# tivo says a severe error has occured



## danny7481 (Dec 6, 2005)

first, i lost my local channels and then i called up D* and after talking to them for a while i had to hang up (baby was screaming) and the receiver froze up so i had to restart it now after the welcome powering up screen, i get a green screen saying a severe error has occured and to leave the phone line plugged in for the next 3 hours while the unit repairs itself, well that wont do any good, since my tivo is zippered. what do i do? please help


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## danny7481 (Dec 6, 2005)

i guess noone has a clue     
i got the phone line hooked up, and letting it do its thing, but i dont think that will do any good


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## JWThiers (Apr 13, 2005)

danny7481 said:


> i guess noone has a clue
> i got the phone line hooked up, and letting it do its thing, but i dont think that will do any good


Its only been overnight, worse comes to worse you can always start over.

btw I haven't a clue about this.


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## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

how large is the Hard drive?
this error means you have filesystem corruption. This is either a bad swap file, corruption of the MFS filesystem, a bad hard drive, or a combination of those.
If it fixes itself, you're golden. The reason it says to leave the phone line plugged in, is tivo will try to download its software to the alternate system partition and rebuild itself.
Re-imaging and rezippering MAY fix it if the problem doesn't repair itself, but in all likelyhood your HD is bad and needs replacing.


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## danny7481 (Dec 6, 2005)

its just a 40 gig hd, how can it use the phone line, when i got zipper installed, or does it now work, in this case?


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## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

the tivo has no idea you have zipper installed. The downloading a new image thing won't happen in your case. Sometimes the error corrects itself without downloading but if your tivo is still messed up 12 hrs later, it's new HD time.


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## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

by the way, the Zipper had nothing to do with this in case you were wondering.


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## danny7481 (Dec 6, 2005)

Gunnyman said:


> by the way, the Zipper had nothing to do with this in case you were wondering.


oh i know, i never blamed the zipper for this, hd's fail all the time, i kinda figured that may of happend, but im letting it sit there, if nothing else, its time for a new hd.


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## danny7481 (Dec 6, 2005)

it fixed itself, so im good as new again


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## BK89 (Oct 11, 2005)

Hey, I just had the same thing happen on my Zippered DTivo. I have only had it for about a month (got it through the DTivo4Me program) so it was refurbished. Guess they didn't test the drive very closely, grrr! Anyways, it froze up about three times within a few hours last night and then I restarted this morning and got the "Severe Error" message. Danny, have you noticed anymore problems since it has repaired itself?


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## danny7481 (Dec 6, 2005)

BK89 said:


> Hey, I just had the same thing happen on my Zippered DTivo. I have only had it for about a month (got it through the DTivo4Me program) so it was refurbished. Guess they didn't test the drive very closely, grrr! Anyways, it froze up about three times within a few hours last night and then I restarted this morning and got the "Severe Error" message. Danny, have you noticed anymore problems since it has repaired itself?


nope, works perfectly again, but do note, itll take awhile, i think it stayed on the green screen for over 2 hours, so you gotta be patient.


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## BK89 (Oct 11, 2005)

Nice, I will keep my fingers crossed...


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## tca32123 (Mar 7, 2006)

BK89 said:


> Nice, I will keep my fingers crossed...


I got the same message this afternoon, but I don't have a phone line at my house. We use cell phones only.

How will the affect the self-repair? Does it try to d/l thru the line or via satellite?


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## fano3 (May 16, 2006)

Today I came home to the green screen of death on my Tivo. This is a first generation Philips I purchased back in 1998 that originally had a 40 GB hard drive and never ever had a problem. Late last year it started crapping out so I replaced the hard drive with an 80 GB hard drive and it has been great ever since. Until today.

Is it true this green screen/severe error is almost 90% fatal? 

Is there any way to do any "computery" type repairs like you can do when your hard drive fails on a computer??

thanks in advance.


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## PortlandPaw (Jan 11, 2004)

I've seen the GSOD many times on my DTivos and they have lived to tell the tale each time. And I never plug in the phone line while it fixes itself...except on the SA S1


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## tca32123 (Mar 7, 2006)

fano3 said:


> Today I came home to the green screen of death on my Tivo. This is a first generation Philips I purchased back in 1998 that originally had a 40 GB hard drive and never ever had a problem. Late last year it started crapping out so I replaced the hard drive with an 80 GB hard drive and it has been great ever since. Until today.
> 
> Is it true this green screen/severe error is almost 90% fatal?
> 
> ...


I didn't have a phone line in and mine fixed itself ... it took about 5 hours though. Give it time.

Since my last posting in this thread, there have been no complaints!


