don't want to get tied to another 1 year contract with D*.


----------



## rbtravis

Try replacing power supply or use Hard Disk with less power requirements . It may be looking at power good line and rebooting based on that status. TiVo should have 
designed a hefty power supply with more current capacity or made it available as an add on option.


----------



## jfuredy

Dan Collins said:


> It would be interesting to see the general ages of the effected units. ......


Well, I have two Hughes SD-DVR40 units, both with upgraded hard drives, and I have noticed that one of them is giving me reboot and locking problems. I have tried the pause 58 and the clearing of the thumbs, both of which have reduced the frequency of the reboots, but not eliminated them. I have also discovered that the reboots are less frequent when I reduce the amount of data stored on that TiVo by transfering to the other unit.

BTW, where do I need to look in order to check the logs to see when/how often the units are rebooting when I am not watching?

Thanks,
Joe Furedy


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## rmassey

> BTW, where do I need to look in order to check the logs to see when/how often the units are rebooting when I am not watching?


I'm not sure about the logs, as this is another hack to get into Linux. I enable the 30 sec skip and if I notice that that is gone, I assume that the unit has rebooted itself. I know this is not as definite as a log file, showing a timestamp, but it works.


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## jfuredy

Thanks for the 30-second skip idea rmassey, but my unit IS hacked to allow access into Linux, and part of that hack is to turn on the 30-second skip at all times. So even after a reboot I don't get that clue about it happening.

Any other ideas?
Joe Furedy


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## Diana Collins

I'm not sure, but I would think that tverr.log would be the logical place for the errors (Tmk Fatal Error) that cause a reboot, to show up. You can tell if your system has rebooted by looking at kernel.log - the "Finished with sysint" message will appear right after each reboot. If you have TiVoWeb installed, the Info page will show total uptime (time since last boot) and this is also visible on the "System Information" page on your TV if you have backdoors enabled.


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## su_A_ve

rmassey said:


> Plan C is to use my 5 year CCity warranty and get an R10 replacement, thus avoiding the obilgatory 1 year contract renewal with D*.


The thing is that when you replace the unit, you'll have to activate the new one and guess what: It won't be a one year commitment, but a two year commitment...


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## su_A_ve

edadave said:


> My 2-3 times per day reboot, on two different units, stopped cold when I took away an IR emitter from a remote control extender. Seems the 6.2 software either has an IR Easter Egg to reboot from a sequence that matches random IR noise, or with the 6.2 speed-up, the unit is more susceptible to IR glitches. I'll experiment with different RF receiver and IR emitter locations, or get a higher-end extender. I have a Terk Leapfrog that worked perfectly before 6.2. It still works, but surprisingly triggers reboots.
> 
> For anyone having reboot problems - check to see if you have any unexpected IR sources around, or just for an experiment, cover up the IR receptor when you don't need it.


Interesting... This morning we had a reboot right after I turned the MB TV (which is fed from the FR DTiVo and controlled with a Leapfrog) and changed channels.

On Sunday it also happened once... And yesterday we noticed that the peanut remote was running low on battery as it was not receiving correctly...


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## rmassey

su_A_ve said:


> The thing is that when you replace the unit, you'll have to activate the new one and guess what: It won't be a one year commitment, but a two year commitment...


Well, I'll have a very long discussion with CR about this. If D* is not supplying me with a replacment and I am activating a new unit that I acquired elsewhere, why is there a need to commit me for 1 or 2 years. This is absurd.


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## veener88

Just wondering is there a way to see the reboots if I have not hacked my tivo?


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## rmassey

veener88 said:


> Just wondering is there a way to see the reboots if I have not hacked my tivo?


Enable 30 sec skip (S-P-S-3-0-S) . if the box has rebooted, you will loose the skip.


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## the_scotsman

jfuredy said:


> BTW, where do I need to look in order to check the logs to see when/how often the units are rebooting when I am not watching?
> 
> Thanks,
> Joe Furedy


If you've done the superpathc_67all hack then the "uptime" should be on the system info screen

HTH
Paul M.


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## Mike_TV

Well I'm in the camp that doesn't think it a hardware problem and want to post what I observed last night.

I have three DirecTivos (one original Series 1 Hughes with a 2nd 80GB drive, one unmodified HDVR2, and one HDVR2 with a 120GB HD).

The problem I'm having is with the HDVR2 with the 2nd 120GB HD.

Last night, my problem unit started to reboot about every 45 minutes while I was playing with it. I noticed a few things. Programs were recording (BB 6 and another show. When I started to play anything recorded on 8/8 I got an error that I've never seen before. Something like there was a problem playing the recording. I don't have the exact text. My only option after that error was to delete the program or go back to the "Now Playing" list.

I got mad at that point and deleted everything recorded on 8/8. Before bed, I went and did the clear and delete everything in the ToDo list, which also removes all of the Season Passes.

This morning, I started putting back my Season Passes in and the unit appears to working just fine. I'll have to watch it a couple of days and see what happens.

Could the number of Season Passes and/or internal database problems be the cause? I had about 85 Season Passes with the problem.

My previous attempt to clear the Thumbs data did not solve the problem so we'll see if problem crops back up and starts rebooting again.

The real frustrating part is that my original Series 1 with the upgraded 80GB drive has been running fine without any problems for years now.


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## Diana Collins

I'm beginning to suspect that the problem really is just a database error. In some cases it is restricted to the thumbs rating database or the "Now Playing" database. so deleting and rebuilding these databases may resolve the problem. But in some cases the error my be in the system portions of the databases, and so, since you can't delete or rebuild these, the only option is to replace the hardware.

If this is correct, then a unit with the problem could be "fixed" by restoring the image from a known working unit to that system.


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## richierich

That is probaby why running SpinRite data recovery software gets rid of those database errors and rewrites the software/data in a better way and eliminates bad sectors.


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## BTUx9

richierich said:


> That is probaby why running SpinRite data recovery software gets rid of those database errors and rewrites the software/data in a better way and eliminates bad sectors.


Ummm... no. They are referring to internal inconsistencies within the database... pieces of data that the tivo gags on. Spinrite has no knowledge of the format of the data, it is only concerned with mapping out sectors that are physically failing.

If this is purely database-related, I'm not sure why the newer RID units would be unaffected, seeing as they are running identical s/w (at least, in previous versions, the only differences were the loopsets <sony excepted>). Perhaps there are timing issues that cause occasional corruption... I know the RID motherboards have some significant differences.

I DO agree that it appears as if some units aren't handling corrupt data well, and I REALLY hope these units can be fixed. I think D* sending out this upgrade with these known issues is nothing less than criminal.

The timing of the errors is also rather suspicious... for many people to have the problem erupt simultaneously, I wonder if it may be malformed guide data coming down the pipe that could trigger it.

Just musing aloud, but maybe if we can hash this out, we can find a solution.


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## rmassey

richierich said:


> That is probaby why running SpinRite data recovery software gets rid of those database errors and rewrites the software/data in a better way and eliminates bad sectors.


I'm not so sure I agree with this, if there are db index errors or db curruption, spinrite will not correct or alter this information, it only will correct drive errors or detect bad spots. If the db is currupt, SR will just rewrite the currupt info back onto the Hard disk.


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## rnwjr

I have a Hughes DirecTV Series 2 and have never had any problems until last Thursday when it seemed to be stuck on a download with the record light on... We called DirecTV and they suggested moving it to the other room, and that the wiring may need to be replaced... I know it's an issue with the unit, so I did the NASTY and reset my entire unit.... Fingers are crossed....


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## Diana Collins

I can attest to the fact that it is NOT a hard drive problem, since the SAME drive that caused freeze-ups in the HDVR2 is running fine in a DSR-704 - with no diagnotics or disk repair run at all...all I did was copy the Philips image onto the drive and install it.

This started as soon as 6.2 was spooled, so I don't think bad guide data is the issue, at least not directly.

We know that 6.2 rebuilds several of the TiVos databases. It may be that some pre-RID units (perhaps those that ran a particular software release, or got a guide download) have a particular database entry or value that causes the rebuild procedure a problem, which results in a bad system table or index value.


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## BTUx9

Actually, a copy CAN fix a marginal sector, AFAIK, but I agree that, with all the data we have on the problem, HD problems are the likely culprit.

My point on the guide data is that if 3.x was tolerant of certain irregularities, as soon as 6.2 was loaded, the problem would occur, so that doesn't remove it as a possibility, IMHO.

To narrow down this problem, we really need to run a crashing copy of the s/w on a RID unit, and a copy from a RID unit on a crashing machine. If my machine starts hanging again, I'll see if I can try the latter (I don't have a RID unit to try the former).


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## richierich

Well, I ran SpinRite back in March to correct hard drive problems and people said they would come right back but they didnt. I was looking out for the "f" version and monitoring my Tivo each day for it and lo and behold I got it downloaded and activated and guess what? I started experiencing pixellation, freezing, macro blocking, rebooting, etc. 

I then ran SpinRite again and my unit has run perfectly ever since. Explain that. I think that it is the way or the level that the software gets written to a marginal or bad sector that creates problems. These were cheap bottom of the line WD drives that didn't even have a one year warranty so how good could they be. I got the "f" version on my other HR10-250 which came from Weaknees with 2 300 gig Maxtor Quickview drives and guess what? I have had no problems with it so it can't be the software or it would be experiencing problems. I think it is a combination of the software download and the hard drive with marginal or bad sectors on it. I had 3 bad sectors on it which SR told me about.

I have sent it off finally to have the WD drive replaced which SMART said was in imminent danger of failing. Tivo turns off SMART but SR reactivates it or uses it in it's attempt to recover data from bad sectors. So I'll be curious if I experience any more problems after I get rid of that piece of SH!T drive and replace it with a good one such as Maxtor. Please explain to me if it was data errors and SR didn't fix them how then did mine work perfectly until the next download. I still find it hard to believe that the download was to the inactive partition which just happened to reside on a bad sector but it's possible and then running SR corrected it by removing the bad sector and replacing it with a good one and then writing the software back to that replacement sector.


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## rmassey

Dan Collins said:


> I can attest to the fact that it is NOT a hard drive problem, since the SAME drive that caused freeze-ups in the HDVR2 is running fine in a DSR-704 - with no diagnotics or disk repair run at all...all I did was copy the Philips image onto the drive and install it.
> 
> This started as soon as 6.2 was spooled, so I don't think bad guide data is the issue, at least not directly.
> 
> We know that 6.2 rebuilds several of the TiVos databases. It may be that some pre-RID units (perhaps those that ran a particular software release, or got a guide download) have a particular database entry or value that causes the rebuild procedure a problem, which results in a bad system table or index value.


Dan, I'm beginning to agree with you here. So it looks like a C&D everything or just reimage the drive is the solution. (I think you said this in a previous post). Either way, you will loose everything (recordings, SP, etc). If this is the solution, I'd opt for a reimage, as it's quicker than C&D. The next question is, over time will the issue reoccur. If it's a db index that gets corrupted with excess recordings or SP's that is causing the problem, will it come back and haunt us eventually on a newly imaged drive?


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## BTUx9

As so often happens, people on threads are experiencing different problems... We're not saying spinrite can't fix some problems, we're saying there is a specific problem with older S2 dtivos and 6.2 that causes a very specific hanging/rebooting problem. Obviously, what you're experiencing doesn't fall into that category.


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## richierich

Dan Collins said:


> I am convinced that it has nothing to do with the hard drive as well. I had a WD 250GB drive in a HDVR2 and experienced a freeze-up about twice a week. I cleared thumb ratings - no joy. I did a "clear and delete everything" and still it froze up (although it took a while to happen again). I finally called DirecTV and they sent me a refurbished Philips DSR-704. The SAME 250GB drive has been in the Philips now for 3 weeks and no problems.


Just because you have been running good for 3 weeks is no indication that it can't be the POS WD drive as most don't start failing until 6 months of use. Mine took about 5 months. Every time I ran SpinRite it cleared up the problem until the "f" version came out. Maybe it is the way that it writes the download where it loses some info over the satellite download, who knows. I am getting mine back from PTVUPGRADE and I will disconnect the phone line and never plug it back in until I see a download that actually works for most people for at least 3 months. I'll have folders, networking, caller-id, etc. but I don't trust these downloads. I lost over $1,000 worth of PPV recording and other material that I will never be able to recover. Should have offloaded them to DVDs. OH WELL!!!!


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## rmassey

richierich, we are discussing sw version 6.2 for SD DTivos. I think you are discussing version f for the HR10-250, which is different. AFAIK, 6.2 is not available for the HR10-250 yet. 

the common problem for SD Tivio owners is reboots began just after sw v 6.2 was installed. You may want to take your topic over to the HD PVR forum.


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## richierich

Thanks, I confused threads.


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## Diana Collins

There are many problems that ARE caused by bad disk drives. Stuttering and pixelation are certainly amoung them, and products like SpinRite will fix those.

But here we are talking about a VERY SPECIFIC class of problem. In one case, the TIVO simply freezes and is totally unresponsive to remote or front panel button presses. The only recovery is to pull the plug. In the other case, the TiVo spontaneously reboots by itself. This is not to say that ALL reboots are caused by this, but when a unit otherwise behaves normally for days at a time, a reboot is an odd occurance. Certainly, the kind of hard freeze-ups I had been seeing are unusual to say the least.

