# Newbie Owner Upgrades his Tivo, really slow guided setup?



## MokTask (Jan 13, 2006)

I posted most of this information in a thread by another member, who was (is) upgrading his Tivo nearly the same as I have, but I had a "problem" which I think needs more eyes on it to answer.

Basically, I bought an 540040 at the end of January, less than a month ago, with all intentions of upgrading it from its tiny 40gig hard-drive. Granted, even if I didn't want the extra space, this little sucker was getting upgraded because that high-pitched whine was becoming very, very unbearable. So, since Newegg is my retailer of choice, I stopped by there last week and bought a 250gig Seagate drive.

I used the Weaknees guide (at http://tivo.upgrade-instructions.com/index.php) for doing a "no backup, keep recordings and settings".

I had a spare machine siting around without Windows installed on it, no hard drives at all hooked up, a machine for my near-3 year old. So, this was the test-bed for the upgrade.

It took the course of 2 separate days to do, because I was "in charge" of the kids the first day, and that didn't work well, pretty much only opened the Tivo up, and removed the drives, that was it.

So, last night (2-20-06) I finished the task.

The whole project start to finish from unhooking the Tivo to putting it back on top of the entertainment center and hooked up, probably just over an hour (between the 2 days).

Copying over the existing 40gig drive to the new 250gig drive, 33 minutes (yeah, I used a stopwatch ).

The instructions were extremely clear, concise, and there were no problems, with the upgrade.

I'll say this though, as SOON as I had it hooked up, I sighed a huge relief sigh, as that thing was quiet. It no longer had that annoying high-pitch whine. Granted, the Seagate drive "clicks" while doing searching/seeking, but it is not noticeable when sitting on the couch or chair, so that's ok by me. The whine, I could hear that in the bedroom, it was ridiculous. So, bigger drive or not, I'm already happy without the noise driving me nuts.

250gig drive, something like 284 hours basic, 198 medium, 139 high, and 80 best, not too shabby for an hours (or so) work in upgrading. (those hour numbers are from memory of this morning before I left for work) This upgrade cost me $108 (with shipping) so this is more than worth it for the cost.

*Here is where my problem/question comes in:*
I was (still am) a complete moron. When I hooked the Tivo back up, I hooked it up WRONG! I put the RCA's in the wrong spot (in the input, the 2-pair next to each other), hard to see because it was "behind" the unit, but that's just an excuse, I'm a moron. When it didn't work right, I re-hooked it all up, with using just Coax, nadda, Dish wouldn't "tune". So, I ran through the guided setup again, there is a part where it asks you to make sure the RCA (or better) connection is setup between your Dish receiver and the Tivo, Being a real idiot here, I was like "duh" so I put the RCA connections the RIGHT way.

HOLY COW, was running through the guided setup slow. Slow, slow, slow. So slow in fact, I fell asleep in the recliner waiting for it at one point. Every step took forever. This of course could have been avoided had I hooked the darn thing up right the first time, I'm pretty sure, and NOT gone through guided setup....

The first "call" to Tivo for setup, it "hung" on the "preparing to load" section, and then the "loading XX%" took a long time, probably 45 minutes for the first one. Then, the tuning of the over the air antenna channels, it ran through them, and it completely hung on the last channel to tune, this is where I fell asleep, over an hour later (now 2am) on the same screen, I rebooted the Tivo. Had to run through a few more steps and this next time it tuned channels it took about 30 minutes. When it got to the next "call to Tivo" I just went to bed, when I woke, it was done, and ready to go.

Is this normal to have such long times to do things because of the larger HD? Tonight I'll run through some more things, to see if it takes more time. Maybe it was trying to "index" the drive or something and that is why it was taking so much time?


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## wmm_16 (Jul 10, 2003)

It sounds like it downloaded an update or something because of the loadingxx% taking a while. I'd bet if you did a call now, it woudl be pretty quick. I just did the exact same upgrade you did last night but mine was 160G and my first call was really quick.


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## labblue (Nov 2, 2005)

It sound like your swap partition is not active. The tivo will be really slugish when doing anything. It will reboot if you try to do too many tasks at the same time without swap being active.

telnet into the tivo and type: "cat proc/meminfo"

You will probably see that your swap is at 0MB. I'm not familiar with the Weaknees guide, check it for instructions on how to enable the swap. (or search the forums here)


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## MokTask (Jan 13, 2006)

labblue said:


> It sound like your swap partition is not active. The tivo will be really slugish when doing anything. It will reboot if you try to do too many tasks at the same time without swap being active.
> 
> telnet into the tivo and type: "cat proc/meminfo"
> 
> You will probably see that your swap is at 0MB. I'm not familiar with the Weaknees guide, check it for instructions on how to enable the swap. (or search the forums here)


Well, I'm not certain I'll be able to telnet in, since this is a 5400xxx series Tivo, unless I haven't read the "good parts" yet.

If I want to check to see if the swap is set or not, I'll have to dismantle it, and boot into a Linux box to see what the drive partitions look like. (is there harm in booting into Linux with these Tivo drives installed, I know Windows XP is a no-no, because it will corrupt the bootloader, but will Linux boot work OK?)

I did all the commands I was supposed to, with the -s 127 (from memory, might not be right here, but it was done right doing the upgrade) switch, so I'm /guessing/ it went ok.

All menus go fine, the guide comes up fine, everything else is fast. That first guided setup was torture though, it was so slow. I sure /hope/ it was just doing a software upgrade though, as wmm_16 had suggested, that would make me feel better.


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