# Premiere Boot Loop



## csm10495 (Nov 15, 2008)

So I decided to upgrade my Premiere's hard drive from stock to a 2TB WD20EARX. I used JMFS to copy, then expand, then supersize. I put the new drive in the Premiere and it wouldn't boot. It would go "Welcome! Starting Up..." for 10-20 seconds then all the lights would flash and it would reboot back into the same screen. So I read a little and figured that the culprit must be the idle time on these newer WD drives. So I used wdidle3 /D, which still had the TiVo rebooting. And wdidle3 /S300 had the same affect. So I thought "I'll try the original drive" and it had the same restarting problem. I was very careful when removing and inserting drives into the unit. I can't even get a kickstart code in. Any ideas would be much appreciated. Thanks in advanced!


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

csm10495 said:


> So I decided to upgrade my Premiere's hard drive from stock to a 2TB WD20EARX. I used JMFS to copy, then expand, then supersize. I put the new drive in the Premiere and it wouldn't boot. It would go "Welcome! Starting Up..." for 10-20 seconds then all the lights would flash and it would reboot back into the same screen. So I read a little and figured that the culprit must be the idle time on these newer WD drives. So I used wdidle3 /D, which still had the TiVo rebooting. And wdidle3 /S300 had the same affect. So I thought "I'll try the original drive" and it had the same restarting problem. I was very careful when removing and inserting drives into the unit. I can't even get a kickstart code in. Any ideas would be much appreciated. Thanks in advanced!


See if the Hard drive data cable came off the motherboard just a bit maybe .


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## csm10495 (Nov 15, 2008)

lessd said:


> See if the Hard drive data cable came off the motherboard just a bit maybe .


Checked, the SATA cable was in pretty well, but i took it out and put it back in just to see if it would do anything; it didn't. Still rebooting, in the same way. Thanks for the try though.


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## steve614 (May 1, 2006)

By chance did you do this on a computer with a Gigabyte brand motherboard?

How did you have the drives hooked up to your computer when you made the copy? Did you unplug the computer OS hard drive?


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## csm10495 (Nov 15, 2008)

steve614 said:


> By chance did you do this on a computer with a Gigabyte brand motherboard?
> 
> How did you have the drives hooked up to your computer when you made the copy? Did you unplug the computer OS hard drive?


The computer has a Fujitsu FJNB231 motherboard. It is a laptop, so both hard drives were hooked using hard drive docks (SATA -> USB). I did not unplug the laptop's windows drive; however I am sure that I did the Copy, etc on the correct drives because they both came up as TiVo drives in JMFS after the process was complete. And the laptop still boots into Windows 7 correctly.

When I did the wdidle3, I needed a SATA connection, so I used a desktop with an Intel motherboard.


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## csm10495 (Nov 15, 2008)

Sorry for the double post, but...

I also ran WD's Diagnostic Tool on the original Premiere drive (320 GB) and it found no errors.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

csm10495 said:


> Sorry for the double post, but...
> 
> I also ran WD's Diagnostic Tool on the original Premiere drive (320 GB) and it found no errors.


Did you do that on the new drive ??


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## csm10495 (Nov 15, 2008)

lessd said:


> Did you do that on the new drive ??


It passed the basic test. The extended test will take around 24 hoursish so I'll get back to you. However at this point I would be very happy if the old drive worked. Thanks again.


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## scole250 (Nov 8, 2005)

I've never run diagnostics on a drive that had data on it before. Those tests weren't destructive were they?

Double check, then triple check the SATA cables. Did any other connectors get removed, perhaps by accident? On the Series 2, I recall a warning to never disconnect the cable that went to front panel. Some sort of booby tap or something.


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## csm10495 (Nov 15, 2008)

scole250 said:


> I've never run diagnostics on a drive that had data on it before. Those tests weren't destructive were they?
> 
> Double check, then triple check the SATA cables. Did any other connectors get removed, perhaps by accident? On the Series 2, I recall a warning to never disconnect the cable that went to front panel. Some sort of booby tap or something.


The diagnostics are not destructive and all connectors are connected firmly. This same thing happened when I first got a Premiere, so I did an exchange. That one (the current problem one) was similar for a few restarts then went through. That was a year and a half, and several power outages later. I've now also tried several outlets. I wonder if its the power supply.


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

Can you run MFSLayout.sh from the JMFS CD and see what you get.


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## Soapm (May 9, 2007)

jmbach said:


> Can you run MFSLayout.sh from the JMFS CD and see what you get.


MFS layout would be good but you may need to do this one step at a time.

Put the stock drive back in. Does it work?

Yes... Just copy over the image to the new drive. Does this work?

Yes... Expand it to use the rest of the drive. Does this work?

Yes... Supersize and see if that's causing the problem.

I don't know what kind of drive I have but I couldn't supersize mine, it's been a couple of years so I can't remember why but I do know it's not supersized but I don't use HD so it's not a problem for me.


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

The OP stated the original drive did not work either.

I wonder if you have a bad power or data cable. I would change just for grins.

Do the drives spin up when the tivo is plugged in?