While I had my HDVR2 I tried restarts, clearing thumb ratings, and even a Clear and Delete Everything. In each case the freeze-ups returned in a few days (almost two weeks after the C&DE).

My question is how different are the RID units? We know that there is a software slice for each model of unit, but is tivoapp or dssapp different for RID versus non-RID units?

So, bottom line, based upon my experience and what I read from others, at least SOME non-RID DirecTiVos have been experiencing operational "issues" since the 6.2 upgrade. In SOME cases, clearing thumb ratings or clearing everything seems to solve the problem. But in some cases it does not.

Even if clearing data works, it is an indication that the problem is NOT the hard drive. Clearing data does nothing to reformat or otherwise repair bad sectors. All it does is rebuild the effected databases. This clearly indicates a software issue - either with the database upgrade process, or the database access software, or some combination of both.


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## richierich

rnwjr said:


> I have a Hughes DirecTV Series 2 and have never had any problems until last Thursday when it seemed to be stuck on a download with the record light on... We called DirecTV and they suggested moving it to the other room, and that the wiring may need to be replaced.. QUOTE]
> 
> That CSR deserves a RAISE because that is the BEST BULLSH!T that I have ever heard from a CSR, tremendous creativity. I bet he was laughing his ARSE off when he got off the phone with you. They are so incredibly INEPT!! We know a hundred times more about Tivos than they will ever know. Did you unplug your unit, wait 30 seconds, remove the card, reinsert it and plug it back in. They love to read that one to you from their script.


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## BTUx9

Actually, we KNOW that tivoapp is identical, because some patching programs found elsewhere wouldn't work otherwise.


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## richierich

I will add one more thing and then leave this thread because I am an HR10-250 guy with a problem but what I have experience and being a computer programmer helps me understand this problem is that when the CPU is busy doing a read on a bad sector, it queues up every tasks as they come in until it completes that read task. Is the Tivo showing a yellow light which says it is not a responsive or bad remote or sluggish remote but it is just queueing up the remote commands to act on them when it finishes the read function. It has to hit a read threshold until it quits trying and then acts on the other requests.

I believe this issue that you guys have with the 6.2 release is the same as I have had with the "f" version and that is why I will not plug in my phone line until I can see alot of people with the HR10-250 experience positive results with the 6.2 release when the HR10-250 gets it if that release OCCURS in MY LIFETIME!!! Good Luck!!! I wish D* would just tell us what they think the problem is because they should know by now.


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## the_scotsman

Dan Collins said:


> Even if clearing data works, it is an indication that the problem is NOT the hard drive. Clearing data does nothing to reformat or otherwise repair bad sectors. All it does is rebuild the effected databases. This clearly indicates a software issue - either with the database upgrade process, or the database access software, or some combination of both.


Not necessarily, it *could* still by a HD problem! A C&D clears the data and the now empty HDD doesn't yet use the "Bad" area. Once you start filling it up with recordings it hits the bad area.... problem comes back!

Almost 48 hours and no reboots on the DRS7000s (uptime on the system page is awesome) - fingers crossed!

What is RID?

Paul


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## richierich

Paul, you hit the nail on the head. My HR10-250 did not fail until it was about 60% full. Then I ran SpinRite and it found 2 bad sectors about 55% of the way thru the process. After it took those 2 sectors out I had no more problems until the new download. I ran SR and it discovered 3 more bad sectors. It removed them and I ran just fine ever since. All doing a Clear and Delete does is buy you time before it hits a bad sector again in my humble opinion.


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## rmassey

richierich, in your case, I think SR did indeed fix your problem. I love SR too and I ran it on a 120 GB drive for 30+ hours. It did not report/detect any bad sectors for my drive. With this drive reinstalled into the DTivo, I am still watching the Tivo to see if reboots occur again, so time will tell.


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## richierich

I think that the reason why D* is telling it's CSRs to tell us to do a Clear and Delete is that their technical people have told them that if a bad sector exists 40% or 50% into that drive then the techs know that they can buy time by having us Clear & Delete and have us start over from point zero but I believe when you achieve that 40 or 50% again and hit that bad sector you will have problems.

Another interesting thing that I read in the SR docs is that it rewrites the data with a deeper pit burn so that it can be read easier for a longer period of time. I do know that game CDs use black CDs and say to burn it in 1X instead of 8X to allow for a better pit burn. I am no expert but after SR does it's thing with no re-organization of the database or whatever I am back in business until the next dowload. 

Someone please comment on this or explain it to me so I can go away and be happy.


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## rmassey

richierich said:


> I think that the reason why D* is telling it's CSRs to tell us to do a Clear and Delete is that their technical people have told them that if a bad sector exists 40% or 50% into that drive then the techs know that they can buy time by having us Clear & Delete and have us start over from point zero but I believe when you achieve that 40 or 50% again and hit that bad sector you will have problems.


Well, how would this work in my case. I was having reboots, I SR the drive, no bad sectors found.... so if no bad sectors, what is/was causing the reboots.

Also, Dan took his same problem drive with no diags, no SR and is using it in a different DTivo with a newly imaged drive. So far no reboots, but they could reoccur once the bad spot is reached (in theory).

IMO, it's a sw or db index issue .vs. a HD issue.


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## richierich

Alot of times reboots are caused because the CPU runs out of temp storage and reboots to save itself by freeing up space so it can function. Perhaps the CPU is getting confused by the reconfiguration of the database. When I was a programmer and we re-structured a database we had to offload all of the data, then re-structure the database by telling it if it was sequential or random or a mix of the two. Then we had to use a utility to reload the data back into the database properly so it could assign the proper indexes.

I can't imagine how they can restructure the database without doing this. If they start using ongoing recordings in one manner and don't get rid of the old structured database then they will encounter problems. That is probably why they want you to do a Clear & Delete. To get rid of the old structure. Going forward it will write everything with the new database structure. Why don't they tell us this? Big Corporation!!!!


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## rmassey

richierich said:


> Alot of times reboots are caused because the CPU runs out of temp storage and reboots to save itself by freeing up space so it can function. Perhaps the CPU is getting confused by the reconfiguration of the database. When I was a programmer and we re-structured a database we had to offload all of the data, then re-structure the database by telling it if it was sequential or random or a mix of the two. Then we had to use a utility to reload the data back into the database properly so it could assign the proper indexes.
> 
> I can't imagine how they can restructure the database without doing this. If they start using ongoing recordings in one manner and don't get rid of the old structured database then they will encounter problems. That is probably why they want you to do a Clear & Delete. To get rid of the old structure. Going forward it will write everything with the new database structure. Why don't they tell us this? Big Corporation!!!!


Re: CPU, etc. yes, but this problem did not exist with v 3.11. It began with the release of v6.2, so unless they also replaced the Linux OS and how it handles multi threaded process allocation and heap storage, I doubt the theory of the CPU runing out of temp storage is valid.

I'm a programmer too, but I am not going to begin to trouble shoot this D* sw/db problem over the net. 



> Why don't they tell us this?


 because less than 2% of Tivo users would even begin to understand (or care).


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## richierich

I am not saying tell us all of the technical stuff but they know what is causing problems, whether it is a hard drive problem or software or whatever, why do we have to endlessly speculate in these forums and threads to try to figure out if replacing the drive will work, or buying and running SpinRite will work or whatever. They could be a little more user friendly and tell us what is going on, be patient and the fix will be approximately delivered in a certain timeframe but don't hold us to it because it may take longer to troubleshoot.

Thanks RMASSEY, for your input and insight and feel free to PM me with any additonal feedback because I have been fighting this problem for over a year and I just want to know more about what is causing all of these problems and why D* hasn't done more to resolve them.


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## rmassey

> if replacing the drive will work, or buying and running SpinRite will work or whatever.


Well these actions are not sactioned by D* for users to perform, in fact it voids the warranty. there solution is to just replace the box. The problem for us upgraded users is we are faced with a more telling solution due to our interest in upgrading the box.



richierich said:


> Thanks RMASSEY, for your input and insight and feel free to PM me with any additonal feedback because I have been fighting this problem for over a year and I just want to know more about what is causing all of these problems and why D* hasn't done more to resolve them.


I'm with you, I just want a solution, so I can fix it and get on with the party.


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## richierich

My warranty ran out along time ago. In fact I have that replacement deal (I don't know why) but I just sent mine off when I could have had a replacement but it could be a refurbished unit or a new unit with a bad hard drive that won't show up for 6 months or one that has a bad HDMI port so I bit the bullet and paid alot of money to get it replaced along with networking capabilities, etc, that I don't have the time to do. I have the money so I got PTVUPGRADE to enhance my unit even though I lost my recordings.

It is amazing to me that D* doesn't try to do more to inform their most loyal supporters and most people who can afford this stuff. I know we are a small percentage but there will be alot of people following us if we are happy and successful by example, word or the mouth, etc.


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## Motterman

Clueless newbie here. 

I've got the Hughes SD-DVR120 that just started crapping out a few days ago. (picture locking up, artifacts, rebooting, non-responsive) I'm furiously trying to back up what I can onto DVD's with my new recorder, but I don't think I'm going to get it all as the problems just keep getting worse and more frequent. I bought the thing at BestBuy (I don't think I got their warranty though), but I do have D*'s service protection plan on my acct. After doing research this afternoon, it looks like my receiver probably downloaded this 6.2 thing and now it's jacked up. I've looked at SpinRite that I saw mentioned here, but I'm not sure that's going to fix my problem. I've looked at the upgrade/replacement options at Weaknees as well, but that's not going to help me keep what I have either... I'm not afraid of cracking cases and tweaking with computer/electionric stuff, although I know nothing about Linux, despite a pretty good knowledge of DOS and Windows. 

I need some advice if possible.

Should I buy a new harddrive and just forget about what I'm losing here or should I try and repair the disk with SprinRite/DD/etc. and hope that works... I don't know, maybe I'm just thinking/typing out loud to try and make my decision easier... 

In any case, this sucks. 

Oh yeah, my temp is 41, so I'm ok there....


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## BTUx9

re: Motterman - since yours is a later unit, it's unlikely to be the same issue as we're discussing here (though I'm not 100% sure of that). On MY machine (and some others) the rebooting stopped when I disconnected the inputs. It's worth a shot, in that it would at least let you pull the recordings off.

If you wanted a more definitive answer as to the cause, you could connect your tivo drive to a PC, boot a linux livecd (there are several images that specifically support TiVo, or you can use any image and load the tivopart utility to recognize the drive), anc check the log files. The 6.2 issue has an Audit, line (31) message, followed by "thread strayed" messages, whereas HD failure has standard linux errors for hda

this method would also help richierich and others do a differential diagnosis on their problems, as they may be more HD-related than 6.2


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## Diana Collins

One more time...

I had a HDVR2 with a brand new WD 250GB drive installed the week after I got 6.2. After about 1 week I started experiencing freezes - this was NOT the TiVo sitting trying to read a sector. The red record light was on, and it was NOT responding to ANY button presses. I once left it for 12 hours and NOTHING happened. I eventually completely filled the 250GB drive (by recording all episodes of a few series) and saw no difference in behavior from a 100% full drive or from a 10% full drive. I did a "C&DE" and still had freezes after about 12 days. The frequency of the freezes was anywhere from a day or two to a week or more between occurances.

I then called DirecTV and they sent me a refurb DSR-704. That SAME 250GB drive was pulled from the HDVR2, reimaged with the Philips version of 6.2, and installed in the DSR-704. That drive is now full of recordings and suggestions and I have seen NO MORE FREEZES.

The freeze ups I was seeing had NOTHING to do with bad drive sectors.


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## Diana Collins

Motterman said:


> ...I've got the Hughes SD-DVR120 that just started crapping out a few days ago. (picture locking up, artifacts, rebooting, non-responsive)...Oh yeah, my temp is 41, so I'm ok there....


What you are describing ARE the classic symptoms of a drive failure. This is NOT what we are talking about. Other than occasionally locking up or rebooting, the TiVos we are referring to work fine - no artifacts, no stuttering, no unresponsiveness. I'd say you ARE experiencing incipient drive failure.

41 is pretty warm for a SD-DVR120 - you should be in the low 30's on those units (they used the B revision chassis with a heftier fan).


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## rnwjr

richierich... I agree with you comment, but I was hoping the tech's knew what they are talking about... Six hours later (Was late from work) I cleared my TIVO only to find that it froze again with the recording light on... At least I can watch two of my programs until it fails again... 

Should I go to Circuit City/ Best Buy and get a R10? (Wonder if this requires new service or can be for existing customers for the $99.00 price)

or 

Get a refurb from DTV?


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## richierich

Gotcha Dan.


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## rnwjr

It appears that mine freezes when it is recording programs in my season pass only... Off to Circuit City I go...


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## aggiedwc

Thanks for all of the information on this thread. I also have a Hughes DVR2 and started seeing spontaneous reboots after receiving the 6.2 software download. I have one 80G WD drive in this system (was the secondary before my 40G totally died last year).

