# Tivo Premiere all front panel lights flashing



## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

Not really a question specific to underground, but figured those that know the most about the box are here.

I have an unmodified Premiere XL that has been working fine for a year or so. I moved it to the other side of the room, connected the cables, etc.. Now when power is applied, green power light goes on. I get to the Welcome screen, all the rest of the LED lights flash together, the screen flickers and back to the Welcome screen

The reboot to the Welcome screen seems like what happens with an S3 or THD when there is no hard drive attached.

Has anyone seen the above symptoms with a Premiere? I'm going to take off the cover and check the drive cables, but don't see how moving across the room would dislodge anything.


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## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

Cables were fine; hard drive doing some very quiet clicking, so I assume the hard drive went bad during the move across the room.


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## HomeUser (Jan 12, 2003)

I had a similar symptom when I replaced the TV stand that I had a Premiere on. The flashing lights and reboot loop was caused by an cracked AC socket on the UPS powering the TiVo's causing frequent power dropouts.

Try booting without the network, cable or any USB device connected. Have you tried moving the Premiere back to the original location? 

On a side note:
The power problem may have also caused a Series 2 to go into a reboot loop Welcome Powering Up, Almost There Just A Few Minutes More, WPU, ATJAFMM ... Need to find some time to pull the Hard Disk and check it with SpinRite.


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## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

HomeUser said:


> I had a similar symptom when I replaced the TV stand that I had a Premiere on. The flashing lights and reboot loop was caused by an cracked AC socket on the UPS powering the TiVo's causing frequent power dropouts.
> 
> Try booting without the network, cable or any USB device connected. Have you tried moving the Premiere back to the original location?


Yup. Tried booting with no cables in both locations (two different UPSs), same problem. When I took the cover off, I heard the clicking I normally associate with a bad drive.

Strange timing, but it does seem like a bad drive.


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## Soapm (May 9, 2007)

Harddrive clicking... I wonder what kind of drive it is. Sounds like drive guard which locks the drive after a heavy jar or shock. I forget which manufacturer has that stupid feature but you can turn it off with the utilities.


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## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

Soapm said:


> Harddrive clicking... I wonder what kind of drive it is. Sounds like drive guard which locks the drive after a heavy jar or shock. I forget which manufacturer has that stupid feature but you can turn it off with the utilities.


FWIW, it was a Western Digital AV green drive.

I wasn't aware of such a feature (or who makes it), but that sounds like a possibility, given the uncanny timing of the "failure".


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## Worf (Sep 15, 2000)

Actually, drives dying like that isn't unheard of. It's well known among the enterprise crowd that drives spinning for years may have motors too weak to spin up, and bearings so worn that they can be spun up. The reason no one notices is because it takes very little to keep the platters spinning, so as long as they don't stop, the drives keep on truckin'.

RAID arrays that were perfectly functional have been known to become completely unrecoverable after a power cycle because of this. Given the TiVo's drive is under the same conditions, it's possible.


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## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

> RAID arrays that were perfectly functional have been known to become completely unrecoverable after a power cycle because of this. Given the TiVo's drive is under the same conditions, it's possible.


true, but in this case, the drive was only 18 months old.


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