# My Big Fat Zippering Mistake (but all is well now)



## pcguru83 (Jan 18, 2005)

Just thought I'd share my experience with zippering my Tivo. I made a REALLY big mistake, and looking back, it's rather funny. First off, it took me pretty much all evening before I saw the Promised Land that is the bash prompt from my Windows PC. BUT, this is because of the really stupid mistake I made. Let me explain.

I purchased a 6.2 image and boot disk from PTVUpgrade, made the necessary disks, and then inserted my Tivo drive into my PC. No problems, easy as it gets. I was able to image the drive and zipper it with no problems. Again, very easy stuff. Very anxiously, I pull the drive from my computer and put it back into the Tivo and boot it up. The Tivo boots up just fine, and gives the me Error #51. No big deal. Now, it gets to the main Tivo menu and I notice that I have no programming...it says it can't acquire the info from the satellite. Now, if I would have read the instructions COMPLETELY for this step, this shouldn't have worried me. I somehow missed the part about running Guided Setup and then rebooting AGAIN. So, without knowing this, I run Guided Setup several times trying to get my channels back and I reboot it several times. Still no programming... At this point I'm very confused. From my previous Tivo hacking experiences years ago, I was more concerned about the Tivo just starting (which it obviously did). Never had this "problem" cross my mind.

Now here's where it starts to get ugly. I read back over the directions again at this point and realize where I made my mistake, so I hurry over to my PC to re-image and re-zipper. The cover was already off of my PC, so I set the Tivo drive off to the side, _but didn't plug it in_!! Wow, what a stupid mistake. Oblivious to this fact at the time, I proceed to re-image _my PC hard drive_. It finishes copying the image, I switch CD's, blah, blah, blah, and still don't realize what I've done. After fully completing the Zipper setup and turning the PC off, I go to reach for the "Tivo" drive to give it another shot. At this point I become fully aware of the HUGE headache I have just cause myself. Fortunately, I had just reformatted my PC about a week ago, so had a very recent backup, but there were still a few e-mail messages that I lost (**Note to Gunny** Could you resend those two e-mail messages you sent me a couple days ago? Especially those install instructions... Thanks.  ).

I was so aggravated at myself!! I have tinkered with computers (both hardware and software) virtually my whole life, and I had never done anything like this before. Obviously I couldn't continue on at this point until I restored my PC, so that ate up about two hours of time that I was hoping to spend with the Tivo. After it was all said in done, I followed the directions EXACTLY (imagine that...heh) and lo and behold, I've got a bash prompt. Words cannot explain the joy I felt at seeing that series of letters and numbers. OK, maybe that's taking it a bit far, but hey.... I now have a fully zippered TiVo with Telnet access and I'm ready to start exploring. Any suggestion on where to start? What world of possibilities has now been opened?


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## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

you aren't alone..
I did the exact same thing when I was just upgrading my tivo capacity.
I now COMPLETELY disconnect all HD's except my tivo one to avoid such fun.


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## dvrdrvr (Jan 25, 2006)

As an added precaution, after I boot off the linux CD and before I enter a command that could really screw the wrong drive up. Like this command:

mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hda | mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hdb

I do a 'shift' page up and you'll be able to see what type of device each address (hda, hdb, etc) is.


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## Diana Collins (Aug 21, 2002)

I've taken it a step further (knowing what a klutz I can be) - I have a completely separate PC I use strictly for TiVo work. I took an old PentiumIII PC with 512MB RAM, stuck an old 18GB drive and a CD-ROM into it. I use the 18GB as temporary backup storage, if needed, and so don't have to worry about what I might overwrite.


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## rbautch (Feb 6, 2004)

I wiped my entire c drive, overwriting it with a nice 6.2 image. Luckily only minor losses, but a PIA! Live and learn.


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## pcguru83 (Jan 18, 2005)

rbautch said:


> I wiped my entire c drive, overwriting it with a nice 6.2 image. Luckily only minor losses, but a PIA! Live and learn.


Yep, exactly what I did, and definately a pain. Good recommendations by all, will definately keep these in mind next time I pull the drive....


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## bengalfreak (Oct 20, 2002)

LMFAO...I'm the biggest dummy in the world, but I have yet to write over my C drive. Maybe there's hope for me yet.


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## Spiff (Mar 1, 2004)

Not what I thought this thread would be about.

_How'd you get the beans above the frank?_

Seriously, I'm sorry to hear this but glad you had most things backed up.


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## Jerry_K (Feb 7, 2002)

I stripped out everything from an old computer and use that for my TiVoing. I used to take out all the hard drives etc. 

I did copy a blank disc to my "old" DirecTiVo disc and wiped out all the recordings. C'est la vie.


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