I have another problem at the same time because I also recently switched to Vonage and haven't been able to successfully complete a daily call. I originally thought that the reboots might be an unfriendly way D* had added to force me to make a call or call in, but from this thread it sounds like they are truly two separate issues.

I tried the thumbs database clear tonight. We'll see how that goes. May make life a little more bearable for a week or to if I'm reading this thread correctly. Hopefully I won't have to go to the full clear and delete.

One item Dan mentioned in his 8/8 post was that he thought it might be related to a database error "while logging data at the end of a recording". Might still be a database error, but while recording long baseball games (had to record lots extra cause I kept missing extra innings ) my reboots seem to have regularly occurred in the middle of recordings and not exclusively near the end.

Thanks for being out there and sharing. It helps to have others to commiserate with. Who knows, maybe we'll figure this out yet.

P.S. Thought the IR theory was interesting, too, as I am using an RCA D930/D935 wireless IR repeater. Don't know how that compares to everyone else, but it's more data at least.


----------



## veener88

Right now for me the reboot and clearing my whole system has seemed to work so far. I have not had a reboot all this week. I am waiting for a few weeks to make sure.


----------



## chasmm

Add me to the list...

I've got two DVR40's, one stock and the other has the Weaknees dual 160 drives installed. The upgraded unit would not receive 6.2. After corresponding with Weaknees, it was suggested to do a Clear & Delete. I did this tonight, and then forced a daily call. 

Lo and Behold...6.2! Of course, I was pretty surprised when it locked up on me while reading the message about the DVR upgrade. Since then it has rebooted over 10 times. I can't even get through a session of setting up the parental controls without it rebooting. I've tried forcing a call (it reboots), I've tried running a system test (it reboots). In short, it reboots almost continously.  

At first, it was rebooted whenever it got to 72% of the sat data, then it started going from 72% directly to LiveTV. Now it will get to 95% and then go to LiveTV, but within 10 minutes of getting to LiveTV, it WILL reboot.

I was so upset that it wouldn't load 6.2 because it was slow. Now I've got a box that seems to be useless...

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. 

BTW, this is a box that, to my knowledge, never spontaneously rebooted in the prior year. I never had to redo the 30-second hack.


----------



## brad639

My locked up system was with the Hughes DVR2.

It was one of the early batches, had it for about 2 years when the hard drive failed around december. I put an upgraded 160GB NEW Drive in it.

Four months later got the 6.2 upgrade and about a month later got pauses and stops and reboots.

I did the clear and delete thumbs, season passes, and to do list. Still got the stops and reboots after 2-3 days.

Then I did the pause 58 thing and it has been working well for about 3 weeks+ with only 2 stop reboots spaced out. 


It seems to be software related with DVR2's and upgraded drives??


----------



## Motterman

rnwjr said:


> richierich... I agree with you comment, but I was hoping the tech's knew what they are talking about... Six hours later (Was late from work) I cleared my TIVO only to find that it froze again with the recording light on... At least I can watch two of my programs until it fails again...
> 
> Should I go to Circuit City/ Best Buy and get a R10? (Wonder if this requires new service or can be for existing customers for the $99.00 price)
> 
> or
> 
> Get a refurb from DTV?


Yeah, I called D* tech support on Thursday night. She said to clean and delete everything... I tried a few times to record what I could onto DVD before starting the process. I started it before I went to work at 8am Friday morning, and when I got home from work around 5pm, the screen still said "process may take up to an hour, do not unplug" and the red record light was flashing. I called D* support and this girl said that even though it says it should only take an hour on the screen, it could take up to 24 hours.  Lovely. So, anyways, went to bed and woke up on Saturday... not surprised to see it still blinking and on the same message. Called D* tech support again, they said to unplug it and then plug it back in and I should be fine.... well, I kept him on the line while it was starting up, and, sure enough, it went back to the clean and delete screen / red light blinking thing. So, they transfered me over to get a replacement, where I was told that, since it was Saturday, they won't process the replacement order until Monday, and I might not get the "comparable DVR unit" until Wednesday. 

I'm assuming this is "classic" D* tech support, yes?


----------



## Nightfall

I have an HDVR2 and I noticed the last few weeks that my Tivo has been rebooting randomly. Today was the first time I saw it reboot while I was watching a recorded program. I don't think this has anything to do with a bad drive. After the system rebooted, I finished watching the show and deleted it.

I have read through the 8 pages of information in this thread so far. It seems that it could be the 6.2 OS, the fact I have 2 160GB drives in the unit, the database, the season passes, or the Tivo itself.

I wish that I knew what was causing the problem.

I am going to monitor this more closely to find out how often it is rebooting. I watch TV once a day on average, and some days I have to do the 30 second skip while other days I don't have to do it. I think this is a once every 2-3 day thing, but I haven't gotten it locked down as of yet.


----------



## BTUx9

Update:
After running a Clear & Delete Everything on my HDVR2, I've been hang/reboot free for 12 days, now. I'm still monitoring the machine closely, but I'm hopeful this indicates a stable machine. I *DID* reboot 2 days ago, for other reasons, and there's a very slight possibility that rebooting once a week may be helpful.


----------



## the_scotsman

I too did a clear & delete (+ HDD upgrades). Been reboot free for over 10 days.


----------



## veener88

I came up with a way to find out if your TIVO is rebooting when you are away from the house with out have to hack the unit.

Go this tread and put in this backdoor code.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=245727

The only way you will lose this option is when your system reboots or if you disable it. So if you have it enabled and you come home and no longer have this enabled your system did a reboot.

I had this happen this week to me and it popped on my head to keep this going.


----------



## Mike_TV

For the people that did the Clear & Delete Everything, did you put all of your Season Passes back in?

I have about 100 SPs (a bunch of ARWL for music artists/groups that show up on late night talk shows).

I was wondering if the nubmer of SPs may be a factor....


----------



## BTUx9

I don't have large numbers of SPs, but I did restore mine (using TWP) and that didn't seem to be an issue. There WAS a post on DDB saying that one of the SPs someone restored caused a reboot, but that may have been an anomaly.

For the record, my tivo is misbehaving again. It was after some unsupported actions better discussed elsewhere, and the hanging has a different cause (in the logfiles) than the initial problems. It looks like a corrupt stream in 6.2 can actually corrupt MFS, so caveat hacker.


----------



## jawhn

This is driving me crazy! 

Samsung S4040R. Had it for over a year and I NEVER saw a reboot. Got 6.2 and reboots started shortly thereafter. Started reading this thread and Most suggested HD problems. Replaced the old 40GB HD with a BRAND NEW 160GB HD (wanted the extra space anyway). NOTICED reboots starting within a week. They vary from once every couple of days, to twice in an hour. I've tried resetting the Thumbs and a Total Reset.

There seems to be NO common link. Does it when watching live TV (I know it's ALWAYS recording) and watching recorded material.

OBSERVATION: If it's bad sectors on the HD and it does it on pre-recorded material, shouldn't it show up each time you view the same recording? It doesn't on mine!


----------



## BTUx9

If you notice, most who suggest HD troubles are redirected to a different thread. There's a definite instability with 6.2 and SOME older dtivos. And, yes, "driving me crazy" is a common reaction. I wish I had something more constructive to say than "join the club"


----------



## joelv

I have the same problem. Samsung SR5412-DR. I called D* tech support and level 2 tech got on the phone (level 1 can't help). I described the problem and without missing a beat she said "we'll send you a new one, where do you want it to go?"... That was it. I never had a chance to ***** or anything.

Sounds like they've gotten quite a few of these calls already and didn't even bother telling me to try a reset.


----------



## veener88

joelv said:


> I have the same problem. Samsung SR5412-DR. I called D* tech support and level 2 tech got on the phone (level 1 can't help). I described the problem and without missing a beat she said "we'll send you a new one, where do you want it to go?"... That was it. I never had a chance to ***** or anything.
> 
> Sounds like they've gotten quite a few of these calls already and didn't even bother telling me to try a reset.


Just wondering did they tell you what they are sending you for the replacement?


----------



## vigfoot

Here's my deal- I bought a new Philips 708 from weaknees, which arrived last week. Finally got around to hooking it up (to replace a working 7000) last night. Watched it for about an hour and went to bed. I think the next call was gonna be overnight, so I figured the 6.2 upgrade might be on it this morning. When I turned on the TV, the frame was 'paused'. I couldn't get out of it so I unplugged/replugged a few times and never got a 'powering up' screen or a lit light on the front panel, but I could hear the fan. I swapped back the 7000 and it worked fine.

Do harddrives degrade w/ non-use?


----------



## joelv

veener88 said:


> Just wondering did they tell you what they are sending you for the replacement?


Sounds like its going to be a Hughes. I said I don't care as long as its 100hrs like the Samsung.


----------



## veener88

joelv said:


> Sounds like its going to be a Hughes. I said I don't care as long as its 100hrs like the Samsung.


I have a Hughes 40 hour unit and I am just a litte worried about getting the same unit back with the exchage and having the same problem again incase it is a hardware issue with that box.


----------



## joelv

They're sending mine via FedEx Ground. I'll try it out and let you know if the problem re-occurs. I hope that a fresh, clean install on a new unit does the trick (as opposed to an upgrade).

You might as well call it in. Worst case they send you a new unit. Can't be any worse then the one you have now (mine was up to two reboots an hour - maddening!!!)


----------



## joelv

One quick note - I have been with DirecTV since 1996 and Sunday Ticket since the first year it was on. They've got a boat-load of my money so maybe thats why the service swapped my unit so easily. 

Just throwing that out there since I heard from a couple people that they didn't get the same level of service...

Good luck all! Thanks for the helpful thread!
JOEL


----------



## Nightfall

It looks like mine is rebooting about once every 2 days. So now, what do I do? That is the question. I think I will do a clear and delete, but I still have a lot of programs on my Tivo I want to watch. I would hate to do that for a while. At least until I watch my programs.


----------



## Nightfall

brad639 said:


> My locked up system was with the Hughes DVR2.
> 
> It was one of the early batches, had it for about 2 years when the hard drive failed around december. I put an upgraded 160GB NEW Drive in it.
> 
> Four months later got the 6.2 upgrade and about a month later got pauses and stops and reboots.
> 
> I did the clear and delete thumbs, season passes, and to do list. Still got the stops and reboots after 2-3 days.
> 
> Then I did the pause 58 thing and it has been working well for about 3 weeks+ with only 2 stop reboots spaced out.
> 
> It seems to be software related with DVR2's and upgraded drives??


Could this be the issue?


----------



## the new guy

Both of my units are RID boxes, hacked and running brand new Quickview drives. One is using the 62small image, the other is imaged from the factory drive, which was allowed to upgrade from 3.1.1e. Both have the same errors in the tverr log file:


Code:


Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) myworld[193]: Tmk Fatal Error: Thread myworld <193> strayed!
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) myworld[193]: pc 0xb1aa48 status 0x8001fc13 cause 0x000008 bva 0x5ecf385c hi 0x000010 lo 00000000
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) myworld[193]: R00 0x00000000 R01 0x100a3cd4 R02 0x00000080 R03 0x00a92ff8
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) myworld[193]: R04 0x00000000 R05 0x5ec79598 R06 0x5ec5032c R07 0x5ec501a4
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) myworld[193]: R08 0x00000001 R09 0xffffffff R10 0x5ec50114 R11 0x5ec501d8
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) myworld[193]: R12 0x00002184 R13 0x00000000 R14 0xa4b58000 R15 0x00015180
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) myworld[193]: R16 0x5ec594a4 R17 0x00000000 R18 0x00000020 R19 0x5ece0bac
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) myworld[193]: R20 0x00000ce9 R21 0x1d78dabd R22 0x00000000 R23 0x5ece0b94
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) myworld[193]: R24 0x00000000 R25 0x00b1aa34 R26 0x00000001 R27 0x00000000
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) myworld[193]: R28 0x1006d910 R29 0x7fff6490 R30 0x5ecda3b0 R31 0x00a93014
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) myworld[193]: bt -t /tvbin/tivoapp
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) myworld[193]: read 0x2aaa8000 /lib/ld.so.1
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) myworld[193]: read 0x2ab04000 /lib/libutil.so.1
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) myworld[193]: read 0x2ab48000 /lib/libdl.so.2
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) myworld[193]: read 0x2ab8c000 /lib/libpthread.so.0
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) myworld[193]: read 0x2abe8000 /lib/libm.so.6
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) myworld[193]: read 0x2acb0000 /lib/libc.so.6
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) myworld[193]: 0x00b1aa48 0x00a93014 0x00b20ba8 0x00b209e4 0x00b2f358 0x00b2ee5c 0x00b2ec28
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) myworld[193]: 0x01353b7c 0x01353f1c 0x0130372c 0x013032f8 0x0137f73c 0x01389c84 0x00b1fe40
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) myworld[193]: 0x00b1dcf4 0x00a857e0 0x007a41b4 0x00612e00 0x00403090 0x2acc13fc
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) myworld[193]: Tmk Fatal Error: Thread myworld <193>: unexpected signal 11
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) myworld[193]: Tmk Fatal Error: Thread died due to signal 11
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) myworld[193]: Invoking rule 834: rebooting system

This sequence seems to be pretty consistent each time a reboot occurs. I have run the MFS cleanup, but the issue comes back after a while. I haven't seen any mention of this, but the reboots seem to occur while watching live TV. If I try to rewind back into the buffer, I will see the flash from the front panel confirming the remote signal was received, but the unit does not respond. Within five seconds, the gray Welcome... screen will show up. I have never seen a reboot while watching a saved program. There is obviously some issue with the new software that D* and TiVo need to address.