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## bignerd5 (Apr 3, 2006)

About a month and a half ago I hacked by HR10-250 using Zipper and
related enhancements. Installed a bigger, 400GB hardrive. Everything
was working great -- I was extracting HD ty files wirelessly, using
caller ID, Fakecall, TivoWebPlus, etc.

Over this last weekend strange stuff started happening. A message
popped up on my TV saying my HDTivo went into shutdown protection mode
because it overheated, and I got the dreaded error #51 message. I've
tried some fixes ("clear and delete all", re-imaging) but I can't get
the darn thing working again. Given all of the activity in this post, could it be that D* sent down an ECM from its satellite that killed my HDTivo.


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## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

I doubt it.
are you sure it isn't error 81?
That's a card issue.


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## bignerd5 (Apr 3, 2006)

Nope, I'm sure is says error *#51*. What's really weird is that my D* service works intermitantly for a while (every 3 or 4 minutes the screes goes blank, says "please insert your card" for about 30-45 seconds, then service comes back), and after several hours eventually shuts down.


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## whiteviperx (May 1, 2006)

I got the same error # 51... says to call sony.. like that would ever be a good idea.

I looked in the system information. Does not have any info for my service ID number, just 0's .... Any way to add this in?

It happened after I loaded a backup up version 3.1.0b.. tivo updated to 3.5 but still same error. 

SAT-T60
40 GB
120 GB

Total 192 Hr


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## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

bignerd5 said:


> Nope, I'm sure is says error *#51*. What's really weird is that my D* service works intermitantly for a while (every 3 or 4 minutes the screes goes blank, says "please insert your card" for about 30-45 seconds, then service comes back), and after several hours eventually shuts down.


I bet you need a new card.


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## fano3 (May 16, 2006)

tca32123 said:


> I didn't have a phone line in and mine fixed itself ... it took about 5 hours though. Give it time.
> 
> Since my last posting in this thread, there have been no complaints!


Ok so about 2 days later, it "fixed itself." Today it just froze on the picture of what I was watching. I unplugged, left out for about 10 mins, plugged back in and it is hanging up on the black screen "Philips presents TIVO. Your PTV Receiver is starting up. Please wait a moment..." But every 5 seconds or so it flashing a rolling blue, then green screen, then goes back to the black "welcome" screen.

Ugh....anyone seen this little problem????


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## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

sounds like a croaking hard drive
hear any clicking?


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## fano3 (May 16, 2006)

Gunnyman said:


> sounds like a croaking hard drive
> hear any clicking?


No..no clicking. Very quiet.

This sucks! Had no problems with this thing for 8 years, hard drive crapped out, replaced it and it's not even 6 months and I'm having problems. ugh...


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## whiteviperx (May 1, 2006)

I have been having the "green screen" problem for a few months. The past few times I just restored from my backup. The tivo would last about a week, then I would have to do it again. However this time before I restored I checked the hard drives with manufacturer software, everything was good, and I formatted the drives. I then restored the image on to the dual drives, it lasted 1 day. Same old thing... A severe error has occurred. If both the drives test ok, can the image be corrupt? Or can it be more severe and that the hardware of the tivo could be damaged?

SAT-T60
40 GB Drive A
120GB Drive B
Total 195 hours


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## whiteviperx (May 1, 2006)

Anybody else besides Stan have access to new images? I sent him a PM a couple days ago, no reply.


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## JedDeLosSantos (Jun 21, 2010)

@danny7481
I read your post and you said "i think it stayed on the green screen for over 2 hours"

I have exactly the same problem but heres what happens.
1.Powering up...
2.Goes to Green screen where it states "A severe error occurred." And it will also fix it.
3.Seconds later, it goes back to the powering up screen and goes back to the green 
screen again...
4.And the same pattern goes on.

I am waiting at this very moment while it does that process over and over again. I was just curious because you said "i think it stayed on the green screen for over 2 hours"
While mine keeps going back to the powering up screen and then green screen.


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## ervilla41 (Feb 25, 2010)

My unit came accross the Internal error code which does not let it finish the restart
The system powers up accures satellite data then "Internal Overheated Screen Appears" does anyone know how to fix


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## jonbig (Sep 22, 2003)

ervilla41 said:


> My unit came accross the Internal error code which does not let it finish the restart
> The system powers up accures satellite data then "Internal Overheated Screen Appears" does anyone know how to fix


First step is to check whether the fan is running. If not, get a replacement.


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## ervilla41 (Feb 25, 2010)

Fan is running


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## ervilla41 (Feb 25, 2010)

Well I was able to get my system running again the Power Supply was bad. Replaced and now back up again success.


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