# Daily Call Problem



## Philnic

Recently my Tivo has had a repeated problem completing daily calls. I only spotted this last week when my guide data dwindled to less than a week's worth.

The Tivo makes the daily call, but the setup menu shows that the call has not been successful, and says "failed loading series".

A few days ago I forced a daily call, which did complete successfully, but for the last couple of days even a forced call is generating this error.

Using "Test call" always shows as successful, so there doesn't appear to be any problem with the phone line.

Anyone have a similar experience or, better still, a solution?

- Phil


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## sanderton

Sounds like the database has been corrupted.

I'd clear all the data and re-run Guided Setup


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## iankb

If you haven't tried already, it might be worth trying to perform a restart. I know that certain conditions will attempt a database rebuild on a restart.

Ian.


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## ccwf

For U.S. TiVos, here are the general things to try, in order of increasing severity and data loss: 
Restart the Recorder
Unplug power to recorder, wait thirty seconds, plug it back in.
Restart and immediately force a daily call
Unplug TiVo DVR, leave unpowered for fifteen minutes, turn back on
Change to a different lineup, then change back.
Repeat Guided Setup
Repeat Guided Setup with 00 as the area and then again with your real location.
Reset Thumbs Ratings & Suggestions
Clear Program Data & To Do List
Clear and delete everything
 (There's also the TiVo kickstart procedure for reinstalling the OS, but I don't think that helps with this particular problem.)

I expect that the above also applies to UK TiVos.

*Warning:* If you're having problems completing the daily call, be wary of repeating guided setup. Remember that you cannot exit guided setup without completing a call (whether over the phone line or over a network). If you wish to use a network to repeat guided setup, make sure it is configured and working _before_ repeating guided setup.


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## thejaxster

Hello all,

can anyone perform the "TiVo kickstart procedure"?
I would be interested in trying this.
Thanks.


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## Grimm1

> _Originally posted by ccwf _
> *For U.S. TiVos, here are the general things to try, in order of increasing severity and data loss:
> Restart the Recorder
> restart and immediately force a daily call
> Repeat Guided Setup
> Repeat Guided Setup with 00� as the area and then again with your real location.
> Reset Thumbs Ratings & Suggestions
> Clear Program Data & To Do List
> Clear and delete everything
> (There's also the TiVo kickstart procedure for reinstalling the OS, but I don't think that helps with this particular problem.)
> 
> I expect that the above also applies to UK TiVos. *


 FYI - In my case (guide data being downloaded but not importing) running the Guided Setup was a big mistake. In Guided Setup I ran into the same problem with guide data not being imported which caused my TiVo to be stuck in Guided Setup Limbo as there is "NO WAY" out of Guided Setup unless it can complete successfully except to restore from a backup (which is what I had to do). Doing so meant losing my recorded shows which for me would have put "Repeat Guided Setup" second from the bottom of the list of "order of increasing severity and data loss" if I had known that was a possibility.

I know this post is in response to a "kickstart" question but in almost every post I have read with people have guide data problems I have seen this post referred to as a suggestion to fix those guide data problems.


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## Hunter Green

Three weeks after moving into my new house I still don't have phone service inside, only out on the porch, and that only a few days. TiVo ran out of data for a bit more than a week and we were doing manual recordings while waiting for the phone line to be installed "real soon now".

When I finally got phone service (a cord running through the snow and in the front door) TiVo repeatedly failed to load the data. I tried restarts and repeated attempts; at one point it got two days loaded, but no more. Resetting thumbs data and suggestions didn't help, so with heavy heart I tried repeating guided setup.

The first few tries it failed, leaving the TiVo in boat anchor mode. But finally after a restart it was able to load data on the second try. It's been indexing since then, about 26 hours ago. (We have a _lot_ of channels, but even so...)

But at least we have guide data now and TiVo is recording things in existing season passes. Hopefully soon we'll be back to full functioning, but I'm still concerned.


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## Hunter Green

See this thread for more about my problem and what finally cured it, without having to clear and delete everything.


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## diskus

I haave had a similar problem, guide data seems fine but not indexing, here is another post of mine;


indexing and reindexing
can someone point me to some detailed info on the indexing process. I am having a situation with a phillps series 1 system 3.0 where indexing seems to repeating often. searching for programs give three types of results which alternate over a two day period or so
;
first; making no sense and out of alphabetical order,
then; no results,
then : normal results,
and then within a day it all repeats over a day or two.