Waiting for 6.2.1...

Tim


----------



## BTUx9

the new guy: Was there anything in the logs BEFORE what you posted... in my experience, there are usually warning messages before threads stray. Of course, I've seen 2 different threads straying causing hangs (neither of them myworld), which is rather suspicious.


----------



## the new guy

Here is some of the kernel log leading up to a reboot:


Code:


Aug 21 22:39:15 (none) kernel: !!!!WARNING: Needed 2 tries to set video STC to 0x031cbe59
Aug 21 22:39:15 (none) kernel: Before = 0x031cbeb4, After = 0x031cbee1
Aug 21 22:39:15 (none) kernel:
Aug 21 22:39:33 (none) kernel: !!!!WARNING: Needed 2 tries to set video STC to 0x1839c6cd
Aug 21 22:39:33 (none) kernel: Before = 0x0329ae90, After = 0x0329aebe
Aug 21 22:39:33 (none) kernel:
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) kernel: Illegal read at 00000040
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) kernel: do_page_fault #2: sending signal 11 to myworld(193)
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) kernel: $0 : 00000000 100a3cd4 00000080 00a92ff8 00000000 5ec79598 5ec5032c 5ec501a4
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) kernel: $8 : 00000001 ffffffff 5ec50114 5ec501d8 00002184 00000000 a4b58000 00015180
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) kernel: $16: 5ec594a4 00000000 00000020 5ece0bac 00000ce9 1d78dabd 00000000 5ece0b94
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) kernel: $24: 00000000 00b1aa34 1006d910 7fff6490 5ecda3b0 00a93014
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) kernel: Hi : 00000010
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) kernel: Lo : 00000000
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) kernel: epc : 00b1aa48 Not tainted
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) kernel: Status: 8001fc13
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) kernel: Cause : 00000008
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) kernel: 8001e9fc 8001eac0 80022bb4 80022d74 80024db8 00b1aa48
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) kernel: 00b1aa48 00a93014 00b20ba8 00b209e4 00b2f358 00b2ee5c 00b2ec28 01353b7c
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) kernel: 01353f1c 0130372c 013032f8 0137f73c 01389c84 00b1fe40 00b1dcf4 00a857e0
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) kernel: 007a41b4 00612e00 00403090 2acc13fc
Aug 21 23:25:31 (none) kernel: Tmk Fatal Error: Thread myworld <193> strayed!

There are numerous warnings about setting the video STC before that. In looking over the kernel log, nearly every reboot happens after the myworld thread strays. Is this different than the reboots everyone else is having?

Tim


----------



## BTUx9

I can't speak for everyone, but my reboots seem to be from a different cause (though quite probably related)... My log DOES have the warnings about 2 tries needed to set STC, that doesn't seem to be related, and may be "normal"

I'll keep my eyes open for a myworld-related reboot/hang... actually, it does make sense, in that most of my issues have been hanging, not rebooting, and it looks like when myworld dies, a reboot is called.


----------



## the_scotsman

Damn! One of my DSR7000s is now rebooting once again with a frequency of 2 or 3 times a day :-( 

I have also seen the STC message in my log file but have not had enough time to compare the (so far) "stable" machine with the one now rebooting. I've really found no log file messages prior to rebooting that suggest a problem. 

I've now restored the original tivoapp to see if that helps. 

Also, I have a ground loop that I need to break - perhaps this machine is more sensitive and the ground loop is causing it problems - don't know! I do know that it is causing rolling horizontal purple lines on the monitor.

Frustrating thing is that I just bought 2 more DSR7000s to replace the T-60s (which are rock solid) as the folders and speed are great features plus MRV rocks. Final resort will be to go back to 3.x (which was perfectly stable). I would have D* swap these out but I really do not want an R10.

Paul


----------



## the_scotsman

Oh yeah, one other symptom, which I had not observed before, was that the video would freeze or stutter every now and then (live & recorded), both during normal viewing and FF. This may be a side effect of the large HDD so I'm going to try the original again if the tivoapp restore dose not work.

Paul


----------



## Nightfall

I am getting one reboot every 2 days or so on average. I know cause I have to set the 30 second skip up again. I know I want to get this resolved before the new season of TV hits. The big question is, what do I do? I am going to start with a clear and delete everything here in the next month. That will hopefully fix my problems as it had with other people here.

To those of you who did a C&DE, did it fix your problems with the reboots? I know 10+ days later, no reboots which is a good sign. However, is that still the case?


----------



## kayson712

Mike_TV said:


> For the people that did the Clear & Delete Everything, did you put all of your Season Passes back in?
> 
> I have about 100 SPs (a bunch of ARWL for music artists/groups that show up on late night talk shows).
> 
> I was wondering if the nubmer of SPs may be a factor....


Mike - My SPs were similar to yours. I knocked mine down from about 100 to 50. Not sure if this makes a difference or not. (FWIW D* support claims that the reboots are a known issue and they suspect the harder you make the machine work the more likely it is to start doing the restarts). Anyway - boot free for about two weeks now on a SD-DVR40 upgraded with second 120GB from Weaknees. Before the clear & delete was rebooting 6-8 times per day.


----------



## Nightfall

I am starting to wonder if the upgrade from 3.1.1 to 6.2 caused problems if you didn't do a clear and delete everything upon the upgrade. Just a thought.


----------



## Nightfall

Well, after a few more reboots, which are happening about 1-2 times per day, I decided to call Directv. They said to do a clear and delete everything. Since I was all caught up on most of the shows (except a couple things I wouldn't have minded keeping but probably wouldn't have watched anyway), I did the clear and delete. I am doing it on the other Tivo as well since hockey season is coming up and I use that for all hockey recordings anyway.

So, I hope this will fix my reboot problem on my primary Tivo....

I know there are some people who did the clear and delete everything and were reboot free for 10+ days. Could those people check in to see how things are going?


----------



## kayson712

Nightfall said:


> I know there are some people who did the clear and delete everything and were reboot free for 10+ days. Could those people check in to see how things are going?


Checking my notes, it looks like I did the clear & delete on 8/3/05. No reboots since. Did come home one day about a week ago and had to manually reboot because I had a frozen picture on my TV coming from the Tivo. A manual power off reset fixed this. These freeze frames were occurring quite frequently along with the random reboots before the clear & delete. Just keeping my fingers crossed that the reboots won't come back.


----------



## SteveInNC

kayson712 said:


> Checking my notes, it looks like I did the clear & delete on 8/3/05. No reboots since. Did come home one day about a week ago and had to manually reboot because I had a frozen picture on my TV coming from the Tivo. A manual power off reset fixed this. These freeze frames were occurring quite frequently along with the random reboots before the clear & delete. Just keeping my fingers crossed that the reboots won't come back.


I still wouldn't trust this. I suspect that you may have delayed the issue by moving data off of some failing disk blocks, but I also suspect that the problem will come back. I never got reboots on my unit which had a failing disk, but got a freeze about once every few days. This gradually became a freeze about once every three hours.

This would be a good time to copy stuff to a new drive, while it's still a viable image. I waited too long for my unit, and the copied disk image wouldn't boot (lots of errors during the copy). I had to find an old 3.1 image to load, then let the whole thing upgrade again after replacing/upgrading the disk. I haven't had any problems since.

At the very least, back up the current image you have to a PC in case it does fail on you later.


----------



## BTUx9

SteveInNC said:


> I still wouldn't trust this. I suspect that you may have delayed the issue by moving data off of some failing disk blocks, but I also suspect that the problem will come back. I never got reboots on my unit which had a failing disk, but got a freeze about once every few days. This gradually became a freeze about once every three hours.
> 
> This would be a good time to copy stuff to a new drive, while it's still a viable image. I waited too long for my unit, and the copied disk image wouldn't boot (lots of errors during the copy). I had to find an old 3.1 image to load, then let the whole thing upgrade again after replacing/upgrading the disk. I haven't had any problems since.
> 
> At the very least, back up the current image you have to a PC in case it does fail on you later.


Sorry to be rough, but please stop saying it's a HD problem when this thread is specifically for non-HD issues regarding 6.2 on older dtivos.

Linux is quite good about logging errors about failing HDs, and for those experiencing the 6.2 issue, those errors are not showing up.

I'm not saying that nobody posting in this thread has HD issues, but giving advice as if they were, when there's no evidence of it, you're just wasting a person's time and money and giving them false hope.

p.s. The previous poster's symptoms being from just a failing HD is extremely unlikely.


----------



## Diana Collins

FWIW, I can force a reboot on demand. I just attempt a "Quick Reload" of TiVoWebPlus 1.2.1. This causes a reboot with the following written to tverr.log:


Code:


Aug 25 20:25:36 (none) TmkAssertionFailure[14717]: (DumpArenaAndBlocksAndDie, line 1472 ())
Aug 25 20:25:36 (none) tivosh[14717]: Tmk Fatal Error: Thread tivosh <14717> strayed!
Aug 25 20:25:36 (none) tivosh[14717]: bt -t /tvbin/tivoapp
Aug 25 20:25:36 (none) tivosh[14717]: read 0x2aaa8000 /lib/ld.so.1 
Aug 25 20:25:36 (none) tivosh[14717]: read 0x2ab04000 /lib/libutil.so.1 
Aug 25 20:25:36 (none) tivosh[14717]: read 0x2ab48000 /lib/libdl.so.2 
Aug 25 20:25:36 (none) tivosh[14717]: read 0x2ab8c000 /lib/libpthread.so.0 
Aug 25 20:25:36 (none) tivosh[14717]: read 0x2abe8000 /lib/libm.so.6 
Aug 25 20:25:36 (none) tivosh[14717]: read 0x2acb0000 /lib/libc.so.6 
Aug 25 20:25:36 (none) tivosh[14717]: 0x013b3e3c 0x013b3c90 0x013b3f84 0x00f58234 0x00f9312c 0x00fd98d0 0x00f9e50c 
Aug 25 20:25:36 (none) tivosh[14717]: 0x00fb7a28 0x00f8eb18 0x00f96cac 0x00fb7a28 0x00f8eb18 0x00fd99ec 0x00fdd23c 
Aug 25 20:25:36 (none) tivosh[14717]: 0x00f58150 0x00612c48 0x00403090 0x2acc13fc 
Aug 25 20:25:36 (none) tivosh[14717]: Tmk Fatal Error: Thread tivosh <14717>: assertion failure
Aug 25 20:25:36 (none) tivosh[14717]: Tmk Fatal Error: Thread died due to signal -2
Aug 25 20:25:36 (none) tivosh[14717]: Invoking rule 834: rebooting system

It would appear that the problem is simply that if the TiVo gets too busy, it can't catch back up.

This is also on a TiVo that runs flawlessly otherwise. This is NOT a disk problem, this is a bug in the software, probably related to whatever they did to speed up operational performance.


----------



## Nightfall

Dan,

If it is a bug in the software, wouldn't it affect all Tivos? Why have only some 6.2 users been hit with this bug?

There is part of me that thinks that the upgrade from 3.1 to 6.2 didn't really upgrade very nicely. Some databases didn't upgrade well. Which is why those people who did a clear and delete everything post 6.2 aren't having issues for the most part.

I guess we will see I suppose.


----------



## BTUx9

Which coincides with someone else's observation that his reboots only occur while indexing... that could be why some machines that are rebooting very often will stop if the satellite is disconnected... possibly.

Nightfall: some people who use AlphaWolf's 62small have had the issue, which wouldn't happen if it were a database condition problem... I think it's a combination of factors, so that many people's systems aren't stressed enough to have it occur very often. At least, that's my current theory 

Dan: is this on the replacement RID unit from D*?


----------



## Diana Collins

Nightfall said:


> Dan,
> 
> If it is a bug in the software, wouldn't it affect all Tivos? Why have only some 6.2 users been hit with this bug?
> 
> There is part of me that thinks that the upgrade from 3.1 to 6.2 didn't really upgrade very nicely. Some databases didn't upgrade well. Which is why those people who did a clear and delete everything post 6.2 aren't having issues for the most part.
> 
> I guess we will see I suppose.


My TiVos don't reboot unless I load them up with work.

Bottom line, no matter what I do with TiVoWebPlus, there should NOT be an assertion error in tivoapp. I could see video interruption, a failed recording, or other problems, but there is only word to describe what I've seen - a bug.

I suspect that at least some of the speed improvement was attained by "streamlining" the error handling code.


----------



## BTUx9

Dan Collins said:


> My TiVos don't reboot unless I load them up with work.
> 
> Bottom line, no matter what I do with TiVoWebPlus, there should NOT be an assertion error in tivoapp. I could see video interruption, a failed recording, or other problems, but there is only word to describe what I've seen - a bug.
> 
> I suspect that at least some of the speed improvement was attained by "streamlining" the error handling code.


