# Freeze Reboot



## Daryl62756 (Oct 4, 2007)

I use 2 Directv Tivos in my household. Both of them within the last few weeks have been randomly rebooting and sometimes freezes. Last Night this occured during House. I have a friend that the same problems have started. What is really strange is his unit failed during the same show. Has this happened to anyone else? I'm not quite sure if Directv has sent an update. Any ideas?


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## rbtravis (Aug 9, 2005)

Various members have reported this problem. Especially in the Northeast. If not this then it could be a sign of your disk going bad. The problems reported earlier were mostly on the Fox network.


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## Daryl62756 (Oct 4, 2007)

Yes I do live in the Northeast and I will take notice if this seems to occur while viewing or recording on Fox!:up:


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## basf_audio (Feb 25, 2005)

I too seem to have stumbled upon this. I started seeing shows with only partial recordings. It wasn't until I actually saw it freeze and reboot did I come to see why so many partial recordings. Everything seemed to start getting slower and slower... Then not respond to the TiVo remote (even though you can see the orange/yellow light confirm the command on the front panel). I'm on version 11 as well...


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## dtremain (Jan 5, 2004)

We are heading into "sunspot" season. That often has a momentary affect on the satellite signal, and a break in the signal can cause a series two Directv TiVo to reboot.

Could well be what's going on, given the coincidence of it happening to people during the same program, in the same region.


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## macizcool (Jul 15, 2007)

Mine has been freezing this past month without restarting. I come home and it's frozen. This is the first time it's done this on such a regular basis (couple times a week). I suppose this could be a hard drive issue, although, my unit is only about a year and a half old. I guess when it comes to hard drives, this cold happen anytime :-\

When you say Fox, are we talking about local Fox or Fox news? I have been trying to record Glen Beck for a few days now and when I come home, it's not recorded. (It finally recorded last night)


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## dtremain (Jan 5, 2004)

macizcool said:


> Mine has been freezing this past month without restarting. I come home and it's frozen. This is the first time it's done this on such a regular basis (couple times a week). I suppose this could be a hard drive issue, although, my unit is only about a year and a half old. I guess when it comes to hard drives, this cold happen anytime :-\
> 
> When you say Fox, are we talking about local Fox or Fox news? I have been trying to record Glen Beck for a few days now and when I come home, it's not recorded. (It finally recorded last night)


What you are describing typically occurs with Directv TiVo Series 2 units on 6.4a right now. It has been discussed throughout the forum and has occurred with my unit as well.

Odds are it is not the hard drive. It is certainly not the hard drive when it happens at the same time to multiple units in someone's home or in an area.

It happens when at least one tuner is on a local station. In this case FOX. The OP mentioned that they were recording House, which is on the FOX network.

It is an unresolved software issue that has been going on for some, annoying, time now.


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## Daryl62756 (Oct 4, 2007)

Yes you are correct. This particular evening we were recording two shows off our local Fox and NBC networks.:up:


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## macizcool (Jul 15, 2007)

dtremain said:


> What you are describing typically occurs with Directv TiVo Series 2 units on 6.4a right now. It has been discussed throughout the forum and has occurred with my unit as well.


The strange part about this freeze is that I've had 6.4a since it came out, and didn't have the problem until recently, happening a couple times a week. So maybe it's a coincidence or my tuner just hasn't been on Fox for the past 9 months or so.


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## dtremain (Jan 5, 2004)

macizcool said:


> The strange part about this freeze is that I've had 6.4a since it came out, and didn't have the problem until recently, happening a couple times a week. So maybe it's a coincidence or my tuner just hasn't been on Fox for the past 9 months or so.


I definitely think that the interference of "sunspots" with the satellite signal could be part of the issue. March is the major time for them and their occurence has definitely cause reception errors in the past.


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## macizcool (Jul 15, 2007)

dtremain said:


> I definitely think that the interference of "sunspots" with the satellite signal could be part of the issue. March is the major time for them and their occurence has definitely cause reception errors in the past.


I suppose that's possible. There have been a lot of break-ups lately.

Maybe that explains why my cell phone has been dropping so many calls, too!


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## codespy (Jan 7, 2006)

I too have been having problems lately on my HR10's with freezing and random reboots. Changing from channel 79 to a local channel 6(Fox) or 4(NBC) causes freezing and I have to pull the plug.

Last Sunday at 1:00pm a unit just rebooted on its own, and the Friday before a different unit rebooted while recording Conan's last show. Three weeks ago one of my Seagate 750's crashed and was only a year old.

My HR20-100 has been losing picture after trying to get into the 'active' window. The 'active' wasn't working, then tuning back to a channel I had sound and no picture.

