# Premiere XL died, boot loop



## yunlin12 (Mar 15, 2003)

My PXL froze while watching a Netflix video tonight. I waited for a few hours, no change, then I pulled the plug. Now it's in a boot loop, I can't even kick start.

It goes to "Welcome! Starting Up" screen, stays there for 15 sec. Only the green light comes on, the amber light never comes on, so can't kickstart. Then the screen goes dark while all the lights (green, amber, blue, and 2 red) on the front flash once all at the same time. Then 2-3 seconds later it goes back to the "Welcome! Starting Up" screen, and this loops again and again.

Is the HDD dead? Or is this something else?

When the TPXL froze, my other Premiere (non-XL) also became very sluggish. I rebooted it and put it back to SD menu, and now the Premiere seems back to normal.

I wonder if this has anything to do with the fall SW roll-out. Last time Tico updated the SW in the summer, the Premiere unit went into frequent reboot, I had to kickstart to swap boot sector to make it normal again (PXL survived that update fine). Now my Premiere is still on 20.1.2. When it gets the fall update I wonder if it will die again. All this is making me think if I should just give up on Tivo for good.


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## rfryar (Feb 15, 2008)

I just went through that with my PXL as well. It would boot loop, or even start up and then reboot after a few minutes to even an hour of running fine. I pulled the HD and did tests and determined it was dead.

Unfortunately I did not log into myTivo and save my season passes, so I recommend logging into myTivo and at least noting your season passes then upgrade your HD.

It was a long 2 day effort to build the hard drive, do a complete wipe on the new drive and network refresh, followed by trying to remember what I had for season passes. But I am working again, not with a 2TB drive.

Best of luck!

Rick


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## scole250 (Nov 8, 2005)

yunlin12, rfryar, were the drives upgraded in the Tivos? If so, had wsidle3 been used to disable the idle timer which parks the heads? Not sure if boot loop is a symptom of short idle timer, but it had something to do with causing soft boot problems.


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## yunlin12 (Mar 15, 2003)

My PXL is completely stock bought from Tivo brand new and never modified


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## yunlin12 (Mar 15, 2003)

rfryar,

My Tivo wouldn't even boot up at all, not even reaching the "wait a few minutes" screen. My other Premiere had done what you described before, but at least it reaches a stage where I could kickstart and swap boot partition. This PXL is dead-dead, won't even get to stage where I could kickstart.

Since I didn't keep an image of the PXL, I guess I have to get a kit HDD from Weaknees now.



rfryar said:


> I just went through that with my PXL as well. It would boot loop, or even start up and then reboot after a few minutes to even an hour of running fine. I pulled the HD and did tests and determined it was dead.
> 
> Unfortunately I did not log into myTivo and save my season passes, so I recommend logging into myTivo and at least noting your season passes then upgrade your HD.
> 
> ...


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

yunlin12 said:


> rfryar,
> 
> My Tivo wouldn't even boot up at all, not even reaching the "wait a few minutes" screen. My other Premiere had done what you described before, but at least it reaches a stage where I could kickstart and swap boot partition. This PXL is dead-dead, won't even get to stage where I could kickstart.
> 
> Since I didn't keep an image of the PXL, I guess I have to get a kit HDD from Weaknees now.


See if the power supply in this one and the power supply in the regular Premiere are the same.

If so, try the regular Premiere's power supply in the XL.

If it boots, then you need the power supply repaired or replaced, obviously.

But if it doesn't, let's try something.

If you have a 320GB or larger SATA drive around you can spare temporarily, then

dd

the regular Premiere's original drive to it, and see if it boots at least part way in the XL with the Premiere's power supply still in.

Remember, this drive and the software on it are only for temporary use in diagnosis, so the mismatch isn't a big deal. If everything else is good it should at least get as far as trying to load into RAM from the hard drive.

Then try it with the XL's power supply re-installed.

The results, and some "if, then, else" thinking, should be helpful before you decide in exactly which direction to throw money at the problem.