Thanks
MB


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## Litz

I have the same problem, we ran out of program info and were unable to get TiVo to manually download the guide. It was making the call to TiVo just fine but would get hung up on the "processing data" part. We reset it and did everything everyone has suggested and then like IDIOTS we decided to go through Guided Setup again. Big Mistake!!!! We've been stuck in Guided Setup hell for three days and can't get it to process the info it's retrieving from TiVo home office. Do you suggest we just keep trying and hope it eventually works?

It seems that a lot of people are having this problem at once, or am I seeing a pattern where none exists? I want my TiVo back and if I can't get it to work I'm chucking the damn thing and getting a DVR from Dish Network, we've never had a problem with our satellite dish.


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## Grimm1

Litz said:


> I have the same problem, we ran out of program info and were unable to get TiVo to manually download the guide. It was making the call to TiVo just fine but would get hung up on the "processing data" part. We reset it and did everything everyone has suggested and then like IDIOTS we decided to go through Guided Setup again. Big Mistake!!!! We've been stuck in Guided Setup hell for three days and can't get it to process the info it's retrieving from TiVo home office. Do you suggest we just keep trying and hope it eventually works?
> 
> It seems that a lot of people are having this problem at once, or am I seeing a pattern where none exists? I want my TiVo back and if I can't get it to work I'm chucking the damn thing and getting a DVR from Dish Network, we've never had a problem with our satellite dish.


Wish I had better news for ya....but unless anything has changed since I happened into the same problem your out of luck. The only way I was able to recover was from a backup I made of my TiVo.

FYI...I'm a big fan of DishNetwork myself...but not that crazy about their DVR....it's little more then a VCR that records to an HD instead of tape in my opinion. The majority of what makes TiVo so great in my opinion is missing from DishNetworks DVR.


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## elta1978

I am also having the same problem.
I have put a new hard drive in my Tivo and transferred the image to it.
I get past the guide setup without any problems, however it still does not complete daily calls.
I thought that there may have been a problem with the TurboNet card so I changed back to the phone line and still seem to be having problems.
I've called Tivo (Sky) to report the problem and they tell me that the there is no problem with the service and no other customers have reported this problem.
I'll give it another week to see if the problem corrects itself, if not I think Windows Media Center will be the way to go.

Not sure if this could be a problem, I found a news article when searching the we that Ruppert Murdoch has recently bought DirecTV and has sold the Tivo service.

Sorry, I can't post the link as you must have a minimum of 5 posts before a link can be posted.
It's on the BBC website.

Looks like America will end up with a Tivo service the same as the UK.


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## Ian_m

elta1978 said:


> I have put a new hard drive in my Tivo and transferred the image to it.
> I get past the guide setup without any problems, however it still does not complete daily calls.


Have you got a swap file ? Did you put the correct size swap file (and enable it) when you transferred your image ?

Lack of swap file can cause the symtoms you describe.

Look in the kernel log to see if it correctly inititialises the swap file.


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## elta1978

The Swap File is correct and enabled.
If I reset the Tivo four time in a row, then it will make the daily call and get the up-to-date listings.
I called my friend who has a Tivo that has not been modified in anyway, she has tried to connect (via Phone line) to make a daily call and also has the same problem.


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## Litz

Now it says "Failed While Loading Data" and the machine is making a coughing noise. I hope it's not Avian Flu. (joke)



Grimm1 said:


> Wish I had better news for ya....but unless anything has changed since I happened into the same problem your out of luck. The only way I was able to recover was from a backup I made of my TiVo.
> 
> FYI...I'm a big fan of DishNetwork myself...but not that crazy about their DVR....it's little more then a VCR that records to an HD instead of tape in my opinion. The majority of what makes TiVo so great in my opinion is missing from DishNetworks DVR.


Yeah it doesn't have a lot of the bells and whistles of TiVo but we never took advantage of the subscription options after the initial free trial period. I just decided that--gasp--I don't want to watch that much TV! So that's why we're happy with the DVR, for our limited usage. On the downside, we can at least manually program TiVo to tape certain programs over a period of time, which you can't do with the DVR, BUT their program guide is nicer IMHO. But yeah I agree with you.


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## redav

Hi

I'm having a bit of a problem getting any program data. I have a turbonet card in my Tivo with software version 2.5.5a. It makes a test call no problem. It also makes its daily call, but never downloads the TV listings!

Anyone have an idea what I'm doing wrong.

The account status on my Tivo says 8: Closed, call. I've never had it activated because I've not long purchased it from ebay.

Any help would be most welcome

Thanks

Vinny


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## cwaring

redav said:


> The account status on my Tivo says 8: Closed, call. I've never had it activated because I've not long purchased it from ebay.


I'm guessing that it's a "monthly sub" unit. If so, I presume the monthly sub is overdue. The cure is to pay for it


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## redav

Hi

Thanks for that. I thought that may well be the case. I have only just bought the thing and I was under the impression it may have been a free service via the net. How stupid am I.  

