# TiVo HD Image & Repair failure (gray screen)



## hchuckie (Sep 11, 2011)

Came home to the dreaded "Welcome! Powering up..." screen on my TiVo HD (652160)

Reboot, no luck... it would just hang on that screen. Left it unplugged overnight, tried in the AM, got as far as "A few minutes more...", then it cycled back to "Welcome!" and didn't get any further. Figured it was the hard drive gone bad.

Got a new WD10EVDS, and intended to use WinMFS. However, hooking up my old TiVo drive to the PC didn't work... my PC reported it failed and wouldn't mount it. I figured that at least confirmed it was a hard drive issue. Since it was dead, I did some reading and discovered the InstantCake option.

Downloaded and burned the ISO for 652's, then used it on the brand new WD10EVDS. The uncompress & restore reported successful, no problems. It told me to put the new drive in my TiVo, so I did...

And I get the solid gray screen about 10 seconds after the Welcome! screen. One green LED, no opportunity to kickstart. 

Unplugged the new drive and popped the old one back in, just to see what would happen... it continued to hang on Welcome!, but never went gray. So I figure it's something to do with the hard drive, I just don't know what. 


Any ideas? Did I stupidly miss a step somewhere?


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

hchuckie said:


> Came home to the dreaded "Welcome! Powering up..." screen on my TiVo HD (652160)
> 
> Reboot, no luck... it would just hang on that screen. Left it unplugged overnight, tried in the AM, got as far as "A few minutes more...", then it cycled back to "Welcome!" and didn't get any further. Figured it was the hard drive gone bad.
> 
> ...


You could have a troubled original hard drive and a power supply with "issues".

Or maybe you should run wdidle3 on that 10EVDS so that it hasn't already booted and gone to sleep by the time the TiVo gets organized enough to call on it.

Or maybe it's just a plague of gremlins. Been cursed by any witches lately?

You could, after undoing intellipark, try running that WD off of a computer's power supply to see if the TiVo's power supply is able to power the motherboard but not the drive.


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## hchuckie (Sep 11, 2011)

unitron said:


> You could have a troubled original hard drive and a power supply with "issues".
> 
> Or maybe you should run wdidle3 on that 10EVDS so that it hasn't already booted and gone to sleep by the time the TiVo gets organized enough to call on it.
> 
> ...


wdidle set to 62.0 minutes.

Ran the WD off the PC power, while plugging the sata data cable into the TiVo mobo, got the same result... 10 sec. then gray screen.

Stopping by the apothecary's shop tomorrow AM for some eye of newt. At this point, sprinkling chicken entrials inside my TiVo at least couldn't make it any _worse_.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

hchuckie said:


> wdidle set to 62.0 minutes.
> 
> Ran the WD off the PC power, while plugging the sata data cable into the TiVo mobo, got the same result... 10 sec. then gray screen.
> 
> Stopping by the apothecary's shop tomorrow AM for some eye of newt. At this point, sprinkling chicken entrials inside my TiVo at least couldn't make it any _worse_.


Closely inspect the power supply for capacitor disease, but if it isn't the power supply I fear it's the motherboard.


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## lillevig (Dec 7, 2010)

hchuckie said:


> Came home to the dreaded "Welcome! Powering up..." screen on my TiVo HD (652160)
> 
> Reboot, no luck... it would just hang on that screen. Left it unplugged overnight, tried in the AM, got as far as "A few minutes more...", then it cycled back to "Welcome!" and didn't get any further. Figured it was the hard drive gone bad.
> 
> ...


Do you have a spare SATA drive of at least 160 GB (or can you borrow one) to try instead? In any case, I will PM you a link to a WINMFS image that you might try. Just in case something bad happened using your other method.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

hchuckie said:


> wdidle set to 62.0 minutes.
> 
> Ran the WD off the PC power, while plugging the sata data cable into the TiVo mobo, got the same result... 10 sec. then gray screen.
> 
> Stopping by the apothecary's shop tomorrow AM for some eye of newt. At this point, sprinkling chicken entrials inside my TiVo at least couldn't make it any _worse_.


I just now had a grey screen or gray screen (both ways for searchers) on an S2 DT, took the lid back off, reseated the drive's power and data cables (and IDE/SATA adapter), and all is well.

The moral here is maybe you should try a different SATA cable between TiVo motherboard and drive. Can't hurt.


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