# Tivo Series 1 looping: Powering Up... Just a few more seconds... Pszpt! Powering up



## bldxyz (Feb 8, 2002)

Arg.

A few days ago, I started noticing a few artifacts in my recorded shows, where the playback would pause for a second, then "catch up" by playing quickly.

Yesterday, I noticed that my Select Play Select codes had been reset.

Today, I noticed they had been reset again. While starting to watch a show, the box spontaenously reset: *Powering Up... Almost there... *

We starting watching a show, and 10 minutes into it, it reset again. Only this time, when it got to the *Just a Few More Seconds* message, the screen fritzed for a moment and it went back to *Powering Up... * again.

Now, it is just repeating.

History: in January, I was having hard drive problems, so I replaced the two drives with new drives. Along the way, I experienced a rebooting problem much like this, and ended up fixing it by replacing the Parlax cable. This thread details the experience.

What concerns me is that I just replaced the Parlax cable in January. Anyone have any thoughts about why it would fail so soon, again?


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## bldxyz (Feb 8, 2002)

Hep me, please... hep me!

(Okay, so this is a bump, but I'll be missing series finales of so many shows if I can't get my tivo back up. One of the downsides to having only one receiver in the house!)

*Update*: I tried several things:
removing the parlax cable, wiping the contacts, and replacing it
re-seating the IDE cables and the drive power cables
trying my old Parlax cable that I had replaced in January

The only one that had any effect was that with the old Parlax cable, it wouldn't come on at all.

Otherwise: it just starts up, I hear the drives spin up, I shows the Powering Up message, then it switches to the Just a few more seconds message, then it resets and goes back to the Powering Up message again. Loop, loop, loop.

I am praying that the new Parlax cable arrives tomorrow and resolves the issue, I'm just dumfounded that I have to do this twice in four months. Anyone have any similar experience?


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## bldxyz (Feb 8, 2002)

Okay, so my new Parlex cable arrived, and after I installed it, the same thing happened. It didn't fix the problem.

I am left worrying that this is a drive failure, because of some implication in this archived thread. . The drives are less than four months old!!! I've been leaving the cover off to keep the unit cool, which is what I suspect caused my original drives to falter.

Does anyone know if, using some set of tools and a PC, I can save any of the programs I had on those drives if the drives are the cause of the failure?

Very frustrated!


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## HomeUser (Jan 12, 2003)

Your link is broken.

I have used SpinRite on a couple of Series 2 TiVo drives with success recovering the data on the drives long enough to make a binary copy.


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## bldxyz (Feb 8, 2002)

(Strange what happened to the link I pasted...)

I'm confirming now that the drives are the problem. I put in my old drives, the ones that were in the process of failing when I replaced them in January, and now the box is working, albeit with old shows and the risk of choppy recordings that caused me to replace them to begin with.

Looks like I need to try to replace the drives again. Boo on bad hardware! And it looks like I have to go from two to two, since Hindsdale says you can't go from 2 to 1 (large drive):



> Those with dual drive DirecTiVos, dual drive Series 2 units (with user added B drive), the rare factory combined dual drive standalones (see Step 7 Option #2 for description), or dual drive UK Thompson TiVo will not have enough available partitions remaining in order to combine their existing drives onto a single larger A drive and expand to use any remaining space while still preserving their recordings.


Rats.


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## dale77095 (Aug 11, 2005)

Now I have this problem. I read in another forum that it might be a failed 'b' drive, or modem. My modem failed a long time ago...long before this error came about. I've already replaced it with a 9th tee wireless connection.

So was replacing both drives your solution? I've put the 'b' drive into my pc and it sees it, but I didn't do anything with it because i didn't want a signature written on it. 

I'm afraid I'll have an issue if I have to restore my last backup, because it's version 2.5.1 - and as I mentioned my modem doesn't work. There was no native support for my 9th tee adapter in 2.5.1.

So at this point it looks like a restore of my old 2.5.1. Then the mods necessary to make the network adapter work. then upgrades to 3.x, then backup, add second drive, backup.

Any better ideas?


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## HomeUser (Jan 12, 2003)

Put the drives in a PC one at a time boot and run the Manufactures diagnostics on the drive 

You can replace the failing drive(s) with a binary copy of the drive using the linux command dd_rescue I think it is on the free LBA48 PTV upgrade CD. 

if you do not want to keep the recordings you can make a shrunken backup of the TiVo drives with MFSTools backup then use MFSTools restore the backup to a single larger drive.


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## Dkerr24 (Oct 29, 2004)

bldxyz said:


> (Strange what happened to the link I pasted...)
> 
> I'm confirming now that the drives are the problem. I put in my old drives, the ones that were in the process of failing when I replaced them in January, and now the box is working, albeit with old shows and the risk of choppy recordings that caused me to replace them to begin with.
> 
> ...


I'd highly recommend going back to a single hard drive in your Tivo. Far less heat and less chance of failure than two 'married' drives. No trying to figure out 'which drive is bad', either.


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## dale77095 (Aug 11, 2005)

Thanks to you and HomeUser both for the suggestions. I had pretty much come to the conclusion that all of my problems really started AFTER my original drive upgrade. Failed modem. Then a failed drive. Now at least one other failed drive. 

I agree that going back to a single drive is the thing to do. I'd like to go the easiest route. Does anyone have a single drive backup V3.x that they wouldn't mind sharing? Is there any reason not to share these...ethical or otherwise? If I can't find one then I guess I'll try Homeuser's suggestion and if that fails either fall back to my 2.5.1 bacup or purchase a single drive upgrade from one of the online sources.

thanks!
Dale


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## HomeUser (Jan 12, 2003)

Some where there is a thread if you need an image send a private message to Stan Simmons.


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## niggszo (May 27, 2006)

hi, 

I just baked a Phillips 112 using a instant cake download on a40gb .but when I plug in my tivo 

all it says is powering up and nothing happens.i have istalled the drive on master but I cant even use my remote ,nothing happens. 

please help help. 

thansk


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## bldxyz (Feb 8, 2002)

Dkerr24 said:


> I'd highly recommend going back to a single hard drive in your Tivo. Far less heat and less chance of failure than two 'married' drives. No trying to figure out 'which drive is bad', either.


I'd love to do this, but I don't see a Hindsdale option for returning to one drive after having done what I did (expand from one to two, then replace the two drives). Something about there being not enough free partitions or something.

It is nearly moot, since I just gave up and went for a new receiver, though I may come back around to trying to restore the old drives so I can get the programs I missed. Sounds like the binary copy is the way to go, though I sure could use help in finding precise instructions for this method.


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## dale77095 (Aug 11, 2005)

The one drive solution worked flawlessly and quickly! I only have 4 hours of programming on my 80gb drive though, so I still have an issue to work through. I'm wondering if my restore command had a bad parameter on it. Thoughts?

Of course I lost my programming, but at least i got my tivo with lifetime subscription back and since I had the 80gb drive, cost was time only.


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