Vinny


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## cwaring

Well, it's not a point of view totally without merit. After all, we are saving them the cost of the freephone number


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## StupidFlanders

I don't know if Rupert Murdoch has anything to do with it, Elta, but it's been in the financial press for a while that DirecTV plans to drop TiVo DVR's in favor of its own. That's really going to hurt TiVo Corp., since the same articles state that DirecTV represents about 75% of TiVo subscribers.

TiVo's response has been to try and shore up customers elsewhere. According to last year's financial statements, they're already taking a loss on the boxes, but making it up by providing a service that's almost pure profit. That's probably why they've been pushing so hard with the $150 rebates on new hardware, looking for the TiVo Ambassador, and so forth, to try and get more subscribers.

Sounds like I have the same problem that everybody else is having. TiVo was turned off for about six weeks, and even though connecting to the TiVo Service appears to work, we still don't have guide information.


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## JonWanner

Like any database application (this one is under Linux) if the index file gets scrambled, the database is unuseable. I would pose the solution of deleting the data from the database ( programs recorded, wishlists, season passes etc. ) but not the database file ( as in wipe everything ). 
Then do the call and try to import the data into the empty structure.

That is what iI will try with my 80-hr type 2 unit as soon as my wife copies her stuff out to the other Tivo.


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## biker

Litz said:


> I have the same problem, we ran out of program info and were unable to get TiVo to manually download the guide. It was making the call to TiVo just fine but would get hung up on the "processing data" part. We reset it and did everything everyone has suggested and then like IDIOTS we decided to go through Guided Setup again. Big Mistake!!!! We've been stuck in Guided Setup hell for three days and can't get it to process the info it's retrieving from TiVo home office. Do you suggest we just keep trying and hope it eventually works?
> 
> It seems that a lot of people are having this problem at once, or am I seeing a pattern where none exists? I want my TiVo back and if I can't get it to work I'm chucking the damn thing and getting a DVR from Dish Network, we've never had a problem with our satellite dish.


I had this problem on one of my old series 1 Tivos. Lucky for me I unplugged it for an hour. Then I was able to redo guide setup and it loaded the data.


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## glennman

I had this problem last week: running out of program data; data would download over phone but not load into the system; then unplug unit, plug back in, and start download via entering zipcode, etc. only to see data not load into system again... I have Sony series 2 TiVo. Called TiVo: they said call Sony. Called Sony: they said unplug for 30 to 60 min AND unplug phone line. (If this did not work I was to call TiVo again and have them somehow work the guided setup process.) Well, unplugged unit plus phone for few hours; came back and everything worked (i.e. guided setup completed successfully and has continued to work during subsequent automated dialups).


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## smittypros

We have a DirecTivo and VOIP (through Time Warner) so haven't been able to successfully complete a daily call for over a year. It hasn't been a problem at all to date, but we're now having the slo-mo issue that's discussed in other threads, so I've been trying to complete a daily call in order to get the software update that's supposed to stop the slo-mo problem (we're still on 3.1.1e).

I've now gotten everything configured to do PPP through serial, and have made it through the connection stage without any problems. It downloads for about 45 minutes or so, then stalls on "Loading. 1%, 301 minutes" for about 15 minutes before getting the "Failed while preparing data" or "Failed while loading series" error message. 

I've tried powering off for different lengths of time (including up to four hours), as well as clearing thumbs since it said somewhere else that might work. Are there any specific fixes for the Hughes DirecTivo? Is there anything I can do to get it to load the data? It seems as though the daily call is no longer the problem.

Thanks in advance for any help!


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## scamp63

I see by the dates of the previous posts that this issue hasn't been addressed lately - my series one Tivo shows "Failed while loading series" and since it hasn't made a successful call in over 30 days, it won't record anything. Any new remedies anyone can suggest???? Please????? I've tried unplugging and forcing calls - no luck - Help! Thank you!


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## aljesk

Tivo (Series 1) pulled through last night after two weeks of failed dailies and no guide data.

It looks like mine was caused, due to the error 'failed to load series'

A Channel lineup change took place, RIP Sentana Sports

and a screwy season pass which tivo deleted!

guide data to mid Aug 

fingers crossed for next scheduled call.......


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## Trinitron

scamp63 said:


> I see by the dates of the previous posts that this issue hasn't been addressed lately - my series one Tivo shows "Failed while loading series" and since it hasn't made a successful call in over 30 days, it won't record anything. Any new remedies anyone can suggest???? Please????? I've tried unplugging and forcing calls - no luck - Help! Thank you!


