# Series3 is randomly rebooting



## gquandt

I have a Series3 with a connected eSATA external hard-drive (Seagate FreeAgent Pro 500 GB, installed by the hack method prior to recent software release). I have had it since last May and everything seems to work great....BUT....recently it has been randomly rebooting. Also, upon reboot it occassionally brings up a screen that says "TiVo has discovered a fatal error and is attempting to fix. This could take up to 3 hours. Please do not power off or restart during this time." It ultimately always gets past this and works fine again, usually after about 1 hour.

Is anyone else having this problem? Any suggestions? I am tempted to return it to Costco and buy another one (gotta luv the costco return policy). However, the hassle of getting Comcast out for cable cards again is not pleasant.

Thanks,
Greg


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## zoeacrute

I have the same problem, but it only happens when I play an album on the Rhapsody Service. It never takes 3 hours to reboot. Usually 15 minutes. Very annoying though.


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## n0pa

Do you put the Tivo in standby?


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## dkmize

I am having the same problem - randomn reboots. I do not have an external hard drive or even use rhapsody - sometimes it gets VERY slow which often follows with a self reboot. Sometimes after the reboot, the screen is a weird blue/green color then I have to pull the plug and force another reboot to get it to normal. Any ideas?


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## KJW

I was getting random re-boots when flipping channels so I returned my tivo to costco and picked up another. the cable card switch was a pain -- took five calls to finally have the cards bound to the new machine and I needed four separate sets of numbers (new host id, cable card no., cable card from cablevision, and the number of the cards that slide into the cabel cards. but I did not have to have a tech come out. let's hope this one works better.


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## nickmyer5

I had this problem too. I was told by tech support that it could be a number of things:

The TiVo itself
The power supply
The cablecards
The ethernet connection

I was told to plug my TiVo directly into the wall vs. through a power strip. I was also told to remove the cablecards and ethernet cable and see if it works okay. If it doesn't then it's probably a hard drive issue. If it does help then it's usually a problem with one of the remaining three things. I managed to narrow it down to my ethernet cable which was surprising to me. I swapped it out and haven't had the reboot issues again (although it's only been a day).

That being said, I powered on my TV this morning and experienced a black screen and my TiVo was unresponsive. I had to reboot it myself to see the powering up screen. What gives? I might just return this TiVo HD and swap it for another as I'm tired of dealing with my current one.


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## KJW

I received the same useless response from Tivo tech support. But because my tivo only had a problem on average once a week, it would take me over a month to determine if it was my power supply, either of my two cable cards, or my tivo wireless adapter. And during that month I would have to do with a crippled tivo. Ridiculous -- regardless of what the problem is, the tivo should not just spontaneously re-boot.


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## sstatman

zoeacrute said:


> I have the same problem, but it only happens when I play an album on the Rhapsody Service. It never takes 3 hours to reboot. Usually 15 minutes. Very annoying though.


Could you give me more details about this? Are you using the free trial, or do you have a Rhapsody account? When did it happen? What were you doing when it happened? What sort of Tivo do you have?

If I can get some basic info, I can research the problem on the Rhapsody service end and try and track this down ...


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## NJChris

I've been having random reboots lately. It seems it has been since the last update.

I've noticed that I turn on the TV and whatever channel the Tivo is on might be stuttering. If i do a rewind it fixes it. I'm guessing this builds up to the problem.

I can't see how this is a hard drive problem since the stuttering doesn't happen again after rewinding or using the 7-second replay or 30 second skip.


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## Cajun Man

I have been experiencing this problem too. Until a couple of weeks ago, my S3 has always been absolutely rock-solid reliable. But lately, it has been rebooting every couple of days on average.



n0pa said:


> Do you put the Tivo in standby?


Great question. Yes, I have always put my TiVo in standby mode. And now I am wondering if this is part of the issue?

Another possible theory is that the S3 does not like being connected to an HDMI switch. I have been using an XtremeHD 4-port switcher for almost 3 months, with no issues. But I am wondering if TiVo's latest software update has added some instability relative to HDMI switches?

Does anyone else utilize an HDMI switch (or an HDMI-switching receiver) between their S3 and their TV?


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## mohanman

I just had my first random reboot. Had my TIVO less than one week. I was watching a recording of the Peoples court.

Weird
Mo


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## jvother

I had some problems too, after I installed the TiVo-sanctioned eSATA drive. In three years I never saw that "fatal error" screen (with a Series2 and Series3), but now I've seen it twice in addition to one non-fatal reboot. It only happened on my Series3 when I was fooling around with cables in my entertainment system. I did not bump the external drive, but the cable probably got bumped. I'm guessing it is very sensitive to that, so when I recently added my blu-ray player I unplugged the TiVo first. I figured I'd rather do that than see that "fatal error" screen again.

By the way, that brings me to a side note. Is there any reason that there is no shutdown option on the TiVo? I hate simply unplugging or turning off computers without at least attempting to go through the shutdown sequence.


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## Ksas

My S3 worked great without a crash for over a year. I added a drive expander from Tivo and have had a few reboots with the green screen. When I installed the drive the S3 responded that it wasn't an approved drive. I got the drive from Tivo! My guess is that there are still some issues in the software related to the drive expander.


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## psquared

My Series 3 has been randomly rebooting as well. It seems to be getting more frequent. I don't have an expansion drive or anything different in my physical installation from when I first got the S3 and it has run fine for quite some time until now. 

The problem seems to build up as the machine gets slower and less responsive. The reboot can almost be guaranteed if you press multiple buttons once it starts getting stuck on operations. 

This led me to suspect either of two possible issues:

1. Rhapsody, which I have as a subscription service - Rhapsody has always been a bit buggy, slow and subject to stalling. BUT - the reboot has never occurred during my use of Rhapsody itself. Nevertheless, I wonder whether the use of Rhapsody sets things in motion for the build-up to a need to reboot. 

2. Could there have been a software update that has caused the problem? 

I saw the power supply/ethernet/cable card suggestions earlier in the thread, but I don't see how any of that would fit my situation, which seems to be a Tivo internal software or hardware problem.


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## geodon005

I, too, was stricken by the reboot bug for the first time yesterday, although my reboots were not so random. Live TV was fine, but anytime I tried to watch a recording, it would lockup within a minute or two and spontaneously reboot. I also called TiVo, and got the same advice everyone else has mentioned (and tried them all with no luck), but since I did have an Apricorn DVR Expander, one bit of advice from the tech seemed useful: remove the CableCards and see if I could still watch a recording. No luck trying this either, which pretty much pointed to the hard drive. I then "unmarried" my external drive and rebooted, rerunning guided setup. That worked! Even though I lost all my recordings, the new recordings I have made all work without a hitch. I will be ordering a TiVo-approved external drive this week.


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## retired_guy

Don't know whether this will help or not but it did solve a rebooting problem for me. Apparently my batteries were getting weak so that when I pressed the remote two or more times in a row, the signal sometimes wasn't being transmitted properly to the Series 3 TiVo and I sometimes got a reboot. When I put in fresh batteries, the problem went away. It's a cheap and easy thing to try.


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## gweempose

Cajun Man said:


> I have always put my TiVo in standby mode. And now I am wondering if this is part of the issue?


I have never put my S3 in standby, and yet I have experienced these same random reboots lately. For the record, my S3 has an MX-1 hooked up to it with a 750GB DB35 inside. Like others have mentioned, my setup has been rock solid until recently.


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## Ksas

retired_guy said:


> Don't know whether this will help or not but it did solve a rebooting problem for me. Apparently my batteries were getting weak so that when I pressed the remote two or more times in a row, the signal sometimes wasn't being transmitted properly to the Series 3 TiVo and I sometimes got a reboot. When I put in fresh batteries, the problem went away. It's a cheap and easy thing to try.


Could be. My remote batteries went dead a few days after the start of this problem. I have replaced them and haven't had a reboot since. I'll keep an eye on this.


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## KJW

I know some very knowledgable and helpful Tivo employees monitor this forum. Hey guys, any idea what is causing this?


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## Bschneider

Here is a post that I wrote back in November regarding random reboots..

TiVO Series 3 problems..with a fix 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I had a really strange problem with my TiVO Series 3 yesterday and I just wanted to let everyone what the symptoms were and what I did to fix them.

Last week the Series 3 received an update to its software. The verison went from 9.1 to 9.2j. That version last 5 days and on Friday 11/09 the verison went to 9.2a. 

On Friday, my wife and I were watching a recording while the Tivo was recording two shows and transfering another from a computer. Everything as far as we know was working just fine. 

The next morning, I got up and saw that the Tivo rebooted but it was hung at the screen " powering up.." I unplugged and plugged the Tivo back in and all was well for about 5 minutes. It crashed again, it always hangs at the "powering up" screen. This went on for about 2 hours, until I decided to call Tivo Support. Actually, I had to wait until they were open.

I was on hold with support for about 45 minutes until I finally got someone. I explained the problem and we then started to troubleshoot. The call lasted two hours. Ugh! We popped out the CCs and it seemd to have fixed the problem. So we re-ran the guide to remove the CC guide. After about 15 minutes of it not crashing, we re-ran the setup to again incude the CCs. What was really weird was as soon as I inserted the first card, the Tivo crashed. So we thought that the CC was bad. 

So I removed both cards and everything was fine for about an half hour except that the picture was pixalating, freezing, etc. Support told me that either the cards went bad or the Tivo went bad. So he asked me if I wanted to swap out the Tivo. I told him that I will think about it and get back to them. (He stated that an advanced replacement unit would cost $799 plus shipping until they received my unit)

So I hung up with support and starting thinking about the problem. There was no cards in Tivo and it was still having problems crashing. So I took out my original hard drive and put it back in. Wouldn't you know it, all the problems went away.

Now what is the real problem, the hard drive or the new software version that was installed, 9.2a? So I went to CompUSA, and purchased a 500gb drive ($109), the same size drive I have in there. I copied the suspected drive over to the new drive, that took 5 hours to complete. I placed the new drive into the Tivo and turned it on. 

So far, not one crash and I didn't loose any of my recordings.. All is well in the life of the Tivo Series 3.

Just a word of caution, if your Tivo starts rebooting randomly, it just may be that the drive is starting to fail.


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## NJChris

I dont think it's the drive. This started happening (as others have noted as well) after the last software update. I've noticed before it happens that things start to get wonky - either unresponsive commands, or random pixellation, or some other sign of slowing down.

It's too much of a coincidence that this has happened to people after the last update.

Mine is doing it at least once a day now AFTER the last update. It did NOT do this before the update.


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## ilh

The new software in the update may be residing on a bad part of the drive, and when it gets errors you get reboots. I can certainly see how a software update could appear to be the problem when it could be an underlying hardware problem.


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## NJChris

But wouldn't it just be in a reboot loop if the system software was on a bad part of the drive? Or when certain functions are accessed? If it was, then a reboot wouldnt fix it (at least it wouldn't EVERY time).


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## truman415

Just got my TivoHD for Christmas. Using HDMI between Tivo and TV. Its rebooted 4 times since setup complete (Christmas Evening). Seems to work fine, then goes to "Powering up" screen.

No cable cards yet (on order from Charter).... Just basic coax into Tivo, HDMI to Tv. Can't even get HD channels yet because of no cards.

All reboots occurred after "Fall 2007" update; not sure what that contained.

Love Tivo, just want it to work!


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## Cajun Man

NJChris said:


> I dont think it's the drive. This started happening (as others have noted as well) after the last software update. I've noticed before it happens that things start to get wonky - either unresponsive commands, or random pixellation, or some other sign of slowing down.
> 
> It's too much of a coincidence that this has happened to people after the last update.
> 
> Mine is doing it at least once a day now AFTER the last update. It did NOT do this before the update.


My S3 is acting similar to yours, it reboots almost every day. And I strongly agree with your thoughts regarding the cause. Given how rock-solid reliable S3's were prior to the last update, it certainly looks like a software bug.


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## KJW

Why do I feel like Linus in the Pumpkin Patch waiting for a Tivo tech to respond to this thread?? Have they even acknowledged there is a problem?


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## hv9200

My S3 has worked flawlessly for 2 years, started the re-boot and fatal errors immedialty after the fall update. It does it maybe once a week or so. annoying but so far has not interrupted any recordings. seems to happen only when I turn the display on. I will consider repair/replacement if next software update does not correct this


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## SeanTivo

I also have the S3 reboot issue. My S3 had been solid for the year I had it until just recently. 2 things changed just before I started seeing the reboots. A software update + I added a Tivo External drive. 

I've seen the green screen of death twice but it powerd back up after about 15 minutes both times. I'm now looking at about a once a week "regular" reboot. 

While waiting for the reboot to finish I've been contemplating how painful calling Tivo tech support would be if/when the reboot fails and whether it would be best to just go with the comcast tivo when it's available. 

If the day comes where a Tivo rep tells me that my $1,000 tivo hardware setup I have is toast and I'm SOL I will definitely be looking at the Comcast 
solution.


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## FuzzyL0g1c

Looks like I'm in this sinking ship as well. Same deal with me.

Everything was great with my S3 until the fall update.
I got the fall update and within a few days, studdering and reboots started, growing worse daily. 
Called Tivo and swapped out the box (did a quick exchange for $799)
Plugged in the new box and old cable cards and things were peachy keen for 2 weeks.
Then I got the fall update and back to immediate reboots / studdering upon boot up. 

The tivo box itself is stable while completely unplugged from the Cable-in. The second I plug in the cable (not the cards, just the cable) same @()&*@ starts up again.. studder for about 5-10 minutes reboot, rinse, repeat. 

As a professional, I lead a team of people who's sole function is to track down and identify problems within a complex system. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that something has gone wrong with the fall update on certain configs or systems. 

C'mon Tivo. You are better than this.


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## FuzzyL0g1c

Okay - here's one for the books.

I talked with Tivo level 3 tonight. I mentioned my problem and the similar problem you all are having. They say... "Your signal is too strong and that's why it's rebooting. You need to call comcast and ask them to lower your signal strength". (I was doing my best not to laugh my head off, but I asked. "So, wouldn't sending the signal through a series of splitters lower the db to achieve the same 'dampening effect you suggest. I can do that right now." To which they replied "No it's different." 

Should I take a picture of the comcast guy's face when I tell him I need my signal strength lowered? Should be classic. 

Yup. There you have it. 2 DVRs which suddenly begin rebooting as soon as they get the fall update = too high a signal strength from comcast. 

Lost all my faith in Tivo tonight. Think I'll cancel my account, ebay the S3 for parts.


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## johnlennon

I had TiVo HD for less than 4 weeks. I upgraded to a 400 GB HD a few days ago. Tonight I was watching a recording while another one was recording. About 1 hour 20 minutes into the program, a 2nd recording started. A bunch of seconds later TiVo rebooted, showed the green screen of death and I let it be. About 1.5 hours later it was rebooting again but never coming back to life.

I let it suffer for about 4 hours, then replaced the HDD with the original one and it's back to business. I know the new HDD isn't the problem as it works fine - even with TiVo: I watched several hours of HD content today and the PC doesn't detect any issue with it.

It either downloaded a new update or TiVo left it in a dirty state from which it can't recover - either way it's a software bug, not a hardware issue.

I'll keep my backup in a safe place, as this could happen again in the future and I don't want to brick my unit while it's out of warranty.