And there's ample evidence that 3.1 boxes when loaded with work did NOT assert and die. (except for those running at setpri fifo 1)


----------



## Diana Collins

BTUx9 said:


> ...Dan: is this on the replacement RID unit from D*?


I can reproduce it on the Philips I got from D*, as well as both the SD-DVR80 and the SIR-S4040. If I exit TivoWebPlus and then restart it manually, all is well. It is ONLY when I try to restart from the menu that it causes a problem. I'm guessing that the start sequence begins before all the resources are released from the stop, and the TiVo runs out of either memory, processor power, or both.


----------



## daviddavidw

My HDVR2 with 6.2 and an upgraded 160MB HD records a show with major pixelation problems and sound drop outs about once a week. Luckily, it has not been rebooting, though. Everything else works fine.

Will doing a MFS partition check (pause 58) be of any help?

Is it a hardware/software problem, or a HD problem?

Thanks for any help. This has been a very informative thread.

-David


----------



## BTUx9

Does the pixellation, etc. recur in the same place, if you rewind and watch the same section over? Does it occur on the same channel, or same time of day? To determine if it's a bad spot on the HD, you may want to KEEP a recording that is exhibiting this behavior, that way other recordings won't be recorded over the same (possibly bad) sectors.

There are many possible causes for this, but since the tivo fixes itself, it's unlikely to be the same 6.2 issue (but not impossible)


----------



## daviddavidw

Yes, it's alway bad in the same place if I rewind. Does this mean it's bad sectors on the HD? Is there anyway to fix this without buying software? Is the only solution to keep the bad recordings?

Will the MFS partition check, or reseating the access card and restarting help?

Thanks for any info.

-David


----------



## BTUx9

It could be a bad sector, interference, marginal signal strength, or there may have been corruption when the stream was actually being written. If it's sectors on the HD, then keeping the recording may help (it may not, if the HD is in the process of dying. You may want to check what the weather was like during the problem recordings, to see if there's any pattern.

These problems are hard to diagnose 100%... running diagnostics on the drive could tell you whether it's disk errors or not, but make sure you use a DOS tool... XP will scribble on the drive, making it unbootable (can be fixed, usually, but is a PITA)


----------



## Motterman

Nightfall said:


> Dan,
> 
> If it is a bug in the software, wouldn't it affect all Tivos? Why have only some 6.2 users been hit with this bug?
> 
> There is part of me that thinks that the upgrade from 3.1 to 6.2 didn't really upgrade very nicely. Some databases didn't upgrade well. Which is why those people who did a clear and delete everything post 6.2 aren't having issues for the most part.
> 
> I guess we will see I suppose.


Well, for me, the Clean and Deletes never completed. They just would hang on the "Please wait. This may take an hour" screen....

As for your theory, the replacement they sent me for my Hughes, a Samsung, started pausing/rebooting a *day * after it upgraded to 6.2. The Samsung was only hooked up for 2 days when 6.2 was installed and problems started soon after like I said...


----------



## Mike_TV

Well C&D did nothing for me. Here are my steps...

1) C&D
2) Redo guided set up and complete call via PPP over serial
3) Leave box alone for about three days to get complete guide data

Note: No reboots yet after about 3-4 days after C&D. Unit seems very stable without any Season Passes.

4) Start rebuilding Season Passes (about 40 of them)

After it starts recording a few of the Season Passes, unit reboots on its own. If I try to play anything it recorded via a Season Pass, I get an error saying it can't play the recording.

I'm guessing I can do a C&D again and just use it as a plain "receiver" without creating any Season Passes so the thing doesn't reboot on me. Kinda of waste for a Tivo, I know but not knowing why/when this thing is going to reboot is frustrating.


----------



## BTUx9

That sounds like another issue... after putting in the SPs, that is. Is the error you receive when trying to play a SP error 51? it sounds like a scrambling key issue.


----------



## Mike_TV

> That sounds like another issue... after putting in the SPs, that is. Is the error you receive when trying to play a SP error 51? it sounds like a scrambling key issue.


I don't get a specific error number but get a message that says something like the program didn't record because of a signal problem. This isn't the exact text of the error, I'll have to take a picture of it and post it for the specific error. I know it's not a signal issue as I've seen this problem in another location in my house (I have three DirecTivos) and moved this one to another location with the same problem.

It does appear to be SP related with the 6.2 version as manual recordings appear to work without a problem. In fact, I may do a C&D again and set up a bunch of manual recordings as a test.


----------



## BTUx9

posting /var/log/tverr may help in the diagnosis


----------



## Nightfall

Welp, not a few days after the clear and delete everything, I am getting reboots once every day or two. Very fustrating. I have a spare Tivo I am going to swap out and see if that fixes the problem. The other Tivo has an upgraded drive, but only a 160gb one as opposed to the dual 160gb one that I have in the living room right now.

I suppose that it COULD be a hard drive problem causing it to reboot. However, I haven't seen any pixelation, stuttering programs, or other things that would show it has a bad drive.

*Sigh*

Looks like I am calling Directv tomorrow to get my box swapped.


----------



## Nightfall

Dan Collins said:


> I can attest to the fact that it is NOT a hard drive problem, since the SAME drive that caused freeze-ups in the HDVR2 is running fine in a DSR-704 - with no diagnotics or disk repair run at all...all I did was copy the Philips image onto the drive and install it.
> 
> This started as soon as 6.2 was spooled, so I don't think bad guide data is the issue, at least not directly.
> 
> We know that 6.2 rebuilds several of the TiVos databases. It may be that some pre-RID units (perhaps those that ran a particular software release, or got a guide download) have a particular database entry or value that causes the rebuild procedure a problem, which results in a bad system table or index value.


Dan, 
When you say pre-RID units, what are those? Like any of the HDVR2 boxes or any Tivo that was made over 2-3 years ago? The R10 may not have this problem?


----------



## Diana Collins

I am utterly convinced that the random rebooting problems that are specific to 6.2 are due to driver glitches when the box becomes too busy. I've corresponded with some people that can't access TiVoWeb while a recording in progress without causing a reboot.

This is why a C&DE helps for a while - it wipes the thumb ratings clean and stops suggestions. Turning off Suggestions may help some of these boxes, by simplying reducing the number of things the TiVo needs to do.

Why this occurs on some, but not all, DirecTiVos is mystery to me.


----------



## Diana Collins

Nightfall said:


> Dan,
> When you say pre-RID units, what are those? Like any of the HDVR2 boxes or any Tivo that was made over 2-3 years ago? The R10 may not have this problem?


The non-RID Series 2s were, IIRC, the Hughes HDVR-2, the Philips DSR-7000 and the RCA-DVR40.


----------



## BTUx9

I think "too busy" may specifically apply to MFS access. Giving the box busywork without messing with MFS seems to have no ill effects. 
Sounds like it could be the locking mechanism that prevents more than 1 thread modifying a piece of information at a time. 
My question would be: is there a hardware component to this, or are all boxes susceptible and it's just a matter of time/use?

I agree with the idea that suggestions being on could make reboots more likely, and size of drive may be a contributing factor, too.

How many people with rebooting issues DON'T have suggestions turned on?


----------



## Nightfall

On my rebooting Tivo, suggestions are turned off. I did the clear and delete everything. I have about 14 season passes set up and only 4-5 programs recorded!

On the Tivo that isn't rebooting, I pretty much made a clone. The one that isn't rebooting I set up with all the season passes of the rebooting Tivo and turned off suggestions. The only difference are the drives. The rebooting Tivo has 2 160gb hds. The non rebooting one has just a single 160gb drive.

I will keep this thread posted. I have a feeling the dual 160gb drive will reboot far sooner than the single drive one will. I am going to keep a watch out for it. I should know in a day or two.


----------



## the new guy

I have suggestions turned off on both of my units, and always have. I am going to avoid a C&DE on my DTiVo's, since everything is set up just the way I like it. I laugh in the face of the DTV CSR support scripts.

Surprisingly, I am reboot-free for 7 days on the Hughes, and 10 days on the RCA. Both units are getting busier with the upcoming fall season, though, so how much longer this streak will last is anyone's guess.

Tim


----------



## Nightfall

How did you get reboot free for 7 days? What did you do to get that far? Did you update something or turn something off? Did the reboots just magically stop? More info please. 

After 1 day, both units haven't rebooted yet.


----------



## the new guy

Just lucky, I guess...  

Tim


----------



## Nightfall

Nightfall said:


> How did you get reboot free for 7 days? What did you do to get that far? Did you update something or turn something off? Did the reboots just magically stop? More info please.
> 
> After 1 day, both units haven't rebooted yet.


It took about 1 week before the unit rebooted. The other unit has yet to reboot. Season passes are set up the same on both units. No suggestions on both units. The only difference is the one that doesn't reboot only has 1 160GB hard drive. The rebooting Tivo has 2.

I have decided to download the 3.1 image, restore to a single drive, and the reinstall the Tivo from scratch this weekend. I think it may possibly be the larger hard drive causing the reboot.

Dan, is there any word on if Directv is going to be releasing a patch or something?


----------



## the new guy

As I mentioned in your other thread, I am now at 19 and 16 days reboot-free.

Still getting lots of


Code:


Aug 27 21:56:56 (none) kernel: !!!!WARNING: Needed 2 tries to set video STC to 0x1e42e5fd
Aug 27 21:56:56 (none) kernel: Before = 0x1e42bb18, After = 0x1e42bb46

and occasionally one of


Code:


Sep 1 18:20:46 (none) kernel: hda: drive_cmd: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
Sep 1 18:20:46 (none) kernel: hda: drive_cmd: error=0x04 { DriveStatusError }

in the kernel log, but no reboots (maybe these are normal from time to time). The tverr log is not showing any strayed threads. I am still considering myself lucky, and will post if my streak is broken by a reboot on either machine.

Tim

I did see the term *recorder canary* in the tverr log, but it said it was a warning only, and was a week ago. Interesting term, at any rate.


----------



## BTUx9

Usually, the 2nd set of errors you're showing occurs when TWP tries to read the S.M.A.R.T. values when you use the "info" option. It's benign.

re: canary, yeah... I thought that was cute, too.


----------



## the new guy

Good to know the Drive Status Errors are not a problem...  

I will keep an eye on the logs to see if the recorder canary is sent into the coal mine.  

Tim


----------



## BTUx9

On a freeze, the canary filled my tverr with droppings, so it's definitely a good idea to keep your eye out for the little guy.


----------



## Nightfall

Welp, clear and delete everything didn't fix my problems. The HDVR2 with dual 160GB hard drive is rebooting once a week on average. Same goes for the HDVR2 with a single 160GB hard drive.

Now, it is decision time....

I can wait until the problem resolves itself with an update or something along those lines from Directv. I won't hold my breath....

I can call Directv and get both my Tivo's replaced.

What would you do?


----------



## Wags

Getting reboots here, also. Thought I was losing my unit. Maybe I'll exercise my extended warranty and get a new unit.


----------



## kayson712

Dan Collins said:


> I am utterly convinced that the random rebooting problems that are specific to 6.2 are due to driver glitches when the box becomes too busy. I've corresponded with some people that can't access TiVoWeb while a recording in progress without causing a reboot.
> 
> This is why a C&DE helps for a while - it wipes the thumb ratings clean and stops suggestions. Turning off Suggestions may help some of these boxes, by simplying reducing the number of things the TiVo needs to do.
> 
> Why this occurs on some, but not all, DirecTiVos is mystery to me.


Maybe it is just luck, but I have had no reboots since I did the C&D on 8/3 and I tend to agree with Dan's busy theory for a couple of reasons.

FWIW I talked to a CSR from retention before I did the C&D and he said even though D* didn't know how to fix the problem they acknowledge that it is a known issue and suspect that it occurs when the software gets overloaded with too many things to do. He suggested that after I do the C&D that I cut down my number of SP and ARWL.

Before the C&D I had over 100 items in my SP manager. After the C&D I put back about 30 and over the last few weeks with the fall season starting I am creeping back up to about 50 items. I like to record lots of movies and catch premiere shows, so many of my wishlists looked like this:
2005 & Movies
Season Premiere (category only)
200* & Moves & Premiere
199* & Movies
Home Improve/Home repair (category only)
with these all set to record 5 or 10 shows & set to "Space as needed".

After the C&D I kept most of these types of wishlists along with my SP network shows, but changed most of them to record 5 or fewer shows and set almost all of them to "Keep until I Delete"

I know most people will tell you not to use Keep Until I delete, but for me this seems to be working. My machine has gone from scheduling pages of shows per day in the To Do list to about 10 shows per day. This changed the record light from being on constantly to the machine actually sitting quietly for extended periods of time. And the good thing is that I still get all of the programs I am looking for. If the machine records a movie or other show I dont want I just delete it and the machine starts recording another show within a short time. This works great with channels like HBO, HGTV, etc. that constantly repeat their shows. Also, I have kept my suggestions turned on so there are typically 30 to 40 shows recorded there. I like the suggestions because it gets me old shows like Becker & This Old House that I like to watch once in a while, but dont necessarily want to make a SP for.

