# TivoGuy On Slide Appearing For No Reason - Is My Hard Drive About To Fail



## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

I have recently had a couple of unscheduled playings of the Tivoguy on his slide (normally only seen on power up or soft reboot) when I have pressed the Tivo button on my remote to get back to Now Playing etc.

Although its nice to see the little guy on his slide as this isn't a documented product feature or indeed normal Tivo UK S1 behaviour does anyone think this is a sign that one or both of my two Samsung HA250JC hard drives is about to die some time soon? They are now both 4 years and 10 months old so have done pretty good service.

I don't have a backup of my numerous thumbs due to pulling the hard drives being the only way to do this and due to also lacking the necessary oldie desktop PC. So I suppose if I don't want to lose all my thumbs I really ought to take a basic backup of the Tivo system now.

Also if anyone has an ancient desktop PC they no longer need due to also having dispensed with their Tivo then I would gladly pick it up from you for free if you are anywhere in London, Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire, Berks or Bucks.


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

You can invoke the same video by pressing Tivo + Zero.


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## katman (Jun 4, 2002)

ThAbtO said:


> You can invoke the same video by pressing Tivo + Zero.


???? Not on mine I cant !!!


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

Indeed not  That only applies to the US S1 units


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

I have occasionally seen the tivo-guy animation shown after pressing tivo as you describe,
not sure of the circumstances, but its not a common indicator of drive failure.

As for backing up, the backup tivoweb module will backup/restore all your wishlists and seasonpasses (but not thumbs) into a tiny file - that's usually more than sufficient IMO.

It's apparently possible to have too many thumb ratings (!), which will cause the daily call to fail during indexing (failed loading series) - though that's pretty rare.


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## BaggieBoy (Dec 4, 2000)

ThAbtO said:


> You can invoke the same video by pressing Tivo + Zero.


The original UK units had this feature but it was removed in the 2.5.5 software release.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

ThAbtO said:


> You can invoke the same video by pressing Tivo + Zero.


No you can't if you live in the United Kingdom (its a place located far to the East of you across the Atlantic ocean and outside any of the 50 States of the Union) and are using a Thomson PVR10UK Tivo S1 machine.

On our British machines the Tivo Guy on his slide will only show after a reboot or if you run a hack to turn the guy on his slide in to a recording you can play from Now Playing.

Responding to mikerr's comments that its probably nothing to worry about I was only concerned because it has happened twice in the last couple of weeks or so.



BaggieBoy said:


> The original UK units had this feature but it was removed in the 2.5.5 software release.


Also have we any idea why the Brits were not thought to be capable of being trusted with this product feature?

By the way are you the same BaggieBoy as the one who hangs out on the pepipoo.com forums?


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## Ashley (Apr 20, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> Also have we any idea why the Brits were not thought to be capable of being trusted with this product feature?


Is it because it mentions Sky at the end?


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> No you can't if you live in the United Kingdom (its a place located far to the East of you across the Atlantic ocean and outside any of the 50 States of the Union) and are using a Thomson PVR10UK Tivo S1 machine.


As I have already pointed out, and slightly more politely I might add 


Ashley said:


> Is it because it mentions Sky at the end?


Yes; probably, anyway.


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## Furball (Dec 6, 2001)

Pete77 said:


> I have recently had a couple of unscheduled playings of the Tivoguy on his slide (normally only seen on power up or soft reboot) when I have pressed the Tivo button on my remote to get back to Now Playing etc.
> 
> Although its nice to see the little guy on his slide as this isn't a documented product feature or indeed normal Tivo UK S1 behaviour does anyone think this is a sign that one or both of my two Samsung HA250JC hard drives is about to die some time soon? They are now both 4 years and 10 months old so have done pretty good service..


I think you'll be fine, ours does this from time to time and I seem to have tracked it down to the odd power spike or mains dip which can evoke it the next time you press the TiVo button.

Fur


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## BaggieBoy (Dec 4, 2000)

Pete77 said:


> By the way are you the same BaggieBoy as the one who hangs out on the pepipoo.com forums?


That's me! Having the same avatar is probably a dead giveaway.


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## ywu (Jan 12, 2003)

I got the reboot slide thing every night and I diagnosed it down to my Sky box crashing (I knew because it get the info channel and my 30 sec skip is reset). It seems that if the input fails then Tivo seems to want to reboot too at some point afterwards. Got a new digibox and it hasn't rebooted since.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

ywu said:


> I got the reboot slide thing every night and I diagnosed it down to my Sky box crashing (I knew because it get the info channel and my 30 sec skip is reset). It seems that if the input fails then Tivo seems to want to reboot too at some point afterwards. Got a new digibox and it hasn't rebooted since.


I wasn't talking about getting the Tivo guy on his slide after the Tivo box had rebooted of its own accord (its well known it does this after the set top box has provided no signal for the last 30 minutes) but instead getting the Tivo guy on his slide in Tivo Central just because you press the Tivo button when the box has not recently rebooted.


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

There is only one Tivo guy animation, isn't there?


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## RichardJH (Oct 7, 2002)

cwaring said:


> There is only one Tivo guy animation, isn't there?


Yes but there must be 2 Petes now  looking at the duplicate posts and replying to his own post


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

cwaring said:


> There is only one Tivo guy animation, isn't there?


But if you had read the discussion you would obviously have realised that it was about there being more than one situation in which the playing of the Tivoguy animation can occur and in this case it occurring in a situation where it is not normal for it to do so. Or is it just that you enjoy having a pop at Pete77 whenever you possibly can?:down:


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

RichardJH said:


> Yes but there must be 2 Petes now  looking at the duplicate posts and replying to his own post


I think you must perhaps be seeing double Richard.


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Here's the circumstances I *think* cause it:

If the tivo reboots when in standby, it starts up back into a blank screen (standby) without displaying the tivo guy.

Then when you next press the tivo button, it comes out of standby and plays the tivo animation.

I used to get it when I used the tivo standby button to turn the TV off, and had the tivo on a reboot switch overnight.
Now its a different TV, I don't use tivo standby and havne't seen it since.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

mikerr said:


> Here's the circumstances I *think* cause it:
> 
> If the tivo reboots when in standby, it starts up back into a blank screen (standby) without displaying the tivo guy.
> 
> ...


I think you may be on to something there Mike as I don't normally use Standby on the Tivo remote (mainly because my Philips tv annoyingly only comes back out of Standby by pressing a channel number or input source button on its remote even though it goes off as a result of the Tivo remote standby command) but I think I did use the Tivo remote Standby command (unexpected phone call each time) around the time I experienced these couple of unexpected playings of the Tivoguy animation.

As my Tivo goes off at 5am every morning for 2 minutes on a timer if I had put the Tivo and tv in Standby with the remote then the Tivo is bound to get rebooted with the Tivo still in standby mode.

I suppose I just thought I was pushing my luck with the two Samsung HA250JC drives coming up for five years old in July.


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## RichardJH (Oct 7, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> I think you must perhaps be seeing double Richard.


 Well at least one of you is good at editing/deleting posts. What the other one good at ????


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> Or is it just that you enjoy having a pop at Pete77 whenever you possibly can?:down:


Me? Would I do that! How very dare you


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