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## furyous

Just to add to the evidence, I've had my s3 since Dec 21, 2 cable cards, no external HDD. On the 27th it started stuttering on live TV, slowing down, freezing and then rebooting. After 3 reboots on Thurs it started working ok, but then when I turned on the TV fri morning it was rebooting again. It now is in a state where it will never fully recover, it boots to a blank Tivo screen and is unresponsive. If you keep trying to command it, it will reboot. I had the 9.2 software for several days prior to the problem with no issues. Tivo is sending me another unit.


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## ajlee7

I have had the same problem since the last update. My S3 has been rock solid until last weekend. I uncoupled my external HD and disconnected both cablecards but I it's stuck on the main menu. After 10 min, it will reboot, come up to the main screen, and get stuck (does not receive remote commands). $1K down the drain or can I get a new S3 from Tivo after a yr and still maintain my lifetime?


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## johnlennon

ajlee7 said:


> I have had the same problem since the last update. My S3 has been rock solid until last weekend. I uncoupled my external HD and disconnected both cablecards but I it's stuck on the main menu. After 10 min, it will reboot, come up to the main screen, and get stuck (does not receive remote commands). $1K down the drain or can I get a new S3 from Tivo after a yr and still maintain my lifetime?


If you didn't make a backup of your Hard Drive it may be though. As I proved with my test, it isn't the tivo that is dead, it's the sw on the disk that has a problem. I was able to restore my backup (lost some of changes I made but other than that it's back in business and currently recording a bunch of programs).


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## DrSnoCaps

Ditto here. I'm not a heavy user and I've had at least 1/2 dozen random reboots since the Fall update. The most recent occurred last evening with about 4 minutes to go in the Patriots vs. Giants game. Needless to say, I was not amused :-(


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## smb56

I'm guessing I am in the same boat as the rest of you. Mine started during Pats vs. Giants game last night and now all I get is constant reboots. TiVo is just over 1 year old too.


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## Rich584

smb56 said:


> I'm guessing I am in the same boat as the rest of you. Mine started during Pats vs. Giants game last night and now all I get is constant reboots. TiVo is just over 1 year old too.


Have you tried recording on both tuners simultaneously? My Series 2 DirecTv reboots randomly in any other mode.

Rich


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## smb56

Have you tried recording on both tuners simultaneously? My Series 2 DirecTv reboots randomly in any other mode.

Rich 

Heck, It wouldn't change channels, wouldn't go to Tivo Central, wouldn't do anything until I unplugged it and it rebooted about 6 times. It is finally up and running. The Tivo HD downstairs did the same thing at the same time and boy was my wife po'd.


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## styggiti

Looks like I'm not alone with my problem ;-)

I was running a Series 3 w/ 2 cable cards (connected through a receiver via HDMI) for just over a year with absolutely no problems. After the Fall update, however, both recorded shows and live TV started having periods of short stuttering. The tivo always gets through it, but it's irritating. 

Beyond that, my Tivo started having the reboot problem, although it's never happened while changing channels or in the middle of a show. Usually, it's when I come home from work and turn the tv/reciever on. What I'm greeted with is a message from the TV that there's a weak or no signal over HDMI. If I switch my reciever over to use the component cables (also hooked to the tivo), I see a blank gray screen. If I leave it on the component output, the Tivo will reboot itself within 5 minutes and all is well for anywhere from 1-3 days before I run into the same problem again. A few times, the reboot has resulted in the GSOD as well, always recovering within just a few minutes.

I've been able to force the reboot several times by switching my receiver over to use the component output and playing mp3's through my tivo (using the tivo desktop music interface) - I have to use the component output in order to use Zone 2 on my receiver. If I switch from component back over to HDMI, the tivo almost always freezes up, resulting in an automatic reboot within a few minutes. It never did this before - only after the fall update.

I love my Tivo, I really do. But the stuttering, and especially the rebooting are really starting to grate on my nerves. I haven't yet called Tivo support, mainly for the same reasons cited previously in this thread. I'm not looking forward to dealing with 1st level support for a product that I have a fair amount of knowledge about.


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## Rich584

styggiti said:


> I love my Tivo, I really do. But the stuttering, and especially the rebooting are really starting to grate on my nerves. I haven't yet called Tivo support, mainly for the same reasons cited previously in this thread. I'm not looking forward to dealing with 1st level support for a product that I have a fair amount of knowledge about.


Don't waste your time calling them. Does no good. First they deny the rebooting and then want to send out an installer to fix the software (true story), then you get the ultimate insult: "We'll be happy to replace your TiVo with a D* DVR."

That will solve the rebooting problem and from what I've been able to read the R15 is now pretty stable. Certainly more stable than the TiVos. Only 100 hours SD tho.

There is something wrong with the software. TiVo knows it and D* knows it. For some reason they can't fix it. At first I thought it was an attack by D* on TiVo. Seems to be spread out like a virus on the complete TiVo using public.

Rich


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## KJW

Rich584 said:


> There is something wrong with the software. TiVo knows it and D* knows it. For some reason they can't fix it. At first I thought it was an attack by D* on TiVo. Seems to be spread out like a virus on the complete TiVo using public.
> 
> Rich


What/who is D*?


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## Foobarsky

I have a new Tivo HD that's also randomly rebooting -- usually just while watching something live (although *always* in HD). It only happens once in a while, maybe once a week? so I can't even begin to think about how to track it down.

(For the record, I've got a vanilla HD box with an M card, Comcast cable, and the Tivo external HD).

It took Comcast about two weeks and 5 visits to get the cable card to work; I'll kill myself if I have to go through that again with a "replaced" unit....

Any thoughts? Could it really be the software? If so, wouldn't we be seeing *a lot* more reports?


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## Rich584

KJW said:


> What/who is D*?


Common abbreviation for DirecTv.

Rich


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## bizzy

The etymology is somewhat amusing. In the US DBS TV market, the two players are "Dish Network", a brand name of EchoStar, and DirectTV. 

On forums, people began using the abbreviation "E*" as a shortcut to refer to EchoStar/Dish.

The abbreviation D* came to be understood to be a similar reference to DirecTV, even though there is no "Star" in the name.


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## Rich584

Foobarsky said:


> Any thoughts? Could it really be the software? If so, wouldn't we be seeing *a lot* more reports?


I was surprised to find the problem so wide spread. I thought D* was trying to push TiVo out.

I am convinced it is the software. What puzzles me is: Why doesn't TiVo fix it?

And there are a lot of posts about the rebooting issue on this and other forums.

I gave up after replacing everything that could possibly cause reboots and even sent out a hard drive to the company I bought it from and had it diagnosed. Came back with a clean bill of health. It has to be the software. And I am also convinced it has something to do with the Dual Live Buffers (DLBs). Mine do not reboot if the sat feed is disconnected or I am recording on both tuners.

Rich


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## NJChris

I'll just add another 2 cents. I sometimes will turn on my tv and my Tivo is stuttering. A quick rewind fixes it, but this had NEVER happened to me before the last update. I think this contributes to the rebooting.

I hope it gets fixed SOON.


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## George Cifranci

I also have rebooting issues although it mostly happens when I turn on my entertainment system. 

I have a Sony R60XBR1 (SXRD HDTV), Tivo Series 3 (connected via HDMI) with 750GB internal and eSata Antec MX-1 with 750GB Segate DB35 in it as well. I have a harmony remote which when I turn on my system turns on my TV, my Yamaha V2600 receiver and switches to the input. Sometimes I will turn my system on and the screen will freeze and then reboot. Sometimes the screen will freeze and then I can use the Tivo menus fine and then the Live TV starts working again but if I go to play a recorded show it will say that there was no signal and show wasn't able to be recorded. However, if I reboot the Tivo the recorded shows play fine.

I had the green screen of death back in early 2007 before I had my eSata drive, the solution then was to stop using the built in ethernet port and use a USB to ethernet adaptor. The green screen lockups went away after that.

Since connecting my eSata drive though (even before the last update) I have had reboots.


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## Foobarsky

Maybe the common element is the eSata drive?

I've had mine connected since I set up the stock unit a month ago....has everyone else with reboots had the external drive?


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## styggiti

My problems started right after the Fall update, before I added the official eSata drive. In my case, the stuttering and reboots happen with or without the eSata drive.


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## KJW

nope -- my reboots happened with no external drive and the original TIVO drive inside. I have since gotten another TIVO, to which I have attached an external drive. So far, no problems.


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## George Cifranci

Foobarsky said:


> Maybe the common element is the eSata drive?
> 
> I've had mine connected since I set up the stock unit a month ago....has everyone else with reboots had the external drive?


In my case, yes.


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## Rich584

Foobarsky said:


> Maybe the common element is the eSata drive?
> 
> I've had mine connected since I set up the stock unit a month ago....has everyone else with reboots had the external drive?


I have six SD units that all reboot randomly or at the same time. No eSATAs. It's the software. Logic must prevail. There is no other commonality that I can find.

Rich


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## KJW

It must be the software. too coincidental that this is happening only after the latest firmware update. Plus, if its hardware, TIVO is really screwed given the number of people complaining about this problem.


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## sac84371

Okay TivoPony and TivoJerry. What is up with this? I have PM'ed you will my private experience with this and no response as of yet. Is Tivo aware of this issue and if yes when do you expect a fix.

Please help.


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## mbeshirs

will tivo work in philippines

[email protected]


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## Foobarsky

Well, this is heading toward a reproducable problem for me:

It only seems to crash when changing channels, either because I manually changed or because it was getting ready to record something.

It doesn't appear to crash if I leave it alone on a particular channel (not that that's very useful!)

I just about only watch HD content -- not sure if that's part of the problem or not.


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## steak

Well, I was about to pull the trigger on a S3 but this thread is making me rethink this decision. We had Tivo with D* a while back and when I switched to Fios we used their unit. With there latest SW upgrade it screwed up a lot of things including the system randomly rebooting. If the S3's are now doing the same thing I don't want to invest in them quite yet.

Very disappointing. I miss my DVR service and couldn't justify paying $25 per month for 2 dvr's with multiple software issues.


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## DingoAce10

What's up all,
Just throwing out a possible solution, cause it seem to fix my issue. 
I had this similar issue a few months back...my first Tivo S3 (owned for 1 month) crashed and fried the internal HDD...There was some kind of power outage in my house at 1:37am (I know cause the Tivo froze at that time). I rebooted it and seem to work fine...Then it just rebooted and never came back...
After I got the replacement Tivo, I was watching TV and it would randomly reboot...So I knew there was something wrong with my homes power...I had all of my HT equiptment plugged into surge protectors...but after doing a little research...those things are basically useless! The power in my house was going up and down so much it was effecting the tivo with low voltage...

So LONG story short...I went out and purchased a UPS backup with AVR (Automatic Voltage Regulator) and my Tivo S3 has worked flawlessly since (now that I just said that it will probably crash tonight )

I have all of my HT equiptment plugged into a "Power Console (line conditioner)" and that PC is then plugged into the UPS...It is a little overkill, since it seemed to work great with just everything plugged into the UPS, so you might be able to get away with that. But I am parinoid about my HT stuff, so I like redundancy 

Otherwise...If you already have your systems plugged into a UPS with a AVR then sorry for the long thread for nothing 

Just throwing it out there.


----------



## hv9200

DingoAce10 said:


> What's up all,
> Just throwing out a possible solution, cause it seem to fix my issue.
> I had this similar issue a few months back...my first Tivo S3 (owned for 1 month) crashed and fried the internal HDD...There was some kind of power outage in my house at 1:37am (I know cause the Tivo froze at that time). I rebooted it and seem to work fine...Then it just rebooted and never came back...
> After I got the replacement Tivo, I was watching TV and it would randomly reboot...So I knew there was something wrong with my homes power...I had all of my HT equiptment plugged into surge protectors...but after doing a little research...those things are basically useless! The power in my house was going up and down so much it was effecting the tivo with low voltage...
> 
> So LONG story short...I went out and purchased a UPS backup with AVR (Automatic Voltage Regulator) and my Tivo S3 has worked flawlessly since (now that I just said that it will probably crash tonight )
> 
> I have all of my HT equiptment plugged into a "Power Console (line conditioner)" and that PC is then plugged into the UPS...It is a little overkill, since it seemed to work great with just everything plugged into the UPS, so you might be able to get away with that. But I am parinoid about my HT stuff, so I like redundancy
> 
> Otherwise...If you already have your systems plugged into a UPS with a AVR then sorry for the long thread for nothing
> 
> Just throwing it out there.


Yep....plugged into UPS here and still have re-boot issue...my issue started after fall update only

this post should be sticky'd


----------



## Rich584

DingoAce10 said:


> After I got the replacement Tivo, I was watching TV and it would randomly reboot...So I knew there was something wrong with my homes power...I had all of my HT equiptment plugged into surge protectors...but after doing a little research...those things are basically useless! The power in my house was going up and down so much it was effecting the tivo with low voltage...


You are better off with a GFI than a surge protector. The national grid is loaded with surge protectors as are the attending sub stations. My company did a study on surge protectors back in the late '80s and came to the conclusion that the surge protectors sold in retail stores were useless. I use surge protectors for the extra outlets, but I don't expect them to do anything.

Most home appliances will operate between 95 and 130 VAC. If your power is fluctuating more than that, you have a major problem.

Can't see where you are from, but I would suspect CA.

Rich


----------



## Rich584

hv9200 said:


> Yep....plugged into UPS here and still have re-boot issue...my issue started after fall update only
> 
> this post should be sticky'd


Again, it is a software problem. D*s proprietary DVRs don't have this problem. Discount voltage problems.


----------



## Rich584

OOH, OOH, OOH, please tell us more about FIOS. Did you have their Internet modem? What problems did you encounter?



steak said:


> Well, I was about to pull the trigger on a S3 but this thread is making me rethink this decision. We had Tivo with D* a while back and when I switched to Fios we used their unit. With there latest SW upgrade it screwed up a lot of things including the system randomly rebooting. If the S3's are now doing the same thing I don't want to invest in them quite yet.
> 
> Very disappointing. I miss my DVR service and couldn't justify paying $25 per month for 2 dvr's with multiple software issues.


----------



## ckelly5

Just started happening here too. Not sure if there was a new update today or something that caused this to start happening. I had 9.2a as of yesterday (just randomly poking around) and the daily call was about this time. It was slow most of today, and it's now rebooted twice on its own (and once with me unplugging it). It boots up into the menu, but the remote and front buttons are both non-responsive. Not a happy camper at the moment, that's for sure... 

Hopefully not a HDD issue...


----------



## ajlee7

ajlee7 said:


> I have had the same problem since the last update. My S3 has been rock solid until last weekend. I uncoupled my external HD and disconnected both cablecards but I it's stuck on the main menu. After 10 min, it will reboot, come up to the main screen, and get stuck (does not receive remote commands). $1K down the drain or can I get a new S3 from Tivo after a yr and still maintain my lifetime?


Hi, I actually isolated the problem. I did not disconnect the cable into the S3. I disconnected it and my Tivo is fine. It does not freeze and does not repeat a reboot. When I reconnect my cable in then the Tivo freezes. Does this mean that the signal from this particular cable is too weak or too strong?