_________________________________________
SD-DVR40 upgraded with added 120GB (155 hours)


----------



## kayson712

One caveat of doing the C&DE is that you will loose all of your channel logos. I assumed these would come back over time, but they don't. Thanks to Earl, I now know these are stored as bitmaps on your drive and don't get re-downloaded until the next software update comes along, which maybe never for 6.2.


----------



## aristoBrat

kayson712 said:


> FWIW I talked to a CSR from retention before I did the C&D and he said even though D* didn't know how to fix the problem they acknowledge that it is a known issue and suspect that it occurs when the software gets overloaded with too many things to do.


The only 6.2 reboot I've ever had (knock on wood) was the other night when I was using TivoTool to stream one of the life buffers while my roommate was reorganizing Season Passes. I think that'd probably fall into the "busy TiVo" category.


----------



## kayson712

aristoBrat said:


> The only 6.2 reboot I've ever had (knock on wood) was the other night when I was using TivoTool to stream one of the life buffers while my roommate was reorganizing Season Passes. I think that'd probably fall into the "busy TiVo" category.


What I failed to mention in my longer post above is that prior to doing the C&DE I was getting 4 to 5 reboots or more a day over a two week period. Sometimes as often as every 1/2 hour which made the machine unusable. I also tried to transfer some shows that I didn't want to loose to DVD before the C&DE, but after making a half a dozen more coasters with the machine constantly rebooting in the middle of the save to VCR, I finally gave up. Since I have the protection plan D* would have replaced this unit for me, but couldn't guarantee if I was going to get a standard 35 hour or larger capacity machine. They certainly weren't going to give me an equal trade to an upgraded unit of 155 hours, so that is why I took my chances with the C&D. I'm surprised they would even cover this unit since it was an upgraded unit purchased from Weeknees.

I know this is OT, but Im not even sure why I keep the protection plan - its is beginning to seem like a waste of $8/month considering the HDVR2 is selling for around $50 and under on eBay & D* is basically giving this type unit out for free with the rebate. I took protection plan out in Oct. 2004 mainly on the advise of the two excellent D* installers who spent over 5 hours in my house last October installing the Samsung, putting up the phase III dish, wiring a new 4x8 multiswitch, and moving the two HDVR2 to other rooms. D* only charged me something like $30 above the cost of the Samsung which I believe was about $200 after D* discounts. The installers said the protection plan covered everything including dish realignment. We get some pretty nasty windstorms in the western PA, but I never had two realign my dish since I installed the first one myself back in 96.

---------------------------------
1 SD-DVR40 upgraded with added 120GB 
2 HDVR2 standard
1 Samsung T160
1 RCA 403
D* customer since 1996


----------



## Nightfall

The big question is, are they going to fix the problem with a patch or something? I think I am going to call Directv to see what they can do for me. Hopefully, they will send me something different than the HDVR2.

*sigh*


----------



## Diana Collins

I'm still of the opinion that those cases where a C&DE helps are cases where the problem was excessive activity. When you do a C&DE you wipe all the season passes, clear the thumb ratings and stop any suggestions from recording. This vastly reduces the work a TiVo has to do.

As an experiment, I set up a cron job to run uptime every 15 minutes on my 4 DirecTivos and log the results. All 4 units reported activity levels (I'm referring to the 1 minute value) well below 1 (usually around 0.5) when not recording, and just slightly above 1 when recording on both tuners. While banging around in TWP, I could push them up over 2. If I re-sorted season passes, they would go up over 4 for as long as the sort took. When I tried to stop and reload TWP they would get up to at least 6 before a spontaneous reboot. So, somewhere above 6 is the "too busy" point at which the software glitches and dies. It would be interesting to have someone with a hacked unit that is rebooting try to monitor their activity level and report what it was around the time of the reboot.

Of course, the question then becomes what is making these units so busy...it could very well be disk problems, although any number of other causes are possible. Obviously, changes where made in 6.2 to improve performance, and these go beyond database changes. The code itself is running faster, so I have to assume that this is related to the higher incidence of fatal errors, and therefore, reboots.


----------



## Nightfall

Dan,

Are a vast majority of people having problems with the HDVR2 tivos OR is it with all older tivos like the RCA and Philips as well?


----------



## Diana Collins

I don't really have enough data points to say...my problem was with a HDVR2, but people have reported some problems with other models as well (such as the DSR-6000 and the DVR-39). If my theory is right, I'll bet it is not manufacturer or model specific.


----------



## Nightfall

I am on the phone with Directv now and I have a feeling they aren't going to be able to help me.

There is part of me that is willing to say screw it and get an R10. However, the problem I have with that is paying $100 for a Tivo that works when my HDVR2s are both rebooting, even after a clear and delete everything.

Dan, I wanted to say thanks for your input in this. I really appreciate it.


----------



## BTUx9

Just another data point, I think that it's got more to do with amount of MFS access, rather than general busywork by the tivo. 

Older tivos had a bug in FP handling, so I wrote a program to test it... the newer (2.4.20) kernel no longer has the problem, and while it keeps the box very busy, it doesn't cause reboots.

My guess would be a bug in the mutex (or whatever they use) to regulate concurrent access to MFS.


----------



## BTUx9

And yet another data point... the reboots Dan is seeing from reloading TWP are most likely from running out of memory in the TCL pool.

I'm not sure what s/w versions this applies to, but I've done some testing, and trying to use more memory than is available under tivosh ALWAYS causes a reboot on my 6.2 machines.

These machines would consistently reboot on a TWP reload, but when I increased the memory pool, that no longer happened... I believe many of the other TWP reboots may also have this as a root cause.


----------



## Diana Collins

I'll throw one data point out here as well...one of my systems (the Hughes) apparently rebooted sometime yesterday afternoon (no one was home at the time). The logs show absolutely nothing - no errors, no suspicious warnings. The last line posted to any of the logs was at least 20 minutes before the reboot occurred. This unit is on a UPS, so I know it wasn't a power glitch. Odd....


----------



## mathesius

I had a two-year old Hughes HDVR2 that went bad due to the software bug. It started rebooting. The DirecTV rep had me try the Clear & Delete Everything and that got "stuck" so the unit had to be replaced. They sent me a refurb Philips with the 80 GB drive (70 hr capacity).

I haven't plugged it in yet though. I wanted TV back faster than the 5 days it took to get the refurb Philips so went to Best Buy and bought an R10.

The R10 rebooted two days after activating it. It rebooted again last night in the middle of a show. It's running 6.1 software.

Frankly I don't know what to do. We love TiVo and had no complaints with DirecTV.

It seems I have a few options:

1) Return the R10 to Best Buy (I've only had it for 10 days) & get my money back. Switch to Dish Network or Charter cable. Do something with the Philips, sell on eBay I guess?

2) Return the R10 and activate the Philips in its place. Hope the Philips doesn't have the reboot problem.

3) Try and find a different software image for the R10 and spend a few hours figuring out how to mount the drive in my PC to load the new software. Then worry that the problem will recurr when DirecTV sends new software down.

I wish I knew why some people don't have the problem and other people do.


----------



## the new guy

As I have mentioned before, I wonder if the problem will eventually work itself out for most people. The instances of spontaneous reboots seems to have slowed drastically, or else not many are reporting them anymore. My RCA hasn't seen a reboot in 44 days now, and I keep TWP runing on it all the time (my Hughes did reboot, but only because I cut power to the room it is in so I could install a ceiling fan).

Has anyone else not seen a reboot, or am I the only one? I haven't really seen anything either way on this lately...

To answer your questions, I would probably return the R10 and keep the Phillips, especially if you will be looking to <cough, cough> enhance its functionality in the future. You will not be able to put any different version on the R10; 6.1 is the only one that will work on it. As for ditching the DTiVo entirely and switching providers, I haven't used any other DVR myself, but I have heard very few positive things about Dish's DVR's, and mixed reviews at best on cable's offerings. DTV is said to have Dish and cable beat on customer service, as well.

Tim


----------



## BTUx9

If you're going to hack the phillips or hughes anyway, you COULD put 4.x software on it, which doesn't have these issues. And the advantages to a hacked tivo are manifold.


----------



## mathesius

Sounds like a plan. I returned my rebooting R10 to Best Buy, got my $ back; installed my refurb Philips. We'll see how that goes and if/when I want to hack it.

Thanks!


----------



## VideoVic

I have a Hughes HDVR2 that started with the Reboot issue BEFORE it was upgraded to 6.2. My other Tivo has received the upgrade and with all the new season shows I really want the Folders. When i call Support they told me to reformat the drive. I replaced the drive with a larger one and all is working well (little noisy but I can live with it). It has been months now and I was pushing for the upgrade before I read this thread. 

Is there a way I can force the upgrade and do I want to?


----------



## chrishicks

I was just in the middle of watching a program I had already recorded and my tivo(see sig) just went to "welcome...powering up". it happened at exactly 9:00. I swear I'm going to have major anxiety problems if these things keep doing this for fear of them dying.


----------



## scottwood2

My SD-DVR40 just started rebooting a few days ago. twice in an hour. then it was OK for about 3 days and tonight it started doing it again. 

2 of the 3 times I was watching a show that was recorded and the screen just went blank and rebooted. 1 time the show paused a few times and then rebooted. I was thinking maybe a HD going but I am not sure now.

Is the reboot problem still an issue with many machines out there?


----------



## Aquatic

My HDVR2 has been good to go for the month or 5 weeks as well. I was rebooting often--at least once a day... I turned off suggestions, cleared Thumbs data, cleaned up my SP lists, and cleaned up my Now Playing list as well. once I did that, coincidence or no, Things have been working well! NO boots, working like a champ.

The other HDVR2 has been upgraded and was rebooting the same.. I don't think my wife cleaned up anything, or did anything special, rather just the opposite most likely. She hasn't rebooted in quite some time either.

[conspiracy theory] Think we got a "sneak" load of 6.2 that fixed the problem but didn't change the version number we see? [/conspiracy theory]


----------



## the new guy

Aquatic said:


> [conspiracy theory] Think we got a "sneak" load of 6.2 that fixed the problem but didn't change the version number we see? [/conspiracy theory]


Certain that is not the case, as both of my machines are hacked to not take upgrades, and both stopped spontaneously rebooting on their own. I think the new software just takes some time to settle in once it is installed, but once it does, it is pretty solid.

Tim


----------



## scottwood2

the new guy said:


> I think the new software just takes some time to settle in once it is installed, but once it does, it is pretty solid.
> 
> Tim


Odd thing is that ours has worked great for months with no reboots. I think we upgraded to 6.2 back in June or July? All of a sudden it is rebooting on its own. Today it rebooted twice so far. This is after clearing out a lot of programs we had saved. We do have a second HD with about 130 hr cap.

Maybe it is time to clear everything out and try again. Too bad this is happening, the 6.2 upgrade almost made the Tivo a prefect recorder for us. The slow screen updates was really getting to us. Much much better with 6.2. Now if we can get around this issue.

Thanks for the replys


----------



## the new guy

If 6.2 was running without reboots before, maybe you have a bad sector or two on one of the drives. Try running MFS cleanup, and if that fails to correct the problem, pull the drive and scan for errors.

Instructions for MFS cleanup:
1. Reboot unit.
2. Watch for light on front panel to flash, then press Pause on remote. Yellow light should be on at front panel.
3. Press 5,8 on remote. You should see the 'Installing new software" screen.
4. Wait for unit to reboot again. Done.

Tim


----------



## bengalfreak

Does MFS cleanup erase your stored programs?


----------



## scottwood2

Thanks, will try that tonight.

I am assuming that it does not erase the drive?


----------



## the new guy

No, it does not erase anything.

Tim


----------



## scottwood2

Tryed to run MFS cleanup and it went OK. Too bad the Tivo rebooted again about 1/2 a hour after finishing MFS cleanup. 

Not sure if we should pull the drives or try a complete restore of everything and start over?

Maybe I should buy a back up Tivo just in case.

Thx

Scott


----------



## scottwood2

Bit the bullet last night and completely started over. 

I really don't think this will help in the long run but it was my last thing to try. Wondering if I should get another unit as a backup? If I do should I get another Tivo or the R-15? With Mpeg 4 coming, I am not sure if this is the thing to do?

Thx
Scott


----------



## the new guy

The only other thing I would suggest is to run manufacturer's diagnostics on the drive to check for bad sectors. If that doesn't help, I am fresh out of ideas, as I haven't had to go that far with my units.  

At the worst, you will probably only need a new drive, not an entire new DTiVo.

Tim


----------



## scottwood2

Just thought I would give an update as to my machine. 

I was pleasantly surprized that the hard restart worked. So far anyways (knock on wood). We have a lot of programing recorded now and everything is good    

Thanks to everyone for the help.

Now I had to read the post on the HDTivo. Thinking about getting one (I need to talk to santa  )


----------



## scottwood2

Guess I posted too soon. The original problem of random reboots is back. It must have rebooted at least 6 times yesterday. Thinking it is a HD now. Need to pull it and check it out.


----------



## Nightfall

I had to do warranty replacements on both of my HDVR2 units. I now have Phillips 708s and the reboot problem is gone.