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## yunlin12 (Mar 15, 2003)

Thanks for the ideas. I took out the HDD, it wouldn't even spin up in one of my external HDD enclosures, I think it's safe to say that the HDD is toast. It lasted just over 2.5 years, I guess they don't make them like they used to. Sigh...


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

yunlin12 said:


> Thanks for the ideas. I took out the HDD, it wouldn't even spin up in one of my external HDD enclosures, I think it's safe to say that the HDD is toast. It lasted just over 2.5 years, I guess they don't make them like they used to. Sigh...


What's the brand and model number on that drive?


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## yunlin12 (Mar 15, 2003)

unitron said:


> What's the brand and model number on that drive?


Don't remember off the top of my head, I think it's WD10EVVS.


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## sushikitten (Jan 28, 2005)

So last night we go to watch the Premiere and its stuck in the reboot loop...Powering up, Welcome, Almost there, GREEN SCREEN OF DEATH...lather rinse repeat. This is the second time in 14 months this has happened. We have the warranty but I'm not sure I want to try again (it would be refurb unit #2). I wonder if they'd give us our money back...


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

What does Kickstart 54 say about it?


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## sushikitten (Jan 28, 2005)

Running kickstarts tonight. We were too pissed last night to do anything.


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## sushikitten (Jan 28, 2005)

The TiVo won't accept any codes. The green and amber lights blink but we never get a blue light. Then it just keeps rebooting.


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## sushikitten (Jan 28, 2005)

And after a truly unbelievable TiVo rep (very condescending and almost d-baggy) we talked to a manager and are getting a replacement.


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## sushikitten (Jan 28, 2005)

And TiVo premiere #4 has died. This is asinine.


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## L David Matheny (Jan 29, 2011)

sushikitten said:


> And TiVo premiere #4 has died. This is asinine.


That sounds too unlikely to be just bad luck. Have you checked your outlets to make sure they're properly grounded? Is your cable (or antenna) feed coming through a grounding block that's bonded to the same ground as the outlets? Is your network connection also using that same ground reference? Is your TiVo on a UPS battery-backup unit? Is the TiVo properly ventilated and running at a reasonable temperature?


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## sushikitten (Jan 28, 2005)

Well, we got it figured out. Our expander must be wonky because we unplugged it/decoupled it and the TiVo rebooted and worked fine. Of course we lost everything that was recorded...but at least it works. 

That said, I don't think it was the problem in the other deaths as we did unplug the extender and didn't get a resurrection.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

sushikitten said:


> Well, we got it figured out. Our expander must be wonky because we unplugged it/decoupled it and the TiVo rebooted and worked fine. Of course we lost everything that was recorded...but at least it works.
> 
> That said, I don't think it was the problem in the other deaths as we did unplug the extender and didn't get a resurrection.


Might as well upgrade to a single internal of the 2TB to 3TB variety, and quit messing with an external.


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## sushikitten (Jan 28, 2005)

unitron said:


> Might as well upgrade to a single internal of the 2TB to 3TB variety, and quit messing with an external.


Is this something Tom could do? Or you? 

I don't have any idea where to even start or how much money we're looking at.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

sushikitten said:


> Is this something Tom could do? Or you?
> 
> I don't have any idea where to even start or how much money we're looking at.


The right 2TB drive, mail ordered from newegg or Amazon, a little under $100, need a PC to connect old drive and new drive to, and either the (free if you burn your own) jmfs boot cd (I can make you one), or the (free) DvrBARS software (there's a thread about it around here somewhere) running on Windows.

Let me do a little research.

We may have to do it on one of your PC's--my TiVo wrangling machine has some problems I haven't been able to solve yet.

How much longer before y'all move?

What's the model number of your Premiere? (TCDxxxxxx)--sticker on back.


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## sushikitten (Jan 28, 2005)

Well...thanks for the offer...but we've decided we're not wanting to void our warranty since we've had so many issues thus far and it would be our luck to install the new drive and the thing dies. Fortunately it's basically a backup TiVo so we don't need much space.


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