----------



## Gregor

ajlee7 said:


> Hi, I actually isolated the problem. I did not disconnect the cable into the S3. I disconnected it and my Tivo is fine. It does not freeze and does not repeat a reboot. When I reconnect my cable in then the Tivo freezes. Does this mean that the signal from this particular cable is too weak or too strong?


If you connect a splitter into the line, that will chop the signal a bit and you can see if the reboots continue. This is a common problem with FIOS, didn't see what your provider is.


----------



## ckelly5

I was having the same issue here. yesterday all of a sudden it started stuttering, culminating in continuous reboots. 

Unplugging the cable line resolves the freezing, and it appears to be happening only when the TiVo is tuned to an HD channel. I tried adding a splitter into the mix, and I thought that resolved the issue, but it appears to have only delayed the hang. Now I'm stuck on CNNHD while I write this, and it's stuttering/ Pixelating. 

I think it may be a signal issue, though I fear calling TiVo as I'll probably be told to unplug cablecards and then it'll be Comcast's issue - either to reactivate cards or to mess around with signal meters. I don't know if a new box will even help resolve this or not. Either way I'm probably looking at at least a week without TiVo. Arg


----------



## KJW

No, it cannot be a "signal issue" -- if there is a fluctuation in signal strength and the tivo reboots, it is a tivo issue and tivo needs to fix it.

Ironically, I noticed an ad for TIVO HD in one of the sunday circulars that said "most reliable DVR." Given these problems -- none of which I ever had on my Cablevision DVR -- I'd say that's pretty misleading.


----------



## ckelly5

KJW said:


> No, it cannot be a "signal issue" -- if there is a fluctuation in signal strength and the tivo reboots, it is a tivo issue and tivo needs to fix it.
> 
> Ironically, I noticed an ad for TIVO HD in one of the sunday circulars that said "most reliable DVR." Given these problems -- none of which I ever had on my Cablevision DVR -- I'd say that's pretty misleading.


Well the TiVo Support techs seem to think the same thing, because they wanted me to call Comcast and have them send someone out to check the line before they go ahead and send me a replacement.


----------



## steak

Rich584 said:


> OOH, OOH, OOH, please tell us more about FIOS. Did you have their Internet modem? What problems did you encounter?


Well,

I think the FIOS tv picture just can't be beat. The DVR sucks big time. I have had the internet service for over 3 years now and not one outage due to Verizon. Not bad at all!!! I have the 30 mb down by 5 mb up. I am thinking about downgrading that because of the cost.

I went ahead and bought my S3 today on ebay. Someone was selling it new for $399. With the $200 rebate in place now that brings it to $199. not bad for a full S3 version. I did check with the seller to ensure it as a TSN648 model with UPC in tact. Hopefully, tivo will honor the purchase for the rebate.

Couldn't pass up the deal.


----------



## mac_g33k

We've had our TiVo HD for not quite a month now and it's never seemed as quick as our previous Series 2. The menus have always seemed slower and I've noticed on quite a few occasions that the video is stuttery and jittery.

Tonight, the video was stuttery and the menus and fast forward controls were particularly slow. And then it rebooted. When it came back up, things were still not right - menus were still very slow and sluggish. Not more than 10 minutes later it rebooted again.

So, after reading the suggestions in this thread, I decided to do a little test. When it finished rebooting, I could hear my drive thrashing around in there and the menus were (again) very slow and unresponsive. So I unplugged the coax cable from the back of the unit. And all of the sudden the menus were very responsive - more responsive than I'd ever seen them on this box. There were also no thrashing noises coming from inside.

I plugged the cable back in and the sluggishness began immediately. S then I checked live TV to see what channel it was tuned on and it was an HD channel. So, I changed it to an SD channel and went back to the TiVo menus. Things were a bit faster, but still sorta slow.

I didn't leave the coax cable plugged in, but I did leave it on an SD channel and now my wife is downstairs watching her show and so we'll see if it reboots on her again.

This is about to drive me mad. We're a long time TiVo fanatics (her license plates say "TVOJNKY") and it really angers me that TiVo is having problems like this with the S3 boxes. Comon TiVo, give us a fix! 

For the record, my box is a TiVoHD, 500GB internal SATA upgrade, no external drive, 1 M cablecard, ethernet connection, and Comcast.


----------



## bizzy

I had the same problems all of a sudden a few months ago, and Tivo replaced my S3 under warranty. The new unit has been running fine so far; but I expect that it will eventually begin doing the same death spiral.

My pet theory is hard drive failure, but who knows.


----------



## steak

So, how old are your Tivo's? I wonder if it is something that is a problem on older manufactured models or newer ones.


----------



## Mickdaniel

Okay, add another one to the pile! Long time Tivo User here (still use my old Series 1 to pause and rewind my tv in the garage). Have a couple of S2's, never a problem. For Christmas I got a series 3 HD, very excited. Read the boards, and made the appointment with Comcast for them to install the cards. Appointment was made for two days out, no problem. So I returned my cable box and hooked up directly, and watched Tivo for a couple of days, no problem. Recorded, used mrv, all was fine. 

Cable installer came (a day late, but no problem) and installed two s cards. First cable card install for him in 4 years, but all went well, HD and premium channels all came in fine. I sent him on his way and ran through the guided steps again. Again, everything went fine, up and running, recording two HD channels at a time, life was grand. 

That lasted about an hour, maybe less. Then the pixelation (sp?) started and I froze up, and Tivo rebooted itself. Well, life has not been good in Tivo land since then. I have rebooted, kickstarted, removed cards, detached cables, rerun the guided steps more times than I care to count. Here is a summary of where I currently stand. With the cable cards in, I seem to be able to watch SD channels without any problem. Response time is not what I am used to, but it does work. Once I jump into HD, I'm all done. The freezing starts, pixels are back, and eventually it reboots itself. Once it starts acting up, I can't even get back to SD channels. 

Box was a refurb, since Tivo was out of the boxes on sale a Christmas when my wife bought it.

So, is it my cable signal strength, the 9.2 software, bad cable cards, or a bad hard drive? Where do I start? I'm tempted to think it is just a bad Tivo unit, but would love some more experienced opinions.


----------



## TexasAg

steak said:


> I went ahead and bought my S3 today on ebay. Someone was selling it new for $399. With the $200 rebate in place now that brings it to $199. not bad for a full S3 version.


Good luck. I've never seen anyone posting that Tivo honored a rebate for a unit bought on Ebay. And unless you happened to get the seller's receipt (the one the seller got when he/she bought the Tivo), you won't have any receipt to submit to Tivo. An Ebay invoice likely won't cut it and will be rejected by the company handling the rebates.


----------



## ckelly5

steak said:


> So, how old are your Tivo's? I wonder if it is something that is a problem on older manufactured models or newer ones.


Ordered mine in Mid-June. will be nearly 7 months to the day when I get to return it next week (I think my comcast tech is going to tell me everything is fine).


----------



## ckelly5

Mickdaniel said:


> That lasted about an hour, maybe less. Then the pixelation (sp?) started and I froze up, and Tivo rebooted itself. Well, life has not been good in Tivo land since then. I have rebooted, kickstarted, removed cards, detached cables, rerun the guided steps more times than I care to count. Here is a summary of where I currently stand. With the cable cards in, I seem to be able to watch SD channels without any problem. Response time is not what I am used to, but it does work. Once I jump into HD, I'm all done. The freezing starts, pixels are back, and eventually it reboots itself. Once it starts acting up, I can't even get back to SD channels.


This is down to the exact detail what's been happening to me the last few days. To get out of the freezing, just unplug the cable line from the box and it will recover; then just change the tuners to SD channels before you reconnect.

I'm starting to think it's a bad hard drive, myself. Maybe the bad drives can't handle the size/ data rate of the HD stream? Or a major bug in the 9.x line that's neutering HD TiVos with damaged drives (the software can't compensate for the bad sectors?) While it's possible that the cablecards could go bad, i think it would affect more than the HD channels only. The only other remote possibility (other than a faulty signal, I guess) would be the HD decoding hardware breaking, but that also seems like a long shot.

Of course then my debate goes to "should I just buy a replacement drive, or hope for the best by trading in my whole unit". If I trade it in with what's left of my warranty, I expect to pay about $50 (based on other reports in this forum) for a whole new box. If I get a new drive, It'll run me ~$250 for a pre-formatted one from Weaknees (don't have the computers lying around to do it myself anymore).

If I knew it was a HDD issue, I'd be more than happy to just replace the drive. I know I could get it up and running in under a week, and likely wouldn't need to have a truck roll to reactivate the cablecards. Unfortunately, I don't know if this is the problem for sure, so I'll probably have to trade in the whole box and hope for the best...


----------



## NJChris

ajlee7 said:


> Hi, I actually isolated the problem. I did not disconnect the cable into the S3. I disconnected it and my Tivo is fine. It does not freeze and does not repeat a reboot. When I reconnect my cable in then the Tivo freezes. Does this mean that the signal from this particular cable is too weak or too strong?


 Why should a low signal cause a REBOOT? It should cause a breakup of the picture if it's too low or at worst a msg saying that channel doesnt come in.

It's very frustrating to find shows recorded in two parts with 10 minutes missing in between because of the reboot.


----------



## ckelly5

NJChris said:


> Why should a low signal cause a REBOOT? It should cause a breakup of the picture if it's too low or at worst a msg saying that channel doesnt come in.
> 
> It's very frustrating to find shows recorded in two parts with 10 minutes missing in between because of the reboot.


It's not the signal itself, it's more of the signal abnormalities wreaking havoc with the software/ video processing/ video buffering and causing the system to lockup, at which point it reboots (my guess is the Tivo does this automatically to try and recover from major issues). When the machine reboots, the tuners are on the same channels they left off on (at least one HD, most likely) and the whole process starts over (decoding bug(?) + bad signal, or other issue, then UI + system lockup, then auto-restart, rinse and repeat).

I agree, it shouldn't cause a reboot, just a "lost signal". Like I said, this could just be a bad signal in conjunction with a larger issue, such as a bug in the software or a defective hard drive which is in turn causing the hang/ reboot.

(disclaimer, this is all just conjecture, of course, I have no idea what's really going on, but it's fun to guess, as I don't have any HD content to watch at the moment )


----------



## steak

TexasAg said:


> Good luck. I've never seen anyone posting that Tivo honored a rebate for a unit bought on Ebay. And unless you happened to get the seller's receipt (the one the seller got when he/she bought the Tivo), you won't have any receipt to submit to Tivo. An Ebay invoice likely won't cut it and will be rejected by the company handling the rebates.


Well, even if they don't I got the new unit for $399 without hassling with rebate mail-ins. Still a win/win if the seller is being truthful. I won't know until I get the unit in my hands hopefully later this week.


----------



## Rich584

*I keep saying this:* It's the software.

It will not reboot if the feeds are unplugged.

It will not reboot if both dual live buffers (DLBs) are eliminated.

It never happened to one of my six SD Series D* TiVos until 6.3e downloaded.

I had a Samsung hooked up a few months ago with no telephone plug. New out of the box. Had 3.something software. Never rebooted or did anything wrong. Plugged in the telephone line after about a month and 6.3e downloaded and the unit started rebooting.

Ponder this. You should come to the same conclusion I have , based on my observations.



mac_g33k said:


> We've had our TiVo HD for not quite a month now and it's never seemed as quick as our previous Series 2. The menus have always seemed slower and I've noticed on quite a few occasions that the video is stuttery and jittery.
> 
> Tonight, the video was stuttery and the menus and fast forward controls were particularly slow. And then it rebooted. When it came back up, things were still not right - menus were still very slow and sluggish. Not more than 10 minutes later it rebooted again.
> 
> So, after reading the suggestions in this thread, I decided to do a little test. When it finished rebooting, I could hear my drive thrashing around in there and the menus were (again) very slow and unresponsive. So I unplugged the coax cable from the back of the unit. And all of the sudden the menus were very responsive - more responsive than I'd ever seen them on this box. There were also no thrashing noises coming from inside.
> 
> I plugged the cable back in and the sluggishness began immediately. S then I checked live TV to see what channel it was tuned on and it was an HD channel. So, I changed it to an SD channel and went back to the TiVo menus. Things were a bit faster, but still sorta slow.
> 
> I didn't leave the coax cable plugged in, but I did leave it on an SD channel and now my wife is downstairs watching her show and so we'll see if it reboots on her again.
> 
> This is about to drive me mad. We're a long time TiVo fanatics (her license plates say "TVOJNKY") and it really angers me that TiVo is having problems like this with the S3 boxes. Comon TiVo, give us a fix!
> 
> For the record, my box is a TiVoHD, 500GB internal SATA upgrade, no external drive, 1 M cablecard, ethernet connection, and Comcast.


----------



## Mickdaniel

Okay, I buy it, it's the software. 

Now what? I have a brand new S3 HD, and can't watch HD. I have to believe many others are watching with no problem, despite the software problems out there. So, do I send this Tivo back, and hope the one I get will be able to handle it better? A techie friend asked me if there is a firmware update I can download, or a way to total reload the original software. I didn't know, and wonder if this is an option. 

I'm just looking to try to get on line here, and would appreciate anyone's best guess.


----------



## saberdata

Rich,

I think you are right. My Grandmother's Tivo has been doing this ever since she got it in July 2007. We are on out third unit now and the reboot problem continues. We have had Comcast out ten times. All the coax lines and connectors are brand new from the pole to her Tivo. They have told us her signal strength is "very high" but there is nothing they can do about it (I don't believe that but that is another issue - typical Comcast). I also have a S3 box at my home and have never had any problem with it, but the signal strength where I live is "normal". This is quite frustrating. I have had Tivos since 2000 and I love them when they work, but this thing with my Grandmother's Tivo is ridiculous. If Tivo doesn't officially respond to this problem in the next two weeks I am going to contact an attorney. Maybe a class-action law suit will get their attention?



Rich584 said:


> *I keep saying this:* It's the software.
> 
> It will not reboot if the feeds are unplugged.
> 
> It will not reboot if both dual live buffers (DLBs) are eliminated.
> 
> It never happened to one of my six SD Series D* TiVos until 6.3e downloaded.
> 
> I had a Samsung hooked up a few months ago with no telephone plug. New out of the box. Had 3.something software. Never rebooted or did anything wrong. Plugged in the telephone line after about a month and 6.3e downloaded and the unit started rebooting.
> 
> Ponder this. You should come to the same conclusion I have , based on my observations.


----------



## mac_g33k

I fully agree that it's a software issue and not a signal issue. And I certainly don't buy that it's a hard drive issue. Read through this thread and you'll find owners with factory and upgraded drives. My drive is not even a month old. Sure, hard drives die. But the probability that these are ALL hard drive failures just doesn't make sense.

*How about this:* Does anyone have a crashing TiVo and SSH (or telnet) access to check out the log files on their box? Surely because a TiVo runs a *nix kernel it MUST have log files where (I can only assume) you may find evidence of the box being in distress just before it reboots itself. Anyone?


----------



## ckelly5

mac_g33k said:


> I fully agree that it's a software issue and not a signal issue. And I certainly don't buy that it's a hard drive issue. Read through this thread and you'll find owners with factory and upgraded drives. My drive is not even a month old. Sure, hard drives die. But the probability that these are ALL hard drive failures just doesn't make sense.