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## edadave

Reminder - cover up any infrared extended emitters as an experiment. With the 6.2 upgrade, spurious IR noise will cause units to reboot. I saw this with two different units, getting reboots several times a day. Moved the emitter ten feet away and no reboots in two months.


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## scottwood2

The IR issue is interesting. Will try that. The HD's are OK. PUt a new HD in anyway. Still rebooting.

Weird that everything was OK for months though. Now it is acting up. I am thinking maybe a power supply?

Did notice this morning that the video had a quick pause, then it rebooted within 5 minutes. I guess it could be memory also.

Thx for the replys


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## patwoods

Ok, here to add one more tidbit to the mix:

I've been reading these posts trying to associate my problems with these symptoms. I have done the thumbs clear and the C&D, and my reboots have generally slowed. However, I have found one interesting thing. My machine reboots DAILY at about 9AM. How do I know this? Easy, I have two toddlers who watch Disney Channel while eating breakfast (I know, great... but you should see them if the tube is off  )

To add insult to injury, I have just upgraded my drive to a brand new Samsung 160gb, not once, but twice mind you, because the same issue happened with my original Maxtor 120. I got the same 'drive is corrupted' spiel from folks swearing it was a bad drive. Well, I plugged my tivo in (unplugged for over a year from the landline) to let it upgrade the original 40gb to 6.2 first, then put the 160gb 6.2 upgraded drives (clean instantcake images) into it, and voila, reboots and freezes galore. This was working fine under the previous 3.0.c software, so I know it is the 6.2 as this thread attests. 

However, I find it interesting about the 9am reboot. Definitely at 9am each morning. My wife has of course decided this is my fault since the 6.2 download and the larger drive upgrade happened around the same time. 

Does anyone else see a reoccuring time that their machine reboots under .6.2 (as well as some oddball reboots), but the 9am daily one is a constant it seems. I have nothing else installed except for telnet at this point, even TWP is commented out for the time being.


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## Jumi

Put off the 6.2 upgrade until last week when the random slo-mo problem caused me to do a C&DE and upgrade from 3.1.1e. Was in heaven for a few days (fast unit!) but last night it rebooted about 11:50pm while recording on both tuners. Hughes SD-DVR80. Oh well.....


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## niccitv

I have 2 dvr's from direct tv. The new Samsung unit is fine, it's the old
HNS Model SD-DVR40 that over the weekend started freaking out. I have tv shows saved that I need to record to vcr or dvd( my little girl is on them). Is there any way I can transfer programming if I have to get a new DVR unit?


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## fsck_101

Just to add that I think my random reboots were caused by IR noise as well. Had a laptop in the room with my SD-DVR80. When the laptop (with IR port) was positioned just so, the DTivo would reboot every 10-45 minutes. Turned off the laptop, no reboots...


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## john-duncan-yoyo

fsck_101 said:


> Just to add that I think my random reboots were caused by IR noise as well. Had a laptop in the room with my SD-DVR80. When the laptop (with IR port) was positioned just so, the DTivo would reboot every 10-45 minutes. Turned off the laptop, no reboots...


Sounds like you need to rig a removable cover over the IR port.


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## fsck_101

john-duncan-yoyo said:


> Sounds like you need to rig a removable cover over the IR port.


I'll probably just disable the IR port, as I don't actually use it for anything...


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## Phantom Gremlin

I've read thru most of this thread and it seems that mostly older units have been rebooting, once they are upgraded to 6.2 software. Sounds like a software bug to me. Especially with the log messages about assertions failing.

But there is also at least one report of an R10 with this problem.

Does the R10 generally have the random reboot problem, or was that an anomoly? I'm looking to upgrade from a SAT-T60 that's dying.


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## the_scotsman

Well , after a while of almost(?) no reboots, one of my DSR7000 is rebotting several times a day. It's rebooting while recording programs I want to see 

I've tried (almost) everything to fix the problem but alas nothing has worked.

So, I've decided to purchase newer S2 Dtivos in the hope that the RID versions will be more stable. The four DSR7000s (all 250GB) will be setup as mrv/archive machines - great for movies, series and kids stuff. If it wern't for the MRV and folders i'd just put them all back to 3.x - oh well.

I managed to pick up 2 DVR80's from Value Electronics (shipping next week) and already purchased a DSR708 from Weaknees. I can't beilieve how many TIVOs I will have :

2 x 120GB Sony SAT-T60 - fully functional but retired.
4 x 250GB Philips DSR7000 - all with MRV - 3 rebooting 
2 x Hughes DVR80 (arriving soon)
1 x Philips DSR708 (stock for now)
1 x 800GB HR10-250 
1 x Toshiba RS-TX20 (stock)

Yes... I like my Tivos!

Paul M


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## dixoncider

Same problem as others, started rebooting like 5 times a day. Did the thumbs and cleaned up season passes forced call in. It is much better now has not rebooted in a day. So the outcome of this thread is that there is no real FIX  ...????? Thanks


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## gen.greivous

Phantom Gremlin said:


> I've read thru most of this thread and it seems that mostly older units have been rebooting, once they are upgraded to 6.2 software. Sounds like a software bug to me. Especially with the log messages about assertions failing.
> 
> But there is also at least one report of an R10 with this problem.
> 
> Does the R10 generally have the random reboot problem, or was that an anomoly? I'm looking to upgrade from a SAT-T60 that's dying.


my R10 +160 reboots all the time. More so when watching off the NPL then live T.V.


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## tinkererguy

Sighh, sure would be great news if a true resolution to this matter surfaces soon.

I have been lurking for a while, as I have 3 HDVRs with 3 120GB Samsungs with 6.2 software, owned these for nearly 3 years. Guess what, 2 of 3 have been rebooting these past 2-3 months, sometimes as often as every hour or two.

I have already tested one of the drives with SpinRite (no issues). And the prospect of resetting all settings and loosing all programs not terribly appealing. Yeah, I could restore my original 40GB, but that's even less appealing.

I do happen to have an IR blaster nearby, will cover it to test if related, we'll see.

I am thankful to know I'm not alone, this forum is very helpful in so many ways.


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## Windstar

Covering the IR port on my laptop that is in the same room with the DTivo solved my problems.

Thanks! I would have been replacing hard-drives if it wasn't for this thread!


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## gen.greivous

My R10 is still running on 6.1 somthing. The original software maybe? In any case if 6.1 is not the same as 6.2 then either both programs have bugs or it's not the software. I contract for DTV but have no clue what the problem is. Seems to crash less after hard reset but it's still a problem. Any other failed attempts at a fix would be great.


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## BTUx9

R10s have a different architecture, so it will never get 6.2... 6.1 is basically 6.2 for R10s (same layout and signalling setup AFAIK)


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## gen.greivous

Thank you for info. Does that mean it's not the software causing reboots? If all versions of DTV tivo's are crashing it"s got to be somthing else, you think?


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## Windstar

Yes, it is a software issue. No, you're DTivo is not "crashing", it is "restarting". I have without a doubt discovered the source of this problem. It is due to exceptionally high sensitivity to IR signals in the same vicinity as your DTivo.

I was having the same problem, numerous restarts per week (day). I solved the problem by covering the IR port on my laptop (which was in the same room as the DTivo) with black electricians tape.

If you have ANY component in the same room as your DTivo with the ability to emit IR signals it is surely the cause of your problem (provided your problem is regular and radom re-booting).

I almost replaced my hard-drive in an effort to solve this problem. I am very glad I found this thread first. Unless you are stuck on "Powering Up" or something similar, your hard-drive is not the problem. The random re-booting with software version 6.xxx is definately, undoubtably, no further questions or answers needed, caused by errant IR signals (laptops, remotes, blah, blah, blah).

This is the answer to this problem. There is no need to turn this thread into a mini-novel. Find the source of errant IR signals, kill it, and your problem will disapprear.

If your issue is something like stuck on "Welcome, Powering up", you are reading the wrong thread and you possibly have a bad hard drive. Go somewhere else and do not post here....


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## tbeckner

Windstar said:


> Yes, it is a software issue. No, you're DTivo is not "crashing", it is "restarting". I have without a doubt discovered the source of this problem. It is due to exceptionally high sensitivity to IR signals in the same vicinity as your DTivo.


Although, I would not rule out hard drive problems. I actually believe that more reboots and reboot failures have been caused by hard drive failures than extra IR chatter.


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## Windstar

In my experience, hard-drive failure re-boots are almost always accompanied by hang-ups at "Welcome, Powering Up". If your unit is re-booting on a regular basis and then working fine (with software version 6.xxx) you have an errant IR signal that is screwing with you. If your re-boot hangs up regularly, then you have a different issue, probably a bad hard-drive...


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## tbeckner

Windstar said:


> In my experience, hard-drive failure re-boots are almost always accompanied by hang-ups at "Welcome, Powering Up". If your unit is re-booting on a regular basis and then working fine (with software version 6.xxx) you have an errant IR signal that is screwing with you. If your re-boot hangs up regularly, then you have a different issue, probably a bad hard-drive...


I would say it depends upon your actual experience. My experience of temporary hard drive errors is that they cause reboots but not reboot failures and might go away after the hard drive notes the failures, but then again "YOUR MILEAGE MIGHT VARY". As an example, right after the 6.2 upgrade, I had a few reboots and bad recordings, but after a week or so, they went away and they haven't been back. There were no errant IR problems at that time.

But I have to agree with you, that checking for IR problems is less expensive and less invasive, than replacing a hard drive.

So, I would advise checking for possible IR problems first and then maybe checking the hard drive.


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## Windstar

Your problems may disappear if you are regularly receiving software updates. However, my problems began when I replaced a hard-drive through WeaKnees which came with software 6.xxx. I do not have a land-line and therefore could not obtain further updates.

I simply did not have this problem with software version 3.xxx and only began to experience it with 6.xxx. I was very close to returning the hard-drive to Weaknees as defective when I discovered this thread. Once I covered the IR port on my laptop with black tape, all problems disappeared.

Pretty convincing, don't you think???

I realize that some cannot see the forest for the trees and will run this topic into the ground with bogus and un-founded claims.


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## Windstar

I have provided the solution to this problem. Spew forth as you will and confuse those who need an answer.


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## BTUx9

Windstar said:


> I have provided the solution to this problem. Spew forth as you will and confuse those who need an answer.


Blind faith is a good thing in church, but on a tech. forum? -- not so much.

Yes, errant IR is triggering problems for some people with the newer software.
No, it isn't the only issue, and I would expect it's more of a symptom of an underlying problem in the IPC messaging (just an educated guess).

Reasons for my position:
1) a C&DE has improved the situation for MANY people (though not necessarily permanently)

2) disconnecting the satellite inputs has temporarily fixed the problem for some (though that isn't a workable permanent solution, it does allow time to work on other things... for instance, salvaging recordings)

3) There are some who have 2 or more boxes in the same room, and only 1 of the boxes exhibits this behavior

These observations give more credence to IR NOT being the only/main culprit


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## the_scotsman

All my DTivos are on one closet and are controlled by wireless remote control adapters (the RF transmitter battery type) except one which uses a IR repeater.

All of these DTivos are hooked up to a very large UPS.

My 2 original DSR7000s both started rebooting after the 6.2 upgrade on the original HDD. prior to that I hand zero issues.

Both my original DSR7000s were given C&D etc etc - did not help.

Both My original DSR7000s were given new 250GB HDDs - did not help

bought 2 refurbished DSR7000s from Weaknees and upgraded to 250GB HDD as soon as the 6.2 upgrade was downloaded - No recordings were done prior to the upgrade. One suffers from the reboot, one seems to be OK (at least I haven't seen a reboot or had a partial recording). The other is used as a archive for kids programs thanks to no view card (I use a viewing card from my Sony T-60 to get rid of the nag).

Installed a new DSR708 (different location for now) ... so far so good... however it's not used/viewed that much yet.

2 New DVR80's on the way - so we'll see how they get on.

I'll try disabling the IR repeater to see if that helps any.

One other option id to transfer a copy of the "working" DSR7000 image to the other DSR7000s to see if that cures the problem. This won't happen quickly as I have a ton of stuff i want to watch before wiping the HDDs. More likely I'll just use the DSR7000s as archive/MRV viewers as mentioned in my earlier post.


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## tbeckner

Windstar said:


> Your problems may disappear if you are regularly receiving software updates. However, my problems began when I replaced a hard-drive through WeaKnees which came with software 6.xxx. I do not have a land-line and therefore could not obtain further updates.
> 
> I simply did not have this problem with software version 3.xxx and only began to experience it with 6.xxx. I was very close to returning the hard-drive to Weaknees as defective when I discovered this thread. Once I covered the IR port on my laptop with black tape, all problems disappeared.
> 
> Pretty convincing, don't you think???
> 
> I realize that some cannot see the forest for the trees and will run this topic into the ground with bogus and un-founded claims.


The only real test would be to uncover the IR port on your laptop to see if it recreates the problem. I do know that you can shutdown the IR port on most laptops through configuration without taping them over. Having been in IT for almost 33 years, the fact that problem disappeared when you covered over the IR port does NOT convince me 100% that covering it over actually solved the problem. I have seen that effect many times, it kind of the last thing I tried fixed the problem, when the problem fixed was fixed by something else. At this point, if you didn't uncover the IR port to see if the problem returned, then you did not prove that the solution corrected the problem, and I would call the IR port covering to be UNFOUNDED solution.