Two other people I know who's HR10's and SD-DVR40's I have imaged for them also have had their machines freezing/ not working just this last week after not having problems for almost a year.

Hope this crap ends soon. Damn sun.


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## bwash (Dec 16, 2002)

Just thought I would report some reboots (previous three days) and a freeze yesterday. This unit is fairly new 1 year old and I don't think it is the hard drive. I am running version 6.4a (upgraded from 6.1 to get proper DST), when I was on 6.1 I never had a reboot or freeze.


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## dtremain (Jan 5, 2004)

bwash said:


> Just thought I would report some reboots (previous three days) and a freeze yesterday. This unit is fairly new 1 year old and I don't think it is the hard drive. I am running version 6.4a (upgraded from 6.1 to get proper DST), when I was on 6.1 I never had a reboot or freeze.


Neither did I.

And, mine comes and goes for well over a year now. If it was the hard drive, it would get steadiliy worse.


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## Curator (Mar 1, 2009)

I've had the same problem for a couple of months now, but I think I've solved my reset/freeze problem by disabling the option to record suggestions. I think there were some channels getting recorded that were just so bad, that it would cause the receiver to reset. I would usually notice that the receiver would reboot for freeze every few days, but after disabling the suggestions two weeks ago, I haven't seen this problem.


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## basf_audio (Feb 25, 2005)

I'm looking at getting off as many of the recordings and testing the theory that my external drive is going bad... Even though the 6+ hour test that I ran on it showed everything passed. I did notice that I had more than 100+ shows available and that connecting via TiVo Desktop or through the Web GUI would time out every time. Now that I'm below, it works. (Still waiting on another crash and reboot to test the theory). The other two TiVos (Series 2) just keep chugging along without issue... ** sigh **


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## Naipes (Jun 8, 2001)

I've had the same problem off and on now for quite some time. I just figured it was DirecTV doing some garbage to get me to call so they could sell me their dvr instead of TiVo. I just reboot and everything is ok for a few days. 

Thing is... I'd love to get HD, but I hate to give up my TiVo. I don't want to go back to Cox (no NFL Sunday Ticket or March Madness). So I'm screwed... until things change. I'll hang with the old technology as long as I can... or until something better comes along.


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## ohbewan (Feb 25, 2004)

I have been experiencing the same thing, freezes and reboots. I have two HR10-250's upgraded to 500GB and two stand alone series 2's with an external DTV receiver. The HR10's are having the problems. A number of the freezes have happened on the same frame of the same show. The problem appears to be triggered by pixelation/breakup in the stream from the local CBS affiliate (KION in Salinas). Since the standalone units don't crash I can see the event in the playback. I checked the same time window on a system on a different CBS affiliate (KPIX in San Francisco) and there is no issue at the same time window. Also, the other local stations which happened to be recording at the same time did not show an issue. Gut feel is that this is an issue with the uplink from particular local station or a particular transponder. The three events last week that I can pin down down were Monday 3/2 at about 10:27PM, Friday 3/6 at about 11:41PM and Sunday 3/8 2:48AM on KION in Salinas, CA. Can anyone else correlate a similar instance at these times?


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## Mark W (Dec 6, 2001)

This seems like another occurrence of problems that they have had before with DTivo units choking on certain data being passed in the datastream. The common theme is people having more than one unit locking up at the same time when tuned to local channels. It's so annoying, but I don't want to give up the Tivo interface. One of the many similar problem threads from the past.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=368836

Since there are so many fewer people on these forums now, there are less people to make noise to DirecTV.


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## ohbewan (Feb 25, 2004)

I don't think this is an intentional data structure being passed. I think the issue is that the error checking is not robust enough to withstand severe burst errors. So, when there is extreme interference occasionally a bad packet gets accepted and it tells the unit to do bad things. I suspect the directv dvrs should be prone to this as well. The result is the same though DTV needs to improve their error checking capability..


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## codespy (Jan 7, 2006)

Besides my HR10's, my HR20-100 rebooted last Thursday morning at 7:01am for no reason at all. It was not due to a software upgrade either.


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## basf_audio (Feb 25, 2005)

As references in another thread - it ended up being my external drive going bad. I removed it, worked fine... Added it back, went back to rebooting. I ended up just grabbing a new 1 TB WD drive and swapping out my main internal drive... Keeping the external drive turned off I'm now at 180+ hours of HD and working as planned...


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## dtremain (Jan 5, 2004)

basf_audio said:


> As references in another thread - it ended up being my external drive going bad. I removed it, worked fine... Added it back, went back to rebooting. I ended up just grabbing a new 1 TB WD drive and swapping out my main internal drive... Keeping the external drive turned off I'm now at 180+ hours of HD and working as planned...