It may well be a software issue, but I had been running 9.2 for almost 2 months with no issues and suddenly this crops up, pretty much out of nowhere. It's not like everyone suddenly got 9.2 (or insert your version here) last week and now their Boxes are encountering issues.

It's highly unlikely, but I'd love to hear from a TiVo engineer on the root cause and solution of this issue once it is resolved.


----------



## Foobarsky

This problems is sooooo frustrating -- I just want to throw my remote through the screen! (Last night, the Tivo HD didn't reboot, it was just frozen -- had to unplug it to reboot.)

This really, really sucks. I've had my two S2's for 5 years, and transfered my lifetime to the new box. I don't want to deal with tech support; it took Comcast 5+ visits to get the Cablecard working, and I can't bear to go through that again with a pairing to a new box.

Why hasn't Tivo responded in this forum? Anyone? Anyone?


----------



## CrispyCritter

saberdata said:


> Rich,
> 
> I think you are right. My Grandmother's Tivo has been doing this ever since she got it in July 2007. We are on out third unit now and the reboot problem continues. We have had Comcast out ten times. All the coax lines and connectors are brand new from the pole to her Tivo. They have told us her signal strength is "very high" but there is nothing they can do about it (I don't believe that but that is another issue - typical Comcast).


I'm standing here amazed. You know that there's an anomaly with the signal and yet you want TiVo to somehow magically fix it?

TiVos have problems with very high signal stength. Lots of posts about that (mainly in the FIOS arena, but some cable posts as well). Look for the "attenuator" thread for an easy solution if you can't get Comcast to fix their problem with their signal.


----------



## TexasAg

ckelly5 said:


> It may well be a software issue, but I had been running 9.2 for almost 2 months with no issues and suddenly this crops up, pretty much out of nowhere. It's not like everyone suddenly got 9.2 (or insert your version here) last week and now their Boxes are encountering issues.


My S3 started locking up about 3 weeks ago (long after I had gotten the 9.2 update). My S3 had an internal drive upgrade and an external drive. Replaced the internal drive, now there are no problems. If 9.2 was the problem, it should have continued after I copied the old internal drive to the new one using dd_rescue.



saberdata said:


> They have told us her signal strength is "very high" but there is nothing they can do about it (I don't believe that but that is another issue - typical Comcast).


Maybe you should believe it. Do what CrispyCritter suggests and look at the attenuation thread. Attenuators are pretty easy to find.



saberdata said:


> Maybe a class-action law suit will get their attention?


Ahhh, it's been at least a week since someone threatened this. I really like how you acknowledged that the signal strength you have is "normal" while the other is not, but you still threaten to sue Tivo.


----------



## bizzy

I had the problem before I even had 9.x on the tivo.


----------



## ckelly5

Had a Comcast Tech come out, and checked everything. aside from a loose connection or two (didn't affect the outcome) the signal was close to perfect. 100 &#37; strength, low SNR. Pretty much ruled out a signal issue. 

Called TiVo support after that, and I'm getting shipped a replacement (refurb) TiVo box. looks like it shipped out today as well. the $50 cost is a deposit until they receive the old box. So I lose my nice new hardware (as of when i bought it), but hopefully will receive a free working one in return

Once I get it and re-pair the cablecards (an always fun phone call), we'll see where it stands.


----------



## Rich584

Mickdaniel said:


> Okay, I buy it, it's the software.
> 
> Now what? I have a brand new S3 HD, and can't watch HD. I have to believe many others are watching with no problem, despite the software problems out there. So, do I send this Tivo back, and hope the one I get will be able to handle it better? A techie friend asked me if there is a firmware update I can download, or a way to total reload the original software. I didn't know, and wonder if this is an option.
> 
> I'm just looking to try to get on line here, and would appreciate anyone's best guess.


I can't answer your question. I have called D* and TiVo about the problem and D* blames TiVo and says they are both working on a solution. TiVo says they are not working with D*, but are aware of the problem. Hopefully the next full update will solve the problem.

Personally, I have given up hope and when I want to watch programs on a TiVo I disable the DLBs on the apparently correct advice of other posters. Have had no reboots since I started doing this, but still have 6.3e as my software. Apparently 6.3f is not going to solve the problem either.

I've been using DVRs since 2002 and never had a problem like this. And I don't think D* cares. Their solution to the problem is swapping the TiVo for one of their proprietary DVRs.

Seems to be happening to stand alone TiVos and D* TiVos and I don't know what the answer is. Hard to believe TiVo has let it go on so long.

Rich


----------



## Rich584

TexasAg said:


> Ahhh, it's been at least a week since someone threatened this. I really like how you acknowledged that the signal strength you have is "normal" while the other is not, but you still threaten to sue Tivo.


I'm not litigious, but geez, how long can this go on? If we all gathered, with remotes in hand, and filed a class action suit, we would probably get $5 each and the rebooting would continue. They'll fix it, I hope. What else you gonna do? Just wait it out.

Rich


----------



## TexasAg

ckelly5 said:


> Had a Comcast Tech come out, and checked everything. aside from a loose connection or two (didn't affect the outcome) the signal was close to perfect. 100 % strength, low SNR. Pretty much ruled out a signal issue.


There is a Fios thread regarding attenuating your SNR to 31. I had already attenuated my signal down to an SNR around 35 to reduce pixelation on Fios channels, and I did it again to drop the SNR to 31-33. It works, and my signal strength is often in the 70s. A 100 signal strength may indicate a signal that it too hot. Might try popping a 20db attenuator in and seeing what happens.


----------



## CrispyCritter

Rich584 said:


> I'm not litigious, but geez, how long can this go on? If we all gathered, with remotes in hand, and filed a class action suit, we would probably get $5 each and the rebooting would continue. They'll fix it, I hope. What else you gonna do? Just wait it out.


Two questions for you:

1. Aren't you posting in the wrong forum? Most of your complaints have been about S2's connected to DirecTV. This forum has nothing at all to do with DirecTV, so nobody can offer insights into your problems. This forum is for S3s and THDs.

2. There are hundreds of thousands of S2s and tens of thousands of S3s/THDs running the identical software you are running, but without your problems. There must be something about your situation which is different from those folks. What is it?

In no way have you proven it's the software. I'm not saying that the problems are not fixable in software by TiVo, but the root cause is something else - one of hardware, signal, or electrical power (the main differences between your situation and most others who do not have the problems.)


----------



## Rich584

CrispyCritter said:


> Two questions for you:
> 
> 1. Aren't you posting in the wrong forum? Most of your complaints have been about S2's connected to DirecTV. This forum has nothing at all to do with DirecTV, so nobody can offer insights into your problems. This forum is for S3s and THDs.


Don't know how I ended up on this thread. Should have been on the link below. But you gotta admit you guys are having the same problems, no?



> 2. There are hundreds of thousands of S2s and tens of thousands of S3s/THDs running the identical software you are running, but without your problems. There must be something about your situation which is different from those folks. What is it?


How do you know that the "hundreds of thousands" of Series 2 TiVos that receive D*'s sat feed don't have the same problems I'm having?

Try this link: www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=336122



> In no way have you proven it's the software. I'm not saying that the problems are not fixable in software by TiVo, but the root cause is something else - one of hardware, signal, or electrical power (the main differences between your situation and most others who do not have the problems.)


I've proven it to my satisfaction and TiVo and D* have both admitted that they have a software problem that has to be resolved to stop the random rebooting. I have six TiVos that do the same thing alongside D*'s Hi Def HR20s that don't reboot randomly. Don't reboot at all. I would think that that rules out a power problem. As for a signal problem, I have two dishes and have tried both and the TiVos still reboot. I have replaced all my "hardware". Kind of hard to believe six units do the same thing and each has an identical "hardware" problem. And now I will leave and go to the proper thread.


----------



## Foobarsky

I am on the right thread (I've got a new Tivo HD) -- and still having problems.

I've plugged into the wall -- still freezes or randomly reboots.

I've checked my signal -- doesn't appear to need attenuation -- still freezes or randomly reboots.

I agree that you'd expect more complaints if this was a widespread software problem, but I still don't know what to do. 

I've got the Tivo external hard disk plugged in -- maybe that's the problem?
I've got an M-card -- maybe there aren't too many folks using an M-Card?

I'm really reluctant to change the unit out since it was so tough to get the cable card configured in the first place, but I guess I may have to (although I don't want to trade my brand new unit for a refurb, either.)


----------



## CrispyCritter

Rich584 said:


> Don't know how I ended up on this thread. Should have been on the link below. But you gotta admit you guys are having the same problems, no?


Nope. Completely unrelated problems. Software completely different. DirecTiVo's are another beast altogether at this point.


Rich584 said:


> How do you know that the "hundreds of thousands" of Series 2 TiVos that receive D*'s sat feed don't have the same problems I'm having?
> 
> Try this link: www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=336122


Hundreds of thousands of DirecTiVo's having the same problem with the main reporting being a thread that has averaged only a dozen posts per month in the past couple of months? Unlikely.


Rich584 said:


> I've proven it to my satisfaction and TiVo and D* have both admitted that they have a software problem that has to be resolved to stop the random rebooting. I have six TiVos that do the same thing alongside D*'s Hi Def HR20s that don't reboot randomly. Don't reboot at all. I would think that that rules out a power problem. As for a signal problem, I have two dishes and have tried both and the TiVos still reboot. I have replaced all my "hardware". Kind of hard to believe six units do the same thing and each has an identical "hardware" problem. And now I will leave and go to the proper thread.


It certainly sounds like there will be a software fix for it. But the basic problem (of the original reports, I don't know about now) was a change in the data coming into the software, not the software itself.

In any case, your problems have nothing to do with the problems seen here, and neither one of us can offer much insight into the other's problems.


----------



## fizban

I have had the same problem recently. I have an S3 with a WD My Book 500gb external drive. Now I know I have read they don't work but I hooked it up prior to reading that and it has worked flawlessly since the hack came out to add drives. Within the last week or so I noticed the unit was rebooting and within the last month it was loosing the external HD on occasion. The last couple of days the S3 will not stay running and will reboot several times in a row, the GSOD will appear, and video will freeze and not play. I have read through numerous forums and postings and today decided to check the external drive. 

I removed it and ran the utilities to check the disk. The software stopped and reported that it could not continue because there were too many "bad sectors" on it. I unmarried the drive from the S3 and it has been working since. I guess it just wore it out. I'll have to look into the forums here or buy a My DVR Expander. Just my two cents.


----------



## CrispyCritter

Foobarsky said:


> I am on the right thread (I've got a new Tivo HD) -- and still having problems.
> 
> I've plugged into the wall -- still freezes or randomly reboots.
> 
> I've checked my signal -- doesn't appear to need attenuation -- still freezes or randomly reboots.


How have you checked it doesn't need attenuation? I'm amazed at how much attenuation is needed for those folks with the problem (eg 14 db). I had different problems over a year ago and thought 6 db was overkill in testing whether attenuation was needed. I know better now!


Foobarsky said:


> I've got the Tivo external hard disk plugged in -- maybe that's the problem?
> I've got an M-card -- maybe there aren't too many folks using an M-Card?
> 
> I'm really reluctant to change the unit out since it was so tough to get the cable card configured in the first place, but I guess I may have to (although I don't want to trade my brand new unit for a refurb, either.)


Before doing that, I would investigate the external disk a bit more (even remove it as your last ditch effort before sending the TiVo back). It can definitely cause rebooting problems. In particular, a number of folks have had problems with the eSata cable on the TiVo approved external disk. I'd try a new cable. The external disk threads have recommendations of good cables.


----------



## ckelly5

TexasAg said:


> There is a Fios thread regarding attenuating your SNR to 31. I had already attenuated my signal down to an SNR around 35 to reduce pixelation on Fios channels, and I did it again to drop the SNR to 31-33. It works, and my signal strength is often in the 70s. A 100 signal strength may indicate a signal that it too hot. Might try popping a 20db attenuator in and seeing what happens.


Well I've ordered some attenuators for the heck of it. They should be here around the same time as the replacement TiVo (monday or so). I'll give it a go on the "old" box before I try the new one.


----------



## hv9200

ok, I have narrowed down my re-booting to only happening when the display is turned on. The S3 front panel is normal when I get home from work and when I turn on the display, the S3 front panel flickers once and starts the re-boot. happens once, maybe twice a week. So far it has not re-booted on its own with the display off or once the display is on and working normally. I have not lost any recordings. Right now its just an annoyance as the S3 re-starts. guess I am lucky it only happpens then. I think this is a fall update bug as it started a few days after the fall update and a my dvr extender install.

one year old S3, my Dvr extender...comcast, sony sxrd, yammy rx-v2700

zero problems before fall update


----------



## Foobarsky

Crispy --

You said:



CrispyCritter said:


> How have you checked it doesn't need attenuation? I'm amazed at how much attenuation is needed for those folks with the problem (eg 14 db). I had different problems over a year ago and thought 6 db was overkill in testing whether attenuation was needed. I know better now!
> Before doing that, I would investigate the external disk a bit more (even remove it as your last ditch effort before sending the TiVo back). It can definitely cause rebooting problems. In particular, a number of folks have had problems with the eSata cable on the TiVo approved external disk. I'd try a new cable. The external disk threads have recommendations of good cables.


How much attenuation might I need? I've looked at the diagnostics -- most people with the attenuation problem report lots of errors accumulating in the diagnostics, but I'm not seeing it. What signal strength should I have? What SNR?

I'll also try your suggestions about the external drive. It's the Tivo drive -- but a cheap cable. Maybe that's the problem.


----------



## CrispyCritter

hv9200 said:


> ok, I have narrowed down my re-booting to only happening when the display is turned on. The S3 front panel is normal when I get home from work and when I turn on the display, the S3 front panel flickers once and starts the re-boot. happens once, maybe twice a week. So far it has not re-booted on its own with the display off or once the display is on and working normally. I have not lost any recordings. Right now its just an annoyance as the S3 re-starts. guess I am lucky it only happpens then. I think this is a fall update bug as it started a few days after the fall update and a my dvr extender install.
> 
> one year old S3, my Dvr extender...comcast, sony sxrd, yammy rx-v2700
> 
> zero problems before fall update


Sounds like it could be a power problem (eg, overloaded circuit, overloaded UPS, cheap surge protector, or something of that sort malfunctioning and not isolating the TiVo power enough). What have you done to test it? Try putting the TiVo on a completely different circuit temporarily (long extension cord!), or putting it by itself on a good UPS.

The one other possibility that comes to mind is a bad HDMI implementation on your receiver or TV that causes problems only on power up (sends an initial burst of garbage over the HDMI connection). But I think you'd see problems more consistently then. You could rule out that possibility by temporarily switching to component instead of HDMI (if you're using HDMI now).


----------



## CrispyCritter

Foobarsky said:


> How much attenuation might I need? I've looked at the diagnostics -- most people with the attenuation problem report lots of errors accumulating in the diagnostics, but I'm not seeing it. What signal strength should I have? What SNR?
> 
> I'll also try your suggestions about the external drive. It's the Tivo drive -- but a cheap cable. Maybe that's the problem.


If you're checking all the channel ranges and not seeing any errors, then you've probably eliminated attenuation as the solution. (The FIOS people say SNR of 31, but as I recall it can be a bit higher for cable without problems).

E-sata cables have been a major problem for the external drives. I wish things were a bit more settled!