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## tivoupgrade

tbeckner said:


> The only real test would be to uncover the IR port on your laptop to see if it recreates the problem. I do know that you can shutdown the IR port on most laptops through configuration without taping them over. Having been in IT for almost 33 years, the fact that problem disappeared when you covered over the IR port does NOT convince me 100% that covering it over actually solved the problem. I have seen that effect many times, it kind of the last thing I tried fixed the problem, when the problem fixed was fixed by something else. At this point, if you didn't uncover the IR port to see if the problem returned, then you did not prove that the solution corrected the problem, and I would call the IR port covering to be UNFOUNDED solution.


Try running diagnostics on the hard drive.

Not only is it possible that you have more than one problem, it is also possible that the hard drive is defective. Regardless of what actually triggers the random reboot, the underlying problem should be diagnosed before it can be declared 'solved'

As for the original subject of this thread, and I'm sure its been stated several times in its many pages, it is not uncommon for random reboots / drive failures to occur and get reported on these forums after a major software upgrade.

Why? Because every time there is an update to the software you begin using partitions on the drive that were previously not in use (or at least not in use since the previous upgrade occurred). That means, if bad sectors exist on the previously unused partitions, they will now start to emerge.

The incorrect assumption to make would be "the upgrade caused the drive failure" whereas the more correct assumption would be "the upgrade revealed it..." Only testing/diagnosing the problem can actually prove or disprove that....


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## tbeckner

tivoupgrade said:


> Try running diagnostics on the hard drive...


Actually, any problem that my hard drive had were fixed automatically and disappeared completely within two weeks of the original 6.2 upgrade. What I was attempting to point out, was that just because something they might have done at the same time that the problem disappeared, might not actually have been the solution to the orginal problem. In the 33+ years that I have worked in IT, I have seen this same effect many times, and sometimes only through complete and time consuming systematic testing can you actually find the problem. In the case of hard drives that diagnose their own problems and can change their own internal redirection tables, it sometimes becomes just a timing issue.

I wouldn't rule out an IR problem creating an overload situation, but I do believe that they would see other problems with an IR overload problem that would extend beyond a simple reboot problem.


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## scottwood2

I have had this reboot problem as well. I thought it was the HD's (2). Pulled them and tested, they checked out OK. I still replaced the HD. This time I put only one 200G drive in. Still had the reboot problem, upto 6 times a day. I covered the IR port and it has worked well for about 3 weeks now.

I did not try to uncover the IR port but all is well on my end. 

BTW I have a IR transmitter under the cover and use my home automation system to send IR to the DTivo.


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## tinkererguy

tinkererguy said:


> Sighh, sure would be great news if a true resolution to this matter surfaces soon.
> 
> I have been lurking for a while, as I have 3 HDVRs with 3 120GB Samsungs with 6.2 software, owned these for nearly 3 years. Guess what, 2 of 3 have been rebooting these past 2-3 months, sometimes as often as every hour or two.
> 
> I have already tested one of the drives with SpinRite (no issues). And the prospect of resetting all settings and loosing all programs not terribly appealing. Yeah, I could restore my original 40GB, but that's even less appealing.
> 
> I do happen to have an IR blaster nearby, will cover it to test if related, we'll see.
> 
> I am thankful to know I'm not alone, this forum is very helpful in so many ways.


Well, guess what, 2 of my HDVR2s TiVos have been up for >50 hours straight. The 3rd one, well, I don't use it much and don't have it plugged in to the network at the moment.

This is the longest I've had the 2 stay up for the last 2-3 months of reboot woes, despite getting 6.2 this past summer. It was particularly bad when watching shows, it'd reboot when you were using it, and not reboot as often when not using it (meaning, no IR signals sent).

This restored stability is certainly good news to the family. All I did was unplug my IR device, a 2 year old "Remote 'Long Ranger' Xtender" like the one in the right-hand picture at this site
http://www.nghp.net/products.htm 
but mine uses N type batteries.

Seems mighty suspicous. First, I'll take the aftermarket emitter extension cable out of the picture, then power the base back up. This time, I'll keep the base itself in line of site with the TiVo's IR receiver windows.

Then, if that fails, I gotta figure out if I'm going to go back to 4 year old Powermids in my upstairs bedrooms:
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2104477&cp 
but they had spurious IR emissions as well, with a blinking activity indicator LED when nobody was pressing any remote buttons. And they're annoyingly position sensitive, sigh, the search continues....but it's nice to have TiVo back, without wiping out all shows and starting over, and without trying to run wiring for a far more pricey IR repeater system.


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## tbeckner

I gave up on extra IR Transmitter/Receivers a long time ago. Most of them are just too flaky to use with all equipment, and never where sensitive enough to do the job. I finally put all of my equipment where it could be reached by it's remote and all of the problems disappeared, although I never had a reboot problem cause by extra IR chatter/signals.


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## BTUx9

Just a FYI... some IR extenders are sensitive to flourescent bulbs, ESPECIALLY the long-life replacement bulbs that go in incandescent sockets.


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## dixoncider

Call dtv they sent me a "new" tivo for free with 2 year contract, it was a refurbed samsung sent it back and ordered and R-10 from weaknees.


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## gen.greivous

HOPE YOUR R-10 doesnt crash as much as mine.


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## MustHaveTivo

FWIW, we suddenly started getting plentiful random reboots after many months of normal operation with 6.2. Hard drives checked out good. Cleared thumbs data, after which we have had a week of reboot-free living. Details here.


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## cronimi

tinkererguy said:


> All I did was unplug my IR device, a 2 year old "Remote 'Long Ranger' Xtender" like the one in the right-hand picture at this site but mine uses N type batteries.
> 
> Seems mighty suspicous. First, I'll take the aftermarket emitter extension cable out of the picture, then power the base back up. This time, I'll keep the base itself in line of site with the TiVo's IR receiver windows.


Great post! I'd been suffering through random reboots for months. I don't have the "Long Ranger" -- I have the "Around the House" Extender featured on the same webpage. I moved the base of the extender a few feet from the D*Tivo, and not a reboot since (3 weeks and counting).


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## tinkererguy

cronimi said:


> Great post! I'd been suffering through random reboots for months. I don't have the "Long Ranger" -- I have the "Around the House" Extender featured on the same webpage. I moved the base of the extender a few feet from the D*Tivo, and not a reboot since (3 weeks and counting).


Glad to hear of another success story. I have been using my old Powermids for >1 month now, and TiVos haven't rebooted even once with 6.2.


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## scottwood2

Just wanted to post an update to our issue. We had the DVR-40 work for quite a while then started rebooting (see previous posts for details). We then tried covering up the IR Receiver and the reboots went away for months. 

We then purchased a new DVR-80 and have not had any issues running 6.2 with the IR receive uncovered. It has been running about a month now.


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## jlmwrite

My stock RCA DVR40 started randomly rebooting shortly after getting the 6.2 upgrade. I tried clearing the thumbs data, unhooking cables, and everything suggested EXCEPT unhooking my IR extender.

Finally, in a desperate rage after 3 reboots in less than 1/2 hr, I unhooked the IR extender. No reboots for the entire week! The following weekend I plugged the IR extender back in, and presto -- the reboots started within a few hours.

It rebooted all weekend. So... Unplugged the IR extender, and now three weeks later I hadn't seen a single reboot. Just for grins, I plugged the extender in again and got a reboot within a few minutes. The extender is now living in the junk drawer and my DVR is happy.

I'd truly discounted the IR chatter as a cause of the d**n reboots when I first read it here, but now I'm a believer! If only I didn't have to leave the cabinet door open to watch TV...


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## JaserLet

What brand/model is your IR extender? I want to buy one for my DVR40, but I certainly want to avoid that problem!!


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## rmassey

re: IR - this sux for those of use that need an IR repeater solution. I use my HT DTivo to feed my MB and need a way to control the unit remotely. 

I had this problem (reboots) last year with my HDVR2 after the 6.2 update. I tried everything and finally upgraded to an HDTivo, which of course doesn't have 6.2 and the problem stopped. If it is IR w/ 6.2 causing the problem, I hope they never upgrade the HDTivos to 6.2. 

So is there an IR solution that does not cause reboots? BTW the one I use is the x10 Powermid.


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## scottjf8

I'm suddenly getting reboots now with my S2 (not sure the exact model number, i'm not home)

It's got the latest code with folders and everything... it's worked fine for 6 months now, but suddenly the last few days it's rebooted a few times...

I have no IR repeater... any other suggestoins? We moved it to over our TV and DVD player - any chance it's a heat related issue?


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## Jumi

Me too. I got 6.2 and had one reboot. OK for weeks then another reboot about midnight the other night during recording. Not a power issue - on a UPS. Hughes DVR80.


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## kgaren

About a week ago, random reboots started happening 1-2 times night between 9-11 pm. This is about the time our TV in our bedroom is on, which happens to have an IR remote extender right next to it. I noticed (last night) that when I turn on the TV the red (IR receive) light on the IR extender would come on. I moved the remote to be further away from the TV. That solved the problem with the red (IR recieve) light on the reciever. I also have not had a problem with the TIVO rebooting since then. Not sure why it started only a week ago, but I looked at the software version - with is 6.2 (not sure how long it has been at this version). I have Samsung TIVo w/directv that I bought about 2-3 years ago. I was close to buying hard disk, but this seems to have solved the problem.


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## 15968

kgaren said:


> About a week ago, random reboots started happening 1-2 times night between 9-11 pm. This is about the time our TV in our bedroom is on, which happens to have an IR remote extender right next to it. I noticed (last night) that when I turn on the TV the red (IR receive) light on the IR extender would come on. I moved the remote to be further away from the TV. That solved the problem with the red (IR recieve) light on the reciever. I also have not had a problem with the TIVO rebooting since then. Not sure why it started only a week ago, but I looked at the software version - with is 6.2 (not sure how long it has been at this version). I have Samsung TIVo w/directv that I bought about 2-3 years ago. I was close to buying hard disk, but this seems to have solved the problem.


This is exactly what I experienced. I've had my Series 2's now for almost a month and no problems then last week random reboots around 1 to 2 a day. I saw my IR Extender light on (flickering) almost constantly so moved it so its not on anymore. I'm now 30+ hours without a reboot on all 3 of my boxes. Crossing my fingers that this is all that was wrong.


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## BTUx9

when my extender flickered all the time, it turned out to be a flourescent replacement bulb (one of those long-lasting low-power jobbies)... block the receiver and see if it stops flashing, to make sure it's external


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## 15968

BTUx9 said:


> when my extender flickered all the time, it turned out to be a flourescent replacement bulb (one of those long-lasting low-power jobbies)... block the receiver and see if it stops flashing, to make sure it's external


My IR Receiver was right on top of a 20 year old 27" TV. By just moving the receiver about 1 foot to the side of the TV all of the flickering stopped. We do have some florescent blubs in that room, so if I have more problems I may look at replacing those to see if that helps further but so far it seems just the location to the TV was creating extra interference.


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## nova tivo

One example that may be of help to others.

I had a series of random reboots with a central DTivo runnnig 6.2 with two IR inputs to a Xantech amplified distrbution device (the 791-44 model). The LED light was constantly flickering, especially in the daytime since most of the IR receivers out there generate noise in a sunlit room. At times on sunny days, the remote signal could barely penetrate the IR noise.

With only one DTivo I never changed the remote address on the single DTivo so it was device #0 (it would recognize all remote codes). In preparation for my DVR4ME DTivo box, I changed the remote code on my first box to #1. Immediately, the remote became more resistant to IR noise (since a remote code of #0 responds to all signals probably). When I got the second DTivo, I set it up with remote code #2. For whatever reason, remote code #2 was better at reducing reboots and IR interference than #1 so I then changed the codes for the two boxes to #2 and #3.

That solved half of the reboot and noise problem. The other half was to install and inline resistor from Radio Shack on the Xantech connecting block per the instructions on the Xantech website for the 791-44 model. It cost 99 cents for a five pack of resistors (you only need one). The LED light practically stopped flickering at all from random noise, but the Tivo remote signal made it through with no problems.

In short, change the remote code away from #0 if you have one DTivo and use an inline resistor if the manufacturer of your connecting block suggests it. Just make sure you buy the right resistor.

Reboot and IR noise problems solved for me.  Hope this helps.


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## alan

Well, my Samsung SIR-S4120R with version 6.2-01-2-381 started randomly rebooting again. 

Looks like the C&DE only works for a while. I'll have to try the IR extender moving stuff. I have the old Powermid models. 

Here's a conspiracy theory for you. Maybe DirecTV just wants everyone to get rid of their TiVos.


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## dkdevin

Just to add my solution to this thread. I recently experienced random reboots. My laptop is in my family room and I had just turned on the IR port which happens to be facing the DTivo (Philips DSR7000). I didn't realize that was the problem until reading through this thread, so I decided to try disabling the IR port. I disabled it 5 days ago and it hasn't rebooted since. I also use an IR Extender and have for over a year without having unexpected reboots. It was definitely the laptop.


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