Hard drvie issues are not consistent with the problem generally being discussed in this thread. (Hard drives don't cause to units to crash at exactly the same time.) What has been going on, for a long time, is that Series 2 SD Directv TiVo based DVRs running the 6.4a (latest) version of the software, crash when there is an interruption in the signal. That may be a rain fade or, as described above, a brief interruption in the signal.


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## rogrrr (Jan 17, 2004)

Very interesting...but not funny! Every time I try to watch my SJ Sharks on the "old" DTivo R10, My wife seems to be watching American Idol on Fox on the DTV R-22 and lo and behold, it reboots....AAARRRGGGHHHH....

Now, what's also interesting is that the R-22, which is almost new, does not have this problem BUT, every time we watch American Idol, there's always audio interference- which is particularly disconcerting because it detracts from the individual performances.

I was under the assumption that the HDR on the R10, which is not the original and only a year and a half old, was dying. Also, the unit never seems to reboot when it's merely on live buffer. I'm thinking of plugging in the HDR from my old Series 2 into the DTivo unit: Will it work?


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## rogrrr (Jan 17, 2004)

[QUOTE I'm thinking of plugging in the HDR from my old Series 2 into the DTivo unit: Will it work?[/QUOTE]

Meant to say: plugging in the HDR from my old Series 2 Standalone into the R10- will it work?


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## LoREvanescence (Jun 19, 2007)

We are having the same issue with our R10.

Over the past week numerous times I have come home to the unite being frozen. I'm also having the random reboot issue. And in my case it does not involve fox or any local channels. So far it's happened on the Speed channel and A&E. And what is happening is when we hit the guide, the video on the channel behind the guide freezes, but the guide continues to work. Then in the guide, when you select a different channel to view, as soon as you hit select the unit reboots it self. 

This has happened at least once every other day and twice yesterday.

I do live in the north east, but seem to have different triggers. Is this issue related to what's being mentioned in this thread or is it a sign of a bad unit?


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## dtremain (Jan 5, 2004)

LoREvanescence said:


> We are having the same issue with our R10.
> 
> Over the past week numerous times I have come home to the unite being frozen. I'm also having the random reboot issue. And in my case it does not involve fox or any local channels. So far it's happened on the Speed channel and A&E. And what is happening is when we hit the guide, the video on the channel behind the guide freezes, but the guide continues to work. Then in the guide, when you select a different channel to view, as soon as you hit select the unit reboots it self.
> 
> ...


I would have to say that your problesm is likely the unit itself. But, I could be wrong.


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## rbtravis (Aug 9, 2005)

Rogrrr:
As long as you leave your HDR on channel 3 or 4. Change channels on your R10. activate recording with HDR remote, change channels with R10 remote. Make sure both remotes have different numbers other than 0.


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## LoREvanescence (Jun 19, 2007)

dtremain said:


> I would have to say that your problesm is likely the unit itself. But, I could be wrong.


I was thinking that problem was the case. This unit is 6 years old now and has started having some other trouble as well. For example it hasn't been able to make a daily call since October and I have tried everything I could think of with out luck. In addition last summer / fall it crashed with the gsod a few times, but I haven't seen it do that while I have been home at least in the last couple of months.

I has hoping it would last until the new HD Direct Tivo comes out, but I don't think my family members would put up with the freezing (which causes missed recordings) or rebooting when you look at the guide and try to change the channel much longer, they are already talking about dumping the box.

I love TiVo, but what are our options? Does Direct have any deals for upgrading an R10 to one of the HD DVRs? And if we do that, what would it cost us / would direct likely do to switch it out for a new TiVo box when they come out?


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## bwash (Dec 16, 2002)

All of my freeze ups were when, I think, I may have lost signal. I am not sure why I didn't check for my readings but my dish must have gotten a bit out of alignment and I was getting 50s 60s and at best 70s for most transponders. Just as soon as we had a bit of rain I think I just lost enough where the signal was not good enough, this coupled with being set on a local station seemed to make the unit freeze up.

I have since realigned the dish and so far have had no freeze ups.


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## rogrrr (Jan 17, 2004)

rbtravis said:


> Rogrrr:
> As long as you leave your HDR on channel 3 or 4. Change channels on your R10. activate recording with HDR remote, change channels with R10 remote. Make sure both remotes have different numbers other than 0.


rbtravis....thanks for the reply....but the unit kept rebooting anyway, even after trying all the above . So is the recording already "tainted"? IOW, do I need to try recording _only_ when the other unit is _not_ on the local channels? That, unfortunately, defeats the purpose having 2 DVR's. The wife is not a big fan of hockey and I ain't into Grey's Anatomy, etc....