----------



## Mickdaniel

I am having a Comcast tech come to the house today. I called and told them I believed my signal strength was too strong. She said while it's not the normal call, they do hear that, and didn't act like I was crazy. I am showing a signal strength of 90-95. I do have a signal booster in the basement that I have had for years, thought that might have been the problem, so I bypassed it, but still got the same signal strength reading (90-95). My SNR (signal noise reduction?) is 35. 

Short notice here, but my tech is due in an hour or so. Any advice to him as to what the I need to be attenuated down to?


----------



## TexasAg

Mickdaniel said:


> I am having a Comcast tech come to the house today. I called and told them I believed my signal strength was too strong. She said while it's not the normal call, they do hear that, and didn't act like I was crazy. I am showing a signal strength of 90-95. I do have a signal booster in the basement that I have had for years, thought that might have been the problem, so I bypassed it, but still got the same signal strength reading (90-95). My SNR (signal noise reduction?) is 35.
> 
> Short notice here, but my tech is due in an hour or so. Any advice to him as to what the I need to be attenuated down to?


31 is the suggestion in the Fios thread. I can't get all channels to that level, so I'm at 31-33.


----------



## hv9200

CrispyCritter said:


> Sounds like it could be a power problem (eg, overloaded circuit, overloaded UPS, cheap surge protector, or something of that sort malfunctioning and not isolating the TiVo power enough). What have you done to test it? Try putting the TiVo on a completely different circuit temporarily (long extension cord!), or putting it by itself on a good UPS.
> 
> The one other possibility that comes to mind is a bad HDMI implementation on your receiver or TV that causes problems only on power up (sends an initial burst of garbage over the HDMI connection). But I think you'd see problems more consistently then. You could rule out that possibility by temporarily switching to component instead of HDMI (if you're using HDMI now).


the TV and the S3 are plugged into a panamax 5300 and have been for over a year. happens either on HDMI or component I have both utilized on the display.

again only started after fall update and DVR extender install. I am certain its one of those that is causing it. its just an annoyance right now...if it continues after next update I will divorce the extender and see if it stops


----------



## Mickdaniel

Thanks Tex, I'll be sure to post back here with my results.


----------



## CrispyCritter

hv9200 said:


> the TV and the S3 are plugged into a panamax 5300 and have been for over a year. happens either on HDMI or component I have both utilized on the display.
> 
> again only started after fall update and DVR extender install. I am certain its one of those that is causing it. its just an annoyance right now...if it continues after next update I will divorce the extender and see if it stops


Given your statement that it's not HDMI, there is no software explanation possible for why the TiVo reboots when you turn on the TV. If you don't want to look at power, that's up to you, but a momentary dip in power strength or voltage to either the TiVo or the disk extension can definitely cause rebooting.


----------



## KJW

I cannot believe the hoops people are willing to jump through for this machine. The bottom line is that whatever the cause, a tivo should not simply reboot. My cablevision dvr did not have any problem with the exact same signal stregnth, power source, display device, etc. Same for my series 2. tivo's great interface and neat internet features are worthless if it can't perform its primary function -- reliably receive and display television.

THIS IS A SERIES 3 PROBLEM AND TIVO NEEDS TO FIGURE OUR WHAT THE PROBLEM IS AND FIX IT!!! We are not beta testers, and for $12.95 per month I expect a little better action on a known problem.


----------



## ckelly5

Attenuators came - tried a 20db one, and it shows the same symptoms: SD channels work fine, HD recordings work fine. Live HD - stutters and hangs.

The unit has seemed a little less responsive in the last few days to boot. I think the Hard Drive may be going. Perhaps inability to buffer HD is a symptom of a faulty/ soon to fail drive? what if a batch of these drives are just plain defective when they were put into the S3s?

Either way, should have the new box on Monday. Then it's just the fun call to Comcast to walk through two CableCard activations...


----------



## tivochiguy

My first Tivo Series 3 started rebooting on its own after adding the DVR extender. A second Tivo Series 3 started rebooting after adding the DVR extender as well.

*** I'm convinced the rebooting of the Series 3 is happening from the DVR Extender for many of us.


----------



## offsky

My Series 3 HD TiVo is doing the same thing that others have described. It continuously reboots, responds slowly, and plays live TV in a very jerky manner. If I disconnect the cable going into the box, it magically starts working again. With one cable card removed (tried both slots) the symptoms are lessened but they do not go away. I called TiVo and they were unable to offer any remedy except for me to pay $150 for a replacement TiVo, which I did not do. However, they did say that they forwarded my problem to the "engineers". Whatever that means.

Based on something else I read here, I tried to determine if it was HD related. So, I went into my channel list and deselected every HD channel so that my TiVo would remain on SD channels at all times. Guess what? It totally fixed the problem. It has been 2 days and my TiVo has not rebooted once, and all the menus and playback is snappier than it has ever been. As a test, I went back into my channel list and turned on one HD channel and then went to live TV to check it out. The instant I switched to the HD channel everything became pixilated, the TiVo stopped responding and a few minutes later the TiVo rebooted. So, I again, removed the HD channel from my channel list and presto, back to normal.

So, based on my testing, it definitely seems to be a software problem with decoding HD channels. This started happening to me right around Jan 1. This is around the same time that Comcast added a few new HD channels to my lineup. Maybe this is a coincidence. I don't know. I am happy to at least have an SD capable TiVo working again. I'll keep bugging TiVo to see if they can get HD decoding working again.

A previous poster mentioned that they were able to turn off the Live TV buffers. Can someone please explain how I can do this?


----------



## CrispyCritter

offsky said:


> So, based on my testing, it definitely seems to be a software problem with decoding HD channels.


It sounds like you've shown it's HD related. That's progress! But I'm not sure why you think it's a software problem. Your overall symptoms are consistent with a hardware problem that's causing the TiVo to write out lots of error messages. That could be the HD tuner or it could still even be disk problems (in particular, a flaky connection that keeps on being detected as disconnected/connected on every large write, with the much larger number of writes for an HD channel causing the problems).

Does this happen with all HD channels, or was this a test on one of those that was recently added?


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## danitaz

My series 3 seems to be in a reboot loop this morning, and it is indeed trying to record HD programming. A one hour HD program is currently in 4 parts! I'm going to try to see if I can intercept it to stop the next program it's trying to record and change to a non-SD channel to see if I can stop the reboots. I guess unplugging the cable is another option to slow it down according to the posts here.

Danita


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## danitaz

And indeed, after changing from CBSHD to CBSSD to finish recording Sunday Morning, things have settled down - George Stephanopolous is in 4 parts though <g>.

Danita


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## danitaz

Oh - and in trying to watch This Week with George Stephanopolous, it is extremely pixelated. My guess is that the Tivo can't handle BAD HD streams - but that's just a guess at this point of course.

Danita


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## ckelly5

update on mine. Got my replacement unit, and the front panel is dead! #3 is on its way...


----------



## demonmucha

hv9200 said:


> ok, I have narrowed down my re-booting to only happening when the display is turned on. The S3 front panel is normal when I get home from work and when I turn on the display, the S3 front panel flickers once and starts the re-boot. happens once, maybe twice a week. So far it has not re-booted on its own with the display off or once the display is on and working normally. I have not lost any recordings. Right now its just an annoyance as the S3 re-starts. guess I am lucky it only happpens then. I think this is a fall update bug as it started a few days after the fall update and a my dvr extender install.
> 
> one year old S3, my Dvr extender...comcast, sony sxrd, yammy rx-v2700
> 
> zero problems before fall update


I have basically the same problem, but it's been happing for a long time.

Basically if I turn the TV (55" lcd projection) and the receiver on - thats when it usually happens. Or when I switch inputs to another device. But it's never consistent or predictable.

The Tivo S3 is going directly to TV via HDMI and audio is going directly to receiver (receiver does not have HDMI). Since the fall update the problem has been happening less and less.

I've monitored the outlets on my APC SmartUPS 1500VA when these devices turn on, and you can barely see a jump, so i ruled out power.

Like the other posted said, I think it may be garbage getting sent over HDMI, so one day I'll have to get off my lazy butt and plug in those component cables and see what happens!


----------



## danitaz

demonmucha said:


> Like the other posted said, I think it may be garbage getting sent over HDMI, so one day I'll have to get off my lazy butt and plug in those component cables and see what happens!


Well, I'm not using HDMI, so that rules that out. My LCD TV has died (again) - it will not power on - but now you have me thinking that there might be some odd interference. I've been trying to watch the TiVO for the past 40 minutes through my Slingbox. It started recording The Closer in HD, and then I lost all navigation, and I watched it reboot a couple of times. I have the slingbox off now - I guess I'll see in the morning how it's doing!

Danita


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## styggiti

Just an update on my problem. I tried attenuation over the weekend. Before signal strength was 95&#37; on both cards, with SNR around 35. I had no RS corrected/uncorrected errors going into it, so I wasn't sure attenuation would help my situation.

After attenuating the SNR down to 31 as recommended in other threads, I noticed no difference in my rate of pixelation/audio dropouts. It's still happening, but my RS uncorrected doesn't move, so as per the other threads, the problem doesn't seem to be a "hot" signal.

I tried various attenuation combinations, but nothing fixed the pixelation/audio dropout problem.

At this point, I could continue with the attenuation to see if that makes a difference with regard to reboots, but I don't think that will be the case. Like many others in this thread, I'm convinced that this is a software-correctable issue on Tivo's end.


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## Adam1115

Just had my Series 3 reboot right in the middle of playing Rhapsody.



No cablecards, analog and OTA, external hard drive attached.


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## danitaz

I have an interesting Tidbit to add to this thread. My TV would not turn on. It's been in once to Best Buy for warranty repairs for the same problem, and it seemed to be "fixed" after they sent it back. However, it was simply not to turn on for the past week. After reading this thread and seeing how some of the issues with the TiVO rebooting were when people turned on their "displays" I decided to try something. I attempted to turn on the TV - nothing (well, the ready light goes out for a second, and then comes back on). So, I unplugged my component cables, unplugged the power to the TV and went and had a shower. After the shower I came back, plugged the power in, and turned on the TV - it came right on. Then I plugged the component cables in, and thus far all seems okay. I guess we'll see if that "fixes" the TV, and maybe I'll be able to see later if the TV problems and the rebooting of the TiVO seem to be at all related.

Odd.

Danita


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## danitaz

Although I'm an excessively patient person, I've just about had enough. I've watched the TIVO reboot 7 times in a row now. Sometimes it never gets past just a screen with the "bronze" wallpaper. Sometimes it gets to the Tivo menu - but the remote is always unresponsive, and I never can get to "live" tv or anywhere else. I've turned off the TV for now. Life's too short 

Not sure what to do next.

Danita


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## tivochiguy

danitaz said:


> Although I'm an excessively patient person, I've just about had enough. I've watched the TIVO reboot 7 times in a row now. Sometimes it never gets past just a screen with the "bronze" wallpaper. Sometimes it gets to the Tivo menu - but the remote is always unresponsive, and I never can get to "live" tv or anywhere else. I've turned off the TV for now. Life's too short
> 
> Not sure what to do next.
> 
> Danita


Danita, do you have the DVR extender attached?

I'm on my second Tivo Series 3 and it's having the same rebooting issues. It reboots a few times per day at random times. I need to call Tivo about the reboot issue on this new box but I have little confidence they can fix it.


----------



## danitaz

tivochiguy said:


> Danita, do you have the DVR extender attached?


Do you mean an eSATA drive? No - I don't have one of those. I'm going to do a test today and disable all of my HD channels just to see if it really is related to HD - it seems to happen the most at night, and that's when we are usually watching/recording things on HD I guess. While disabling HD won't "solve" the problem (I mean, what's the use of an HD Tivo if you can't watch any HD programming), it might at least confirm what the issue is.

Danita


----------



## KJW

danitaz said:


> Do you mean an eSATA drive? No - I don't have one of those. I'm going to do a test today and disable all of my HD channels just to see if it really is related to HD - it seems to happen the most at night, and that's when we are usually watching/recording things on HD I guess. While disabling HD won't "solve" the problem (I mean, what's the use of an HD Tivo if you can't watch any HD programming), it might at least confirm what the issue is.
> 
> Danita


Does it reboot on its own, or when you are changing channels?


----------



## danitaz

KJW said:


> Does it reboot on its own, or when you are changing channels?


All on it's own that I can tell. For example, last night I sat down to watch TV at about 8:30 and it was in the middle of a reboot, and that continued on until 11:30 - I didn't actually "watch" it do that <g> - but a program that was supposed to start recording at 11:00 didn't actually start until 11:27 - which means, in my mind, that the TiVO was busy rebooting up until then. The last time I "looked" to see what it was doing was about 10:00 p.m., and it was in the middle of a reboot then. So, the TiVO was essentially unusable for about 3 hours straight. It rebooted once at about 2:05 this morning, because an episode of Law and Order started at 2:00, stopped at 2:05, and restarted at 2:20. This morning it is fine, and it recorded programs at midnight and 12:30 a.m. with no problems, and I don't see anything else since that 2:00 a.m. blip that didn't record properly.

My guess is it will be fine all day, and start acting up about 8:00 tonight when we're trying to record our HD stuff for the evening. Between 8:00 and 10:00 we have 4 HD programs set to record, with both tuners going full bore. We'll see.

Danita


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## jordanfrank

I suffered this random reboot problem as well. Ultimately, I fixed it by purchasing a $75 Monster brand HDMI cable. 

Originally, my setup had me connecting from my TiVO directly to my TV. My installer used a high quality cable at the time. Later on, I bought an Onkyo 605 home theater amplifier and so I connected the TiVO to the AMP with the cable provided with the TiVO a year prior. Then, it started to reboot randomly. 

TiVO support told me to try a better cable. That fixed the problem. I REALLY wish they would have put an adequate cable in the box, but so it goes.


----------



## memphislim

I have the same problems as everyone else with the 3 series but I hook up to my TV with the component cables. Worked fine for a year and then suddenly started freaking out 2-3 days ago. I haven't tried the SD fix but sounds like it could remedy the reboots, but I want my HD!!! It has to be a software thing. It's the only thing we all have in common!!! All of our drives/hardware wouldn't stop working at the same time regardless of their age. We should all go to Tivo headquaters and throw our machines through their windows for their lack of acknowledgment/help on this issue. It's could even be a virus that was set to start at a certain time. I hate that you call tech support and they act like no one else is having the same problem. I used to love tivo and would tell everyone so but if this keeps up tivo will be a thing of the past.


----------



## danitaz

memphislim said:


> I have the same problems as everyone else with the 3 series but I hook up to my TV with the component cables. Worked fine for a year and then suddenly started freaking out 2-3 days ago. I haven't tried the SD fix but sounds like it could remedy the reboots, but I want my HD!!! It has to be a software thing. It's the only thing we all have in common!!! All of our drives/hardware wouldn't stop working at the same time regardless of their age. We should all go to Tivo headquaters and throw our machines through their windows for their lack of acknowledgment/help on this issue. It's could even be a virus that was set to start at a certain time. I hate that you call tech support and they act like no one else is having the same problem. I used to love tivo and would tell everyone so but if this keeps up tivo will be a thing of the past.