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## poppagene (Dec 29, 2001)

Used basic premieres are pretty cheap on ebay or craigslist. (At least cheaper than that 2tb drive). You could get one (or find a friend willing to let you borrow theirs) and after verifying that it works, you have plenty of ways to isolate the cause of your problem. Trying your original hard drive in the newly acquired second hand premiere is a start. If that doesn't complete the boot, you could use the hard drive from the working tivo to reimage your original hard drive. If on the other hand your original hard drive boots up the newly acquired tivo, you can attribute the failure to the power supply or cables or motherboard. Swapping out the known working power supply and cables from the newly acquired tivo should allow you to either identify or eliminate them as problems. If all else is goog, the motherboard is likely the problem.


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## csm10495 (Nov 15, 2008)

jrtroo said:


> Do the drives spin up when the tivo is plugged in?


Yeah the drive(s) seems to spin continuously. I also ran mfslayout.sh (on the 2Tb) and got output that included...









not really sure if that's good or bad. I'm tempted to just put the original drive back, play dumb to TiVo support, and go for an exchange.


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## poppagene (Dec 29, 2001)

csm10495 said:


> I'm tempted to just put the original drive back, play dumb to TiVo support, and go for an exchange.


If you're still under warranty, that seems like a reasonable course of action. And you're not really "playing dumb" in that your tivo is stuck in a reboot cycle and you really are dumbfounded as to why this is happening.


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## jrtroo (Feb 4, 2008)

I would try one last thing- use a known good sata cable and restart.


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## csm10495 (Nov 15, 2008)

jrtroo said:


> I would try one last thing- use a known good sata cable and restart.


Just tried known working SATA and power from another source and had the same problem. I'm doing an exchange. Thanks anyways


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

csm10495 said:


> Just tried known working SATA and power from another source and had the same problem. I'm doing an exchange. Thanks anyways


Could not see your MFS layout to see if anything was wrong there. If it looks okay then sometimes block 0 gets overwritten. 
Not sure how comfortable you are at looking at the raw data on the drive. I had a similar problem once and somehow block 0 was overwritten with MBR Code. Not sure how it happened and never happened again and I have used the same setup several times to copy and expand TiVo drives. Restored block 0 from another Premiere and worked again. You can use HxD or iBored to look at the drives raw data. I do still have the block 0 image as a backup. Would not recommend doing this if you feel uncomfortable with any part. You won't destroy the disk but can make it completely unusable until you can find a good drive to copy off of.

What size is your premiere original drive. 
Jim

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2


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## csm10495 (Nov 15, 2008)

jmbach said:


> Could not see your MFS layout to see if anything was wrong there. If it looks okay then sometimes block 0 gets overwritten.
> Not sure how comfortable you are at looking at the raw data on the drive. I had a similar problem once and somehow block 0 was overwritten with MBR Code. Not sure how it happened and never happened again and I have used the same setup several times to copy and expand TiVo drives. Restored block 0 from another Premiere and worked again. You can use HxD or iBored to look at the drives raw data. I do still have the block 0 image as a backup. Would not recommend doing this if you feel uncomfortable with any part. You won't destroy the disk but can make it completely unusable until you can find a good drive to copy off of.
> 
> What size is your premiere original drive.
> Jim


Its a 320gb. However I tried it in a known working Premiere and it wouldn't boot there either. I don't want to risk screwing up the working drive from the second Premiere. I really don't know what I would look for or how to fix it in the raw data.


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

Does the known working Premiere have a drive the same size as yours? If it does you could use that drive to copy from. I have used a Premiere image in a Premiere XL and forced a connection upon initial startup via the kickstart portal to install the correct OS. You have to do a clear and delete everything afterwards in order for the unit to sync with the mothership to provide correct activation information. 

Another member, ggieseke, has been working on something that might work for you. 

As for reading the raw data, not something for the faint of heart but too difficult. I find iBored works well for me the majority of the time. It will open the drive as read only on start up. You will get and initial Window listing drives it sees. Pick your Tivo drive. Will usually start at block 0. If block 0 is in Tivo format it will open up in the raw window. If it matches one of its templates it will open up in the template window. (MBR, GUID, etc) You will see in the first line of block 0 something like "/dev/sda7" or possibly "/dev/sda4" If you see that then block 0 is probably not your problem. There is some other code in block 0 but most of it is 0. 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2


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## shamilian (Mar 27, 2003)

csm10495 said:


> So I decided to upgrade my Premiere's hard drive from stock to a 2TB WD20EARX. I used JMFS to copy, then expand, then supersize. I put the new drive in the Premiere and it wouldn't boot. It would go "Welcome! Starting Up..." for 10-20 seconds then all the lights would flash and it would reboot back into the same screen. So I read a little and figured that the culprit must be the idle time on these newer WD drives. So I used wdidle3 /D, which still had the TiVo rebooting. And wdidle3 /S300 had the same affect. So I thought "I'll try the original drive" and it had the same restarting problem. I was very careful when removing and inserting drives into the unit. I can't even get a kickstart code in. Any ideas would be much appreciated. Thanks in advanced!


I had a similar problem with a new premiere after about 24-hours of running it started a reboot loop. Since it was new I did not try to diagnose the problem, Tivo swapped it.

I also could not get to the kickstart.

My best guess was a problem with the power supply. If you have access to an alternate power supply you might try to power the disk from an alternate supply and use a different SATA connector.

If that does not work then something on the motherboard failed.


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