I'm tempted to give up on Tivo altogether. The DTV R22 is actually far more advanced than the "old" R10 in many respects. For example, the overlapping issue is solved with the R22. However, one of the most glaring omissions of the R22 is the slow mo feature. It's a joke, completely useless. This is bad for sports fans! Also, the remote is not, unlike Tivo, user friendly- still haven't gotten used to it...but of course, this is a topic for another thread.....still wondering if I can use the old hard drive from my old Standalone Tivo in the R10...can't afford to invest in new stuff...


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## rbtravis (Aug 9, 2005)

Yes you can use the Hard drive but you will have to do a clear and delete everything to marry the drive to the motherboard. I suggest you upgrade the software to 6.4a. It has a feature that will make show transitions easier. If you need the new software you can get it from www.DVRupgrade.com for $20.00 available by iso download or by CDrom via USPS. Good Luck and remember to run Manufacturers Diagnostic's on the Hard Drive before you image it and install it in your R10.


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## rogrrr (Jan 17, 2004)

rbtravis said:


> Yes you can use the Hard drive but you will have to do a clear and delete everything to marry the drive to the motherboard. I suggest you upgrade the software to 6.4a. It has a feature that will make show transitions easier. If you need the new software you can get it from www.DVRupgrade.com for $20.00 available by iso download or by CDrom via USPS. Good Luck and remember to run Manufacturers Diagnostic's on the Hard Drive before you image it and install it in your R10.


I appreciate the advice very much, rbtravis but you're speakin' a language I don't grok..."show transitions"?.... I should be able to get the upgrade from DTV for nothing, doncha think? I am paying for the service, after all...I don't know anything about imaging as I was hoping to avoid that step by using the old Tivo hardrive...I can always get a hardrive cheap.


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## rbtravis (Aug 9, 2005)

Rogrrr:
The upgrade to 6.4a is available from directv via phone line, the satellite downloads have already ended. It takes about an hour over the phone and not all of the machines will get it. The surest way is now from DVRupgrade. Remember different TiVo's use different Processors. The code that runs on a Directv series I and series II are different. Directv's are different from standard Tivo's. You have to get the correct code for the processor in your TiVo. That is why I suggested DVRupgrade, it avoids a lot of frustration. By the way www.Frys.com is having a special (this week only) on Western Digital 320 Gb PATA drives for under $50. good luck what ever you choose to do.


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## rogrrr (Jan 17, 2004)

rbtravis said:


> Rogrrr:
> The upgrade to 6.4a is available from directv via phone line, the satellite downloads have already ended. It takes about an hour over the phone and not all of the machines will get it. The surest way is now from DVRupgrade. Remember different TiVo's use different Processors. The code that runs on a Directv series I and series II are different. Directv's are different from standard Tivo's. You have to get the correct code for the processor in your TiVo. That is why I suggested DVRupgrade, it avoids a lot of frustration. By the way www.Frys.com is having a special (this week only) on Western Digital 320 Gb PATA drives for under $50. good luck what ever you choose to do.


Thanks, RBtravis...Are you suggesting I could get a new HDD from Frys (or wherever), and get the "Instantcake" from DVRupgrade? But I still have to transfer the data to the Tivo and I have no idea how to do that...or I could spend as little as $110 or so and get a "blessed" HDD from them or someone else like "dvrdude" which we did before. That one lasted a year before it started to crap out...


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## rbtravis (Aug 9, 2005)

Rogrrr:
I would get MFSlive-1.4.iso CD from www.MFSlive.org for free via download . Burn and Boot from it. Use: dd_rescue -A -v /dev/hda /dev/hdc
to copy your files from the old drive to the new drive if possible.
total cost $50.00 to Frys if successful. If not then spend $20.00 with DVRupgrade. that is the cheapest choice.


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## rogrrr (Jan 17, 2004)

rbtravis said:


> Rogrrr:
> I would get MFSlive-1.4.iso CD from www.MFSlive.org for free via download . Burn and Boot from it. Use: dd_rescue -A -v /dev/hda /dev/hdc
> to copy your files from the old drive to the new drive if possible.
> total cost $50.00 to Frys if successful. If not then spend $20.00 with DVRupgrade. that is the cheapest choice.


rbtravis, you have been most gracious. Funnily enuf, at this moment I had just dusted off an old copy of H*****g Tivo by jeff keegan, 2004 edition. It comes with the MFS CD. But my eyes glazed over as I started to read....in any case, it's probably out of date, no?


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## rbtravis (Aug 9, 2005)

I don't know. Spike at www.MFSlive.org has fixed a lot of errors. That is why I recommend his site. I am not familiar with Jeff Keegan or his works.


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