Today I purchased a new power conditioning surge protector. Maybe the old one was getting "worn out"  - we'll see. Interestingly enough, my TV that wouldn't turn on at all this morning, turned right on as soon as I plugged it into the the new surge protector,

However, my issues really only started in the last week or so too. Did we maybe get some kind of a software "update" that we don't know about? In any event, I haven't "turned off" HD yet - I'm going to give it a day or so with the new surge protector and see what happens.

Danita


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## KJW

This is crazy -- $75 cables, new power conditioning surge protector, not being able to watch HD on a machine that was purchased specifically because it can play HD!?! What happened to the reliable TIVO that just worked. All the time. 

And where is some statement from TIVO on this issue? 

Why the hell am I paying a monthly fee again?


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## memphislim

Okay here's what I've figured out so far. I rebooted and things worked fine until I went to an HD channel, then things started to get glitchy. As soon as I told tivo to record the HD channel I was on I lost all control of the box. I then popped out the one card I had in and immediately gained full control back. Then I told tivo to record a different HD channel and it locked up again and stayed locked even after I popped the card. I then unplugged the cable out of the back, bang, full control back. 

So now, like others, I've removed the HD channels from my lineup and altered my season passes to to only record the SD channels. What a drag and with the two best football games of the year coming up.  I guess it'll have to stay this way until Tivo fixes the very obvious (to me anyway) software problem, I or get so disgusted that I get TW's box and ashcan the tivo. 

Thanks for stepping up and take responsibility Tivo, we know your watching, and if you're not, shame on you. Shame on you either way.


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## danitaz

Yes, tonight I'm trying to record Moonlight on one channel in HD and House on the other channel in HD. I went to "look" at Moonlight live, and it looked okay, but the recording is almost unwatchable - extremely pixelated - I don't know if just the beginning of the program was "bad" or if it's just the way they all are going to be <sigh>. In 15 minutes when the two programs that are recording are over, I'm going to switch to SD for the next set of programs and see how that goes.

Danita


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## ckelly5

So #3 arrived - overnight delivery, actually. #2 had a dead front panel.

#3 is brand new - looks like a production date of Dec 2007 (I'm looking at the sticker on the back near the power socket). 

Popped the same cablecards in, and the same HDMI cable, and it's working perfectly.


----------



## memphislim

ckelly5 said:


> So #3 arrived - overnight delivery, actually. #2 had a dead front panel.
> 
> #3 is brand new - looks like a production date of Dec 2007 (I'm looking at the sticker on the back near the power socket).
> 
> Popped the same cablecards in, and the same HDMI cable, and it's working perfectly.


What's the software version?


----------



## danitaz

Okay - well I tried something new today - going to antenna - and it does the same thing - HDTV on the antenna, suddenly the TiVO remote becomes unresponsive, and the Tivo reboots 

My TiVO is pretty "vanilla"

- no eSATA
- no HDMI
- two Cablecards (which have been ruled out by the same thing happening on antenna)
- simply can't use my HD Series3 TiVO right now to enjoy HD programming reliably 

I'm suspicious that it's the latest software update that we got that brought in the TiVO2Go features, etc. It seems like everyone started falling apart in December sometime. I just noticed mine about 10 days ago now though. My Series 3 is no longer under warranty (I don't think), so I'm wondering just how far I'll get trying to call TiVO customer support, but I guess that's the next step.

Danita


----------



## memphislim

Call and ***** a fit, I just did. Tech made it sound like he hadn't heard my particulars before, made me jump through some hoops then said he's send to engineering and would get back to me. Everyone please call and if enough do, maybe they will roll back the software. When you call, make sure you ask for the top level of tech support.


----------



## bizzy

1: They always say that they've never heard of your problem before.
2: They never get back to you.
3: I think "send it to Engineering" is code for "ignore you".
4: The "Top Level of support" is the coworker your CSR hates.


----------



## lqaddict

Wow,
I posted in any other thread but this one regarding the reboots, and Live TV freezing.
Well, my newly ordered Tivo HD was sent back to Tivo after 3 days of non-functional service because of the constant reboots and freezing. No CC's installed, no external drive hooked up, no wireless card, but plain ol' RJ-45 for the network, power to the wall outlet or surge protectors - it kept rebooting and freezing. I'm expecting the "new" box to come in next week, we will see what happens.
I am not buying the idea of Tivo to be a queen of an electrical power and cable signal feed quality - all my other electronics, including SA-8300HD and Tivo Series 2 (540) 40-hour DVR are using the same power and cable sources, and there have been no problems whatsoever with them. If this is the case, and Tivo proves me that the signal is not good enough for it - this is an indication of the lower quality product, and I do not want it.


----------



## ckelly5

memphislim said:


> What's the software version?


it's 9.2a. It was 8.01 to start, and then the service updates followed - can't really stop them 

but yeah, same cablecards, same signal coming in. Something about the box was funky.


----------



## gbastug

lAdd me to the list. Not sure when the problem started, sometime over the past few days - I've been watching my DirecTV more lately.

When I went to watch the Tivo, there was heavily pixelated video (it was on an HD channel). I rebooted the system, and got up to the main menu background (the animation was stuttering and not smooth), and it too three or four minutes for the main menu text options to appear - when they did, the menu was unresponsive, both via the remote and the front panel.

Though perhaps my Tivo eSata was causing a problem, so I disconnect that, rebooted and allowed the system to reconfigure as a single drive unit - but the problem persisted. Couldn't switch to live TV or watching anything record, and rebooted a few more times to no avail.

Then followed the advice here and disconnected the cable input, rebooted, and the system behavior appeared normal. I could play recorded shows, including HD material, and it was flawless. I tuned to an SD channel, then reconnected the cable line. Video and audio were fine, and as long as I navigated within SD channels, the Tivo seemed to work fine. As soon as I switched to an HD channel, it started to pixelate and freeze. If I switched back to an SD channel quick, I kept control of the unit. But if I left it on an HD channel for more then ten or 20 seconds, I "lost" control of the Tivo, and could no longer even get SD channels to appear or get back to the menus.

Before all the trouble shooting, I spoke with Tivo, and they are sending me a new unit, believe it was the HD - but after reading here, it seems the problem will persist and it's apparently some software issue.

My setup had been working flawlessly for a year, no change to my cable service (Cablevision/Oakland NJ) - I added the Tivo eSata drive about two months ago and things were working fine until recently, so I don't think the problem is related to that. I was in the beta program in the middle of last year because of the cable card issue, which it appeared was fixed with the latest release - but I wonder if this is a more ugly variant of the problem rearing its head.

BTW - When I was on the SD channels, I checked signal strength, and it ranged from 96 to 99. When I switched to an HD channel, it never registered a signal strength. I tried the unit in other known-working cable locations in my house, and the same issue occurred. Conversely, I installed a Scientific Atlanta 8300 HD DVR onto the line used by the Tivo, and it worked fine.

Is there a way via the front panel to reinitialize the unit - reformat the drive? Has anyone tried that or does anyone think it's worth trying?


----------



## cliffb

I am also having the same issue. Consolidated version:
1. S3 seemed unresponsive, ended up getting replacement.
2. Replacement front screen dead, got new one sent out.
3. 3rd unit is unresponsive, but I was moving so I didn't do anything about it because I thought it was a CC issue.
4. Comcast came Friday to my new apt, and unit was barely responsive again after hooking unit up and installing CC, but I let the tech go. Before reading this, I had rebooted without the cable in hooked up, and works fine. I remember him saying I was at a +4 for the upper channels and -2 for the lower, or something to that effect.

I read through this thread, and ordered the attenuator kit from smarthome. Will see if this allows me to use my Tivo. the S2 works fine on this same line, so it appears the S3 doesn't handle it as well. I also have 2 HD units at another house each with 2 CC's and work fine. That is Time Warner, and that tech told me that my amplifier helped bring my signal closer to a zero, which it apparently is.


----------



## jefsta

I'm having the same problem. It started within the last few days. I have had this box for just over a year. It has worked perfectly until the last few days. Now I can't use it at all. I also have a simple install, no HD or SATA drive yet. The TiVo reboots, goes to the red TiVo Central screen and just sits there. It took almost 2 minutes after the TiVo Central screen shows up before the text for the menu shows up. During this time, the TiVo does not respond to the remote. After the text is on the screen, the TiVo front LED lights when I push the live TV button, but the TiVo does not respond for 20-30 seconds. It seems like the processor is doing something else.

The box is pretty much unusable at this point. When it does change to Live TV, most of the time it just shows a gray screen and the remote stops working.

I would tell you what version of SW I have, but I can't get to that screen.


HELP!!!!!


----------



## lqaddict

What happens if you remove CC's and the cable feed from Tivo?
Does it come back to life?
And call Tivo to inform them of the issue.


----------



## jefsta

lqaddict said:


> What happens if you remove CC's and the cable feed from Tivo?
> Does it come back to life?
> And call Tivo to inform them of the issue.


TiVo SW ver. 9.2a-01-2-648

I have not been able to check this yet, but I will. After it reboots, the TiVo is totally unresponsive. I think I might have figured out what it is doing. Once it booted the last time, I immediately went to the channel menu. It seems to be more responsive immediately after it reboots. I went to the channel menu to disable any HD channels. When I selected the channel screen, the TiVo displayed a rotating circle and the screen said " acquiring channel information"

At this point, my TiVo is not usable at all.


----------



## lqaddict

if you remove cable feed it should loose the lock to the last channel, and allow you to at least get the tivo under control. It is not a solution though, it is a temporary "fix" until the next time Tivo locks up on an HD channel, as reported by others. We are all here to find the solution.
I hope Tivo reads these threads.


----------



## jefsta

lqaddict said:


> if you remove cable feed it should loose the lock to the last channel, and allow you to at least get the tivo under control. It is not a solution though, it is a temporary "fix" until the next time Tivo locks up on an HD channel, as reported by others. We are all here to find the solution.
> I hope Tivo reads these threads.


Your right. I pulled the cable feed and my TiVo is back to normal.

Wow. This is great now I have a TiVo that I can't connect to cable. I guess I can just keep watching the shows I have recorded over and over.....


----------



## lqaddict

Now the question is - what Tivo broke in 9.2 release of the software, and what it is doing to fix it.
Tivo, are you listening?


----------



## mac_g33k

So where are all of the official TiVo reps that frequent here on this issue???!!

Our TiVo rebooted again tonight. I think my wife is about to kill either me or it.


----------



## mdobbins

My Series 3 has become totally unresponsive since Thursday or Friday of last week (the 17th or 18th of January 2008). Up until then, I would get random reboots that started with software 9.2 - but the TiVo was at least usable after rebooting. 

I can only get a responsive TiVo Series 3 if I pull the cable feed. If I reattach the cable feed, even if I'm on a SD station, the TiVo becomes unresponsive and eventually reboots. I have tried multiple combinations of kickstart 52, kickstart 57 and kickstart 58 with and without the cable feed attached, and the TiVo always goes back to the same unresponsive state once the cable feed is attached. I also repeated the guided setup without the cable feed attached and cleaned up the suggestions list. I also deleted all of the shows from the "deleted" folder. I haven't tried to disconnect my external eSATA box because I have been using it trouble-free since the whole kickstart 62 days.

This does NOT appear to be a symptom of a failing hard disk, but more like a symptom of the tuner and/or software interaction. My cable company recently (01 January 2008) transferred from Insight cable to Comcast, and even though I think that's just a coincidence, I thought I'd mention it. I haven't tried an external antenna, but I thought someone in this thread was having the same symptoms with OTA.

Has anyone tried a clear and delete everything?


----------



## lqaddict

mdobbins said:


> My Series 3 has become totally unresponsive since Thursday or Friday of last week (the 17th or 18th of January 2008). Up until then, I would get random reboots that started with software 9.2 - but the TiVo was at least usable after rebooting.
> 
> I can only get a responsive TiVo Series 3 if I pull the cable feed. If I reattach the cable feed, even if I'm on a SD station, the TiVo becomes unresponsive and eventually reboots. I have tried multiple combinations of kickstart 52, kickstart 57 and kickstart 58 with and without the cable feed attached, and the TiVo always goes back to the same unresponsive state once the cable feed is attached. I also repeated the guided setup without the cable feed attached and cleaned up the suggestions list. I also deleted all of the shows from the "deleted" folder. I haven't tried to disconnect my external eSATA box because I have been using it trouble-free since the whole kickstart 62 days.
> 
> This does NOT appear to be a symptom of a failing hard disk, but more like a symptom of the tuner and/or software interaction. My cable company recently (01 January 2008) transferred from Insight cable to Comcast, and even though I think that's just a coincidence, I thought I'd mention it. I haven't tried an external antenna, but I thought someone in this thread was having the same symptoms with OTA.
> 
> Has anyone tried a clear and delete everything?


I just opened a thread on Tivo.com Support Forums linking the multiple threads from TC.
I am awaiting for my RMA unit to arrive tomorrow. It will most probably come with 8.1 software. I will not update the software on it for a few days.


----------



## lqaddict

mdobbins said:


> My Series 3 has become totally unresponsive since Thursday or Friday of last week (the 17th or 18th of January 2008). Up until then, I would get random reboots that started with software 9.2 - but the TiVo was at least usable after rebooting.
> 
> I can only get a responsive TiVo Series 3 if I pull the cable feed. If I reattach the cable feed, even if I'm on a SD station, the TiVo becomes unresponsive and eventually reboots. I have tried multiple combinations of kickstart 52, kickstart 57 and kickstart 58 with and without the cable feed attached, and the TiVo always goes back to the same unresponsive state once the cable feed is attached. I also repeated the guided setup without the cable feed attached and cleaned up the suggestions list. I also deleted all of the shows from the "deleted" folder. I haven't tried to disconnect my external eSATA box because I have been using it trouble-free since the whole kickstart 62 days.
> 
> This does NOT appear to be a symptom of a failing hard disk, but more like a symptom of the tuner and/or software interaction. My cable company recently (01 January 2008) transferred from Insight cable to Comcast, and even though I think that's just a coincidence, I thought I'd mention it. I haven't tried an external antenna, but I thought someone in this thread was having the same symptoms with OTA.
> 
> Has anyone tried a clear and delete everything?


Also,
Most people attribute this to the cable signal strength, and its stability/fluctuations. I am not sure if OTA will exhibit the same behavior. On the other hand, the tuners hardware is different for Series 3 and Tivo HD, it leads me to believe it is a software design issue.


----------



## ctn1983

lqaddict, my Tivo is experiencing the same symptoms as yours.

Around December, my first Tivo was experiencing these same symptoms (sluggish menu, unresponsive, automatic reboot, and etc.), the only solution was to remove the coax cable, which would fix the issues, but as soon as I plug it back in, these issue would reappear. I called Tivo and had them sent me a new unit (cost about $50.00), everything was working great (software was 8.1 I think), however this past 2 weeks, the same symptoms I experience on my first unit have reappear on my new Tivo (now software 9.2a). I don't know if I should call Tivo and have them send me another replacement or wait several months for the next update...Does anyone know if they will charge me for another replacement unit, I've only had it for over a month.

BTW, I had my first Tivo for about a year, with no issues, my second Tivo lasted only over a month, both units experience these issues at around the 9.2a update. I truly believe it's the new software.