Rebuild the database. Going through the System Reset procedures in order is the simplest way in my experience (though others will no doubt think differently )

Start with Repeat Guided Setup - changing your postcode is normally recommended to force a new set of data - last time I did it I simply chose another town in the same ITV area, which was fine. If that doesn't work then try the other options in turn.

If Clear and delete everything fails, you buy a new TiVo!


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## GravityChallenge

I had unplugged my Series 1 TiVo box for over 2 months this summer. When I plugged it back in, I ultimately got the "Failed While Loading Series" error when the TiVo box was updating the guide. It appears to fail when there is a big download required (my TiVo guide was completely expired) or when the TiVo service channel lineup or some other guide/software change occurred while the TiVo box was not plugged in. The fact that other people had this same error this summer tends to suggest that it was a guide/software change that caused the problem

I tried many methods to solve this problem. I have listed the failed methods after the solution to save you the hassle of trying them. There may be a less devistating solution than mine. That is, deleting subsets of personal preferences, etc instead starting as if you just bought the TiVo unit.

My Solution: Perform a "Clear and Delete Everything" command and follow the guided setup as you did when you bought the unit. Note that all of your shows, preferences, settings, etc. are lost but the TiVo box is functional again.

This command can be found in the TiVo menu system at:
New TiVo Messages & Setup -> System Reset -> Cear and Delete Everything


Methods that failed solve the problem:
1. Gave TiVo several days to succeed at a download attempt. I tried forcing calls and allowing TiVo to make multiple attempts. TiVo Customer Care made this recommendation. I even made sure TiVo was on a channel with no signal to reduce CPU loading and shortened my phone cord to reduce possible bit errors in the data since the download was so large. All attempts failed.

2. Replaced the hard disk. A TiVo Customer Care suggestion. It seems to be the default claim that the hardware has failed not the software. Since I saved my original TiVo hard disk after I bought a bigger disk I could check if the newer disk was bad. I installed my original hard disk and had the same "Failed While Loading Series" error. The hard disk is not the problem.

3. Tried the Kickstart routines
Kickstarts 51, 52, and 56 were all done to update my software. None of these called the TiVo service for updates even when the screen said it was doing it. The phone line was never used. All failed. Looks like these functions have been disabled.

Kickstart 57. DON'T DO THIS! You will end up with the Green Screen of Death with no possible recovery unless you have a backup image of TiVo on another disk. This was suggested to me by TiVo Customer Care with caveats that it could corrupt the disk beyond recovery. I concur. Fortunately I had a backup image.

Kickstart 58. I expected the Green Screen of Death with this one too. I tried it multple times. It did not corrupt the drive but it also did not solve the problem.

Best of luck to you!


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## aljesk

Awww C*!p

30 days have passed and i've not had a successful completed call

'Failed to load series'

That said, i am getting guide data one day at a time!?!

Has anybody cracked this problem yet?????


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## travelmad

My trusty Series 1 has been plugging along for 10 years with no problems but now I have moved to a new house with Verizon FiOS digital phone service. For the first time ever, "failed while loading series." Tivo and Sony are both telling me that the problem is the digital phone line, which is not supported. Tivo tech support said "can you get an analog line?". Well, no. Is there any way to make my current set-up work? I can't download via internet on the Series 1. (I have lifetime data service, if that wasn't obvious...it would pain me greatly to get a new box.)


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## cwaring

travelmad said:


> My trusty Series 1 has been plugging along for 10 years with no problems but now I have moved to a new house with *Verizon FiOS *digital phone service.





> Tivo and *Sony* are both telling me


Sounds like you're in the US. This is the *UK* Forum.


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## AMc

Try this forum instead...
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=4


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## cwaring

Well yeah. I assumed he'd be able to find it himself, but then again....


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## travelmad

AMc said:


> Try this forum instead...
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=4


Aha, sorry. I did a search for the "failed to load" issue and this thread was the one that seemed the best fit. Did not notice the UK part!

Thanks for the link.


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## bobwojo

travelmad said:


> My trusty Series 1 has been plugging along for 10 years with no problems but now I have moved to a new house with Verizon FiOS digital phone service. For the first time ever, "failed while loading series." Tivo and Sony are both telling me that the problem is the digital phone line, which is not supported. Tivo tech support said "can you get an analog line?". Well, no. Is there any way to make my current set-up work? I can't download via internet on the Series 1. (I have lifetime data service, if that wasn't obvious...it would pain me greatly to get a new box.)


Get a turbonet card I have 4 Series ones also about 10 with lifetime subscriptions.

Starting running turbonet cards when lighting took out the modems on the first two units.


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## AMc

mucho spam reported


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