----------



## Bodie

I read some (and scanned the rest) of the thread and didn't see this so I thought I'd add it. Some are claiming that it can't be the drive and must be software because it happens right around the time a new version is loaded. There's two partitions for the SW on the drive and only one is in use at a time. The new SW is loaded into the unused partition and then when the system reboots with the new SW, it does so into the new partition. If this partition has a bad or failing sector, it will appear that the SW is the cause and not the drive, while that is not the case. 

I hope this helps and sorry if that's been said already and I missed it.


----------



## CrispyCritter

ctn1983 said:


> BTW, I had my first Tivo for about a year, with no issues, my second Tivo lasted only over a month, both units experience these issues at around the 9.2a update. I truly believe it's the new software.


Hard to see how it could be just the 9.2 software. If the second TiVo lasted over a month, then 4 weeks of that time was with the 9.2a software (the newest software gets loaded within 3 days). So it worked for quite a while.

Obviously, there is some signal coming in over the cable that disagrees with the TiVo. Whether it's the signal's fault or the TiVo hardware's fault, we can't tell. But cable franchises all over the country are changing their signals as they convert to digital (and in particular, digital simulcast, which should be an "invisible" change to the user). It's not hard to imagine the signals sometimes have a problem (as they do). Are there others in your area with the same problem?


----------



## ctn1983

UPDATE: I called Tivo today and after going through the "troubleshooting procedure" by phone, she concluded that there was something wrong with the Tivo and agreed to send me a replacement unit, this time there was no fee, I only had to pay the shipping cost.

My plan once I receive my 3rd unit is to avoid the force 9.2a update by not having the USB network adapter always connected to the Tivo (I will only connect it when I have to upload the new guide data), I will keep doing this until Tivo releases the next software version.



CrispyCritter said:


> Hard to see how it could be just the 9.2 software. If the second TiVo lasted over a month, then 4 weeks of that time was with the 9.2a software (the newest software gets loaded within 3 days). So it worked for quite a while.
> 
> Obviously, there is some signal coming in over the cable that disagrees with the TiVo. Whether it's the signal's fault or the TiVo hardware's fault, we can't tell. But cable franchises all over the country are changing their signals as they convert to digital (and in particular, digital simulcast, which should be an "invisible" change to the user). It's not hard to imagine the signals sometimes have a problem (as they do). Are there others in your area with the same problem?


I don't think it's the cable fee because I remember connecting just a regular antenna to my Tivo-1st unit (for OTA HD signal) and experiencing the same symptoms as I would with the cable fee. I wish I could test this out on my Tivo-2nd unit, but I've already sent it to UPS. Right now I'm using my old Tivo Series2 as a temporary unit until I receive my Series3...everything is working great so far, no sluggish menu or automatic reboot, but the software is 9.1


----------



## TexasAg

ctn1983 said:


> I will keep doing this until Tivo releases the next software version.


You'll either not get any guide data or have it for only 2 weeks max. After that, you'll need to connect.


----------



## ctn1983

TexasAg said:


> You'll either not get any guide data or have it for only 2 weeks max. After that, you'll need to connect.


Yeah, I will just have to do manually upload the new guide date every two weeks or so, than disconnect the USB network adapter once its uploaded...I'll see how that goes, if everything turns out great and I don't experience the symptoms mention, than I know it's definitely the 9.2a software and not my cable.


----------



## bizzy

How do you plan to manually upload guide data?


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## greg_burns

bizzy said:


> How do you plan to manually upload guide data?


You can force a connection from the network screen to download guide data on demand.


----------



## NJChris

Ok, so I was complaining a lot in here about my S3 rebooting since the last update. It has gotten progressively worse. I was reading another thread about an SATA cable issue someone was having and decided to replace mine. I was willing to try anything.

I put it in yesterday afternoon and have not had one single reboot since. The now playing list even seems more responsive, as well as the functions I'm getting from pausing, rewinding, etc.

It would have definitely rebooted by now with all the show switching I did testing this out, but it has been rock solid (crossing fingers).

So, I may have to take back my blame on the software update for my issue.


----------



## lqaddict

I got my replacement Tivo HD - software is at 8.1. It has been up for 2 hours since I initially powered it on (SPS9S is still there, so it hasn't rebooted). My cable feed is crap, and I will keep it that way for now. I don't have any external storage attached, and I am using component output and wired network connection.
Tivo should get the latest software by tomorrow afternoon. We will see what happens... I have 60-day money back guarantee and 3 months of non-billed service, granted to say I only used Tivo 4 days this month.


----------



## greg_burns

NJChris said:


> Ok, so I was complaining a lot in here about my S3 rebooting since the last update. It has gotten progressively worse. I was reading another thread about an SATA cable issue someone was having and decided to replace mine. I was willing to try anything.
> 
> I put it in yesterday afternoon and have not had one single reboot since. The now playing list even seems more responsive, as well as the functions I'm getting from pausing, rewinding, etc.
> 
> It would have definitely rebooted by now with all the show switching I did testing this out, but it has been rock solid (crossing fingers).
> 
> So, I may have to take back my blame on the software update for my issue.


Just to be perfectly clear, you _are_ talking about replacing your *eSATA* cable for your external drive?

What cable did you replace it with?


----------



## lqaddict

lqaddict said:


> I got my replacement Tivo HD - software is at 8.1. It has been up for 2 hours since I initially powered it on (SPS9S is still there, so it hasn't rebooted). My cable feed is crap, and I will keep it that way for now. I don't have any external storage attached, and I am using component output and wired network connection.
> Tivo should get the latest software by tomorrow afternoon. We will see what happens... I have 60-day money back guarantee and 3 months of non-billed service, granted to say I only used Tivo 4 days this month.


Tivo is still up, almost 12 hours!
Software 8.1
I will not force the connection to Tivo, and want to see if I get the software automatically updated, and Tivo initiate its reboot sequence.
I will keep you posted.


----------



## NJChris

greg_burns said:


> Just to be perfectly clear, you _are_ talking about replacing your *eSATA* cable for your external drive?
> 
> What cable did you replace it with?


Yes... I forgot the little e in my post.


----------



## TexasAg

greg_burns said:


> You can force a connection from the network screen to download guide data on demand.


But there is no way to keep the Tivo from downloading the software update when you connect. Forcing a manual connection does not guarantee that you will only download guide data.


----------



## cliffb

I have the same issues reported. Standard S3 config, no sata, wired ethernet, 2 comcast CC's, and SNR of 35. I tried all different combo's, and the Tivo becomes unresponsive when cable is hooked up. If no cable feed, unit works great. I am preparing myself to call Tivo tech support and try and convince them not to send me my 4th replacement S3 box. I just can't handle another replacement ordeal.


----------



## bizzy

I was going to type a long rant on how great it is that Tivo hasn't bothered to notice this problem, but it really would be a wasted effort.


----------



## bjwana

KJW said:


> This is crazy -- $75 cables, new power conditioning surge protector, not being able to watch HD on a machine that was purchased specifically because it can play HD!?! What happened to the reliable TIVO that just worked. All the time.
> 
> And where is some statement from TIVO on this issue?
> 
> Why the hell am I paying a monthly fee again?


My sentiments exactly. My TIVO HD DVR seems to be at war with my HD channels. Not only does it restart several times per day, the controls become unresponsive especially during HD programming. I have not made it all way through an NFL football game without the TIVO HD restarting. It is definitely not ready for prime time and I am extremely disapointed. I would not wish it on my worst enemy!

Sony Bravia KDL-40S3000
TIVO HD with multistream cablecard (what a hassle to get that installed!)
TIVO My DVR Expander Hard Drive
TiVo Wireless G USB Network Adapter
Comcast Digital Preferred


----------



## greg_burns

TexasAg said:


> But there is no way to keep the Tivo from downloading the software update when you connect. Forcing a manual connection does not guarantee that you will only download guide data.


Very true. I guess I was responding to his literal question and not in the context of this thread.


----------



## Zpunky

I had the same problem with my brand new 40GB HD TiVo. It took two system updates with cold reboots (unplug, replug) and the problem went away.

Being in IT for 15 years, I'd recommend removing all external devices (except network, e.g. USB, devices) before updating your system. Let it run for a little while and see if it's fixed or messes up again. It it seems fixed, attach your external devices. If possible, try attaching a different external device; see, the device could be the hardware with the problem and TiVo is simply reacting to it. You'd need to find this out before returning the box for a new one.


----------



## cliffb

Well, my desperate attempts at finding a fix for my vanilla S3, that freezes and reboots when a cable line is plugged in, were thwarted. This, after I was unfortunately "Accidentally" disconnected twice, after telling my life story. Yes, I was very polite and it could have been a coincidence, but I'm irritated after 1.5 hours of talk time, so I guess I'm exaggerating.
The sup (Who was very nice and apologetic of my phone issues) was convinced that my problem was hardware related, and that a freezing Tivo when a cable is plugged in (both with No CC's and CC's inserted) is definitely a hardware issue.... 

Soooooo, here we go with S3 #4. I can only pray that they perform an autopsy on my old unit and figure out what the problem is.


----------



## thrang

I received my replacement Series 3 yesterday AM, and Cablevision came out in the afternoon - to review, my Series 3, which had working fine for nearly a year, began pixelating and locking up whenever I tuned to an HD channel, and would continually reboot until I disconnected the cable feed.

Using the old cards from the suspect Series 3, Cablevision bound the cards to the new Tivo, and things worked fine. No pixelization, no reboots. The unit was manufactured in Oct 2007, and was shipped with 8.01!

So I forced an update, and 9.2 was delivered. Upon reboot, things remained fine. I then connected my Tivo supplied eSata drive, and started configuration this morning before leaving for work. We'll see how things are when I return this evening. But so far, it appears to be the Tivo itself is the culprit.

While there, Cablevision used their external signal test box, and I wish I knew precisely how to explain it, but I was told that it measured two frequencies for cable card functionality - one was a 0 db, which was described as perfect, and the other fluctuated from -6 to -7.5 db, which was described as low...They may come back to tweak the signal higher, but as it is, it seems to be working fine.

Time will tell....


----------



## greg_burns

thrang said:


> I then connected my Tivo supplied eSata drive, and started configuration this morning before leaving for work. We'll see how things are when I return this evening. But so far, it appears to be the Tivo itself is the culprit.


Did you see *NJChris*'s post about his eSata cable?



NJChris said:


> Ok, so I was complaining a lot in here about my S3 rebooting since the last update. It has gotten progressively worse. I was reading another thread about an SATA cable issue someone was having and decided to replace mine. I was willing to try anything.
> 
> I put it in yesterday afternoon and have not had one single reboot since. The now playing list even seems more responsive, as well as the functions I'm getting from pausing, rewinding, etc.
> 
> It would have definitely rebooted by now with all the show switching I did testing this out, but it has been rock solid (crossing fingers).
> 
> So, I may have to take back my blame on the software update for my issue.


If you have problems again I would try divorcing your external drive and see if it stops. Maybe a cable issue as well.


----------



## lqaddict

Update on my issues.
Box is upgraded to 9.2a, CC's installed - I haven't had the symptoms I experienced since the replacement. Now I have vanishing video, no live TV issues - another 10+ page long thread, oh my.


----------



## gbastug

greg_burns said:


> Did you see *NJChris*'s post about his eSata cable?
> 
> If you have problems again I would try divorcing your external drive and see if it stops. Maybe a cable issue as well.


Well, with my original Series 3, I did unmarry and disconnect the eSata drive, the problems had persisted - so in my case, it seems the Series 3 itself was bad

As of last night, things were still working fine with the refurb replacement and the eSata connected and recognized under 9.2


----------



## lees06g35

I have a Tivo Series 3 w/ external Seagate FreeAgent Pro 500GB and have had no problems until yesterday morning. My Tivo has been freezing up then rebooting during diffrent intervals, channels or recorded programming. I called Tivo tech support tonight and they asked me to unplug the Tivo and plug back in to see if this would fix the problem. It did not. Next, they told me to unplug the tivo and unseat the cable cards and plug back in without cable cards inserted. Once the tivo powers up it is on a cable card menu and they said to back out without setting up the cable cards to the Tivo Central screen and leave it there to see if my Tivo still freezes and reboots. WIth the cable cards out, I then decided to watch a previous recorded program while waiting to see if the Tivo freezes. It still continued to freeze and reboot. This eliminates the comcast signal feed or cable cards as the potential problem. I called Tivo tech support back and they said that the Tivo was the problem and wanted to charge me $50 for a replacment tivo. I have had my Tivo for 10 mo. and no problems untill now. Hopefully Tivo is listening and sends a new update to repair this if this is an update issue. If I continue to have problems, I will take it back to Costco.


----------



## danitaz

I have trouble believing at ALL that this is a hardware issue overall, since so many of us have had it happen "recently". I think it's a software problem. BTW, I was getting the same problem when switching to HD programming on our antenna, so it doesn't seem cable related to me either.

Danita


----------



## mdobbins

I ordered the attenuator pack from Smarthome. I sequentially placed the 3, 6 or 10 attenuators separately in line; each time the Tivo became unresponsive immediately upon connection of the cable feed and returned to responsive with the cable feed disconnected. When I placed the 20 in-line, the unit remained responsive (menu navigation, etc.) with the cable feed connected; however, I wasn't receiving any picture or sound when I tuned to HD channels. I then combined a 10 and a 6, and at first thought I had hit upon the right combination - the unit responded to remote commands and I could tune to HD. After 2 minutes of extreme audio and video dropouts, the unit stopped responding to remote commands and eventually rebooted. The same behavior occured with a 10 and a 3. My conclusion - the assertion that the behavior I'm seeing is related to signal strength is total BS.

I now think I'm going to have to go with the route of a hardware-replacement. Before replacing the entire TiVo, I'd like to rule out the hard disk. If I replace my internal hard disk with a larger hard disk, will I still be able to use my external eSATA drive? (Something in the back of my tells me that the original drive is required for the Series 3, eSATA expansion and software 9.2.)



mdobbins said:


> My Series 3 has become totally unresponsive since Thursday or Friday of last week (the 17th or 18th of January 2008). Up until then, I would get random reboots that started with software 9.2 - but the TiVo was at least usable after rebooting.
> 
> I can only get a responsive TiVo Series 3 if I pull the cable feed. If I reattach the cable feed, even if I'm on a SD station, the TiVo becomes unresponsive and eventually reboots. I have tried multiple combinations of kickstart 52, kickstart 57 and kickstart 58 with and without the cable feed attached, and the TiVo always goes back to the same unresponsive state once the cable feed is attached. I also repeated the guided setup without the cable feed attached and cleaned up the suggestions list. I also deleted all of the shows from the "deleted" folder. I haven't tried to disconnect my external eSATA box because I have been using it trouble-free since the whole kickstart 62 days.
> 
> This does NOT appear to be a symptom of a failing hard disk, but more like a symptom of the tuner and/or software interaction. My cable company recently (01 January 2008) transferred from Insight cable to Comcast, and even though I think that's just a coincidence, I thought I'd mention it. I haven't tried an external antenna, but I thought someone in this thread was having the same symptoms with OTA.
> 
> Has anyone tried a clear and delete everything?


----------



## danitaz

Of course, I've been away from home since Friday, and last night I decided to watch some TiVO content, and I've yet to be able to get to my Tivo. I can connect to my Slingbox, and all I have is the main "menu" screen. The tivo is unresponsive, and if I attempt to control it with a few remote control clicks, it eventually reboots. During this time, I've noticed that the web manager (https://tivo/nowplaying/index.html) is also unreachable. I guess when I get back home on Wednesday I'm going to have to phone and see what they can do about mine. Of course, mine is just a bit over a year old, so I have no idea if they will be able to replace it without me purchasing an entirely new box!

Danita


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## robstrash

I got a new HD box about 3 weeks ago (with lifetime service). The only thing attached is the wireless network adapter. I have analog cable TV via the coax cable. Noticed several reboots the first 2 weeks, sometimes in middle of watching a recorded show, other times while in the Tivo menus. Went on vacation for a week so no idea what happened.

Yesterday, I finish 1 show, open a new one and about to click on Play now and it reboots again. Tech support gave me the same song and dance about connecting to wall and then try without network adapter for a few days so did that tonight.

Since I don't have HD cable channels, this is definitely related to any HD programming. This is utterly annoying since it takes 8 minutes for the box to reboot.


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## danitaz

So, of course, I can't say that this is "definitively" fixed, because it's been less than a day, however . . . .

I was away from home from Friday until Tuesday night. I didn't have time to try to watch anything on the Tivo via Slingbox on Friday, but every time I tried from Saturday through Tuesday was unsuccessful. The Tivo was just stuck on the "main" menu, and was unresponsive to remote control commands. And in fact, I watched it reboot remotely a dozen times while I was away.

I got home last night and unplugged the cable. The Tivo regained all of the controls, and I noticed that it was on an HD channel. I had redone all of my season passes to SD TV channels, but I didn't disable the HD channels (hoping that occasionally an HD show would be okay). But it looks to me like after recording House on a SD channel Friday night the Tivo changed to an HD channel for something, and from there on was just "stuck" until I could physically correct the problem. So, I went into the channel setup and remove ALL HD channels from the lineup. That was at about 10:00 p.m. last night, and it's 10:45 a.m. now. So, it's only been about 12 hours, but whereas not ONE show was recorded after about 9:00 p.m. Friday night, the Tivo recorded ALL NIGHT LONG overnight. It's not locked up once, I've watched TV a few hours this morning, and there hasn't been one case of a lockup, whereas it did nothing but lock/reboot for 4 straight days!

So, yes, unplugging the cable "fixed" it, but it didn't need to stay unplugged as long as I was not touching an HD channel at all. I'm going to wait until the end of the week to phone TiVO. If indeed this stays fine until Friday, I might switch to a HD channel purposefully, and see if I can force a lockup before I phone them.

I know that a lot of people are having similar and even dissimilar issues, so it might not be the same problem for every person, but for me, I'm really convinced that it's HD that is causing the problem, because I was able to crash it with OTA HD programming last week before I left.

Ho hum 

Danita


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## gwar9999

danitaz said:


> I was away from home from Friday until Tuesday night. I didn't have time to try to watch anything on the Tivo via Slingbox on Friday, but every time I tried from Saturday through Tuesday was unsuccessful. The Tivo was just stuck on the "main" menu, and was unresponsive to remote control commands. And in fact, I watched it reboot remotely a dozen times while I was away.


Interesting... Last night I was playing a game on my PS3 and noticed all of the lights on my TiVo S3 illuminate. I figured I was the beneficiary of a new software update. As I continued to play I saw the TiVo go through it's usual boot sequence and then about 15 minutes later it appeared to reboot again. When I finished my game, I switched to watching TiVo and had the same issue with TiVo being stuck on the main menu and not recognizing any IR commands. I yanked the power cable out of the TiVo, let it reboot (for the 3rd time) and things have been behaving ever since.

Unfortunately, since I wasn't watching TV, I have no idea what TiVo was tuning to when the initial reboot occurred

FWIW, I do not use the Rhapsody service, nor do I have a Slingbox or external harddrive. I am using a 100% stock S3 unit (original HDD).


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## danitaz

gwar9999 said:


> FWIW, I do not use the Rhapsody service, nor do I have a Slingbox or external harddrive. I am using a 100% stock S3 unit (original HDD).


Yeah - I doubt that Slingbox has anything to do with it - it's just an "output" as far as Tivo is concerned really. I'm 4 hours further into the day, and the TiVO has been fine. But not a HD program near it!

Danita


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## careysm

Okay, it's time for me to join in the fray.

About 2 weeks ago (1/17), my Series 3 HDTiVo became unresponsive and eventually rebooted. (I had been operating perfectly for nearly 5 months until this point). I immediately called TiVo. Long story short, we plugged and unplugged the cable cards (both) and I appeared to be back up and running.

Fast forward to the following Sunday. I was sitting down with a house full of people ready to watch the NFL championship games in HD. TiVo died in a similar manner to the last time but unplugging and plugging did nothing this time. I thought the box was dead. TiVo insisted that it must be the cable cards. The cable guy (Cablevision) came out and replaced one of the 2 cards (not both) and he insisted it was the TiVo box. TiVo sent me a new box. I'm scheduled to have the cable guy give me 2 new cards for this new box.

The bottom line is that I have the exact same problem as other folks on this thread. The box works fine with the HD channels deleted. If I turn on an HD channel, I'll get pixelation leading to nonresponsiveness leading to a reboot.

If I'm not mistaken, there was someone else on this thread who said things started going south for them around the same time as me. TiVo insisted that I haven't gotten a firmware update for a few months.

I'm pretty convinced that this is Tivo's problem and not the cards. If this doesn't work, I think I have no choice but to drop my Tivo service and go back to that dreaded cablevision DVR. I have 2 other TiVos (Series 1 and Series 2) that I love and have worked great for over 3 years. It pains me to drop the HDTivo but I can't live with the finger pointing and the endless phone calls and cable guy visits. I guess I'll just have to wait it out until HDTivo is ready to work with cable cards.


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## greg_burns

careysm said:


> TiVo insisted that I haven't gotten a firmware update for a few months.


That is true. I got the 9.2 software on my S3 months ago.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=370220


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## gwar9999

careysm said:


> Fast forward to the following Sunday. I was sitting down with a house full of people ready to watch the NFL championship games in HD.


I had started a thread awhile back (too lazy to search for it now) regarding TiVo reboots during NFL broadcasts (particularly on Fox) and there were many others that had the same problem. Not sure if this is the same problem that you had, but you never know.



careysm said:


> I'm pretty convinced that this is Tivo's problem and not the cards.


I agree. TiVo should display an error if the Cablecards explode (or anything even less severe) rather than reboot. Reboots should never occur, in theory-- it's up to the device to handle even the worst case situations as gracefully as possible. Rebooting and becoming non-responsive to IR commands is not graceful. If it absolutely has to reboot, for whatever reason, it should add a message stating the problem to the Messages and Settings.


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## mac_g33k

Don't know if this helps or not, but since we know our Tivo HD has been experiencing this sluggish/rebooting behavior, we've changed all of our HD recordings to instead record the SD equivalent. And since we started doing this, we've had no reboots.

So, a week without recording any HD channels == A week without sluggishness and reboots.

Nice that I bought this great HD device..but can't watch anything but SD content without problems.


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## gwar9999

It happened again (two nights in a row). This time I noticed that a recording was in progress and ended at 9 PM (on FOX SD) . Within 1 minute of the red recording light turning off I saw it reboot. Then after it came back up, it rebooted again. Then I finally tuned in when the THX was displayed and quickly pressed the TiVo button on the remote and began to scroll down the menu. After a few moments of scrolling down it froze again (prior to that the IR receiver was illuminating with each press, once it became unresponsive the IR light ceased). I had to yank the plug, yet again. This is the exact same problem that occurred last night (however, I don't believe the S3 was recording anything just before it began the reboot madness last night-- there is nothing in my NPL for 1/29).

There is no way this is an ethernet issue since it occurred around the same time as last night and every other device on my network (PS3, several PCs and servers, my A/V receiver) had no connectivity loss. The last network activity (according to my router's log) from my TiVo was a little over an hour before the crash when the S3 requested data from http://tivo-service/mercury.cgi (which it did every 15 minutes prior for several hours).

Interestingly, there is no ".com" after the request for "tivo-service", but I suppose the S3 resolves the IP address first but that's exactly what my router reports it as. Throughout the day it hits other pages of tivo-service as well but mercury.cgi is apparently requested the most often. I know the S3 connects to the internet successfully since the recordings I scheduled online record as expected, Unbox downloads work, MusicChoice videos work and the guide data is current.

It's not a power issue either since the S3 is connected to a UPS that has my TV, receiver and PS3 attached to it. I was playing my PS3 via my receiver and TV at the time of the reboots (both last night and tonight).

Basically, it's either the CableCards (Scientific Atlanta / Cox Santa Barbara) or the S3. I haven't begun calling tech support because I'm sure Cox and TiVo will blame each other. I guess I'll see what happens tomorrow night.


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## greg_burns

gwar9999 said:


> The last network activity (according to my router's log) from my TiVo was a little over an hour before the crash when the S3 requested data from http://tivo-service/mercury.cgi (which it did every 15 minutes prior for several hours).
> 
> Interestingly, there is no ".com" after the request for "tivo-service", but I suppose the S3 resolves the IP address first but that's exactly what my router reports it as. Throughout the day it hits other pages of tivo-service as well but mercury.cgi is apparently requested the most often.


CGI is a program. Is an interesting address though. Wonder how it does resolve http://tivo-service?


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## gwar9999

greg_burns said:


> CGI is a program. Is an interesting address though. Wonder how it does resolve http://tivo-service?


The S3 probably has that address in it's /etc/hosts file (since it's linux based). The S3 worked nearly perfect for over a year and now it's gone insane. Are there any diagnostics or logs I can view to see why it's having issues. First thing this morning. the S3 was recording one show, my wife went to record another, reboot. it rebooted, it began to record the 2 shows and the menus were sluggish, the S3 was almost non-responsive doing some strange UI refreshes. I guess I need to call tech support. The one thing I do know for sure now, the S3 was not recording any HD content when it became a zombie. All of the channels were SD digital cable channels.

EDIT:

Called TiVo-- I'm removing the CableCards for 24 hours. They say, if it reboots it's TiVo. If it doesn't it's the CC. I agree with the first part, but IMO it's still possible it could be the TiVo in either case. If I repeat Guide Setup (which my S3 prompted me to do so) w/o the CC, and later I re-add the CC and repeat-- will the settings for the CC be lost?

EDIT 2:

Removed the CC... rebooted it manually... when it did, the TiVo became a zombie again. It's not the CC. Just my luck, my warranty is up since I've had it just over 12 months! ARGHHHHHH!


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## greg_burns

gwar9999 said:


> The S3 probably has that address in it's /etc/hosts file (since it's linux based).


Would it show up in a log on your router like that? Would think it would have resolved it locally and you would see the IP. But I am talking outside my area of expertise.


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## greg_burns

gwar9999 said:


> Are there any diagnostics or logs I can view to see why it's having issues.


Only thing I would know that you can do yourself would be to run a Hard Drive diagnostic test on your drive. 

Hitachi Drive Fitness Test


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## gwar9999

greg_burns said:


> Only thing I would know that you can do yourself would be to run a Hard Drive diagnostic test on your drive.
> 
> Hitachi Drive Fitness Test


I'll probably just exchange the S3 since it seems defective at this point. Funny thing, I had an S1 for about 7 years and the S3 didn't last much more than 1. I don't know why they switched from SCSI to SATA drives considering SCSI drives are far more reliable-- oh wait, I know why, price.


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## miller890

I have two Series3 both with eSata external drives. I have recently added a Slingbox AV (s-video, w/ HDMI to TV) to my newer S3 (no problems), then moved my older S3 with an identical setup. At that time, the random reboots started. Prior to installing the Slingbox AV, the S3 has not been rebooted in some time, so I thought it may have a disk on its way out. 

That same day I read this thread and noticed there were a couple of comments about watching NFL; it was that same Sunday during the game! It made me remember a comment one of the TWC tech's made about bumping the signal strength during big events. Are their any cable company techs out there that could confirm this is a possibility? S3 shows a signal strength of 97-100, never below, so maybe a slight increase in signal strength push me into the range of too strong of a signal; mentioned here as well.

The following Monday, the semi constant random reboots stopped and I don't see any evidence of a reboot (too bad they added the SPS30S to remain after a reboot, that was a sure sign a reboot happened.) The only difference between the two S3's is the older S3 (by almost a year) has 2 s-cards, the newer one has 2 m-cards. The older one as of that Sunday has the Slingbox AV connected. 

I guess I will have to see what happens during this Sunday's Super Bowl.


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## greg_burns

gwar9999 said:


> I'll probably just exchange the S3 since it seems defective at this point. Funny thing, I had an S1 for about 7 years and the S3 didn't last much more than 1. I don't know why they switched from SCSI to SATA drives considering SCSI drives are far more reliable-- oh wait, I know why, price.


Don't think Tivos ever used SCSI drives...

S1s are IDE I assume, just like the S2s.


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## richsadams

greg_burns said:


> Don't think Tivos ever used SCSI drives...
> 
> S1s are IDE I assume, just like the S2s.


You are correct sir.


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## bizzy

greg_burns said:


> Would it show up in a log on your router like that? Would think it would have resolved it locally and you would see the IP. But I am talking outside my area of expertise.


Your router sees the HTTP request as a connection to an IP address on the HTTP port. The Tivo has already done name resolution of its own using whatever domain name it was instructed to connect to.

Where 'tivo-service' comes from is your router doing a reverse dns lookup of the IP address it saw the Tivo connect to. Apparently whoever set up the reverse dns for that IP range set the name for that IP to 'tivo-service' either intentionally or accidentally.


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## danitaz

mac_g33k said:


> Don't know if this helps or not, but since we know our Tivo HD has been experiencing this sluggish/rebooting behavior, we've changed all of our HD recordings to instead record the SD equivalent. And since we started doing this, we've had no reboots.
> 
> So, a week without recording any HD channels == A week without sluggishness and reboots.
> 
> Nice that I bought this great HD device..but can't watch anything but SD content without problems.


Yes - that's exactly where we stand (sit) now too - no HD, Tivo is happy - no HD, Danita is unhappy!

Danita


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## Foobarsky

Well, I've been desperately trying everything on this thread for quite a while now (brand new Tivo HD in December, frequent reboots on HD channels, etc.)

So, I used the cable attenuators to get down to about a 31 SNR; that seemed to help a bit, but still rebooting. Argh.

I recently "unmarried" my Tivo/Western Digital eSata drive *and* unplugged the eSata cable. It hasn't rebooted since (about 4 days, definitely a record.)

If things continue to be stable, I'm going to try the high-quality (and expensive) eSata cable mentioned here. If not, I think I'm going to have to go the return route, but I'm really, really, really dreading the cablecard config nightmare with Comcast.


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## richsadams

Foobarsky said:


> Well, I've been desperately trying everything on this thread for quite a while now (brand new Tivo HD in December, frequent reboots on HD channels, etc.)
> 
> So, I used the cable attenuators to get down to about a 31 SNR; that seemed to help a bit, but still rebooting. Argh.
> 
> I recently "unmarried" my Tivo/Western Digital eSata drive *and* unplugged the eSata cable. It hasn't rebooted since (about 4 days, definitely a record.)
> 
> If things continue to be stable, I'm going to try the high-quality (and expensive) eSata cable mentioned here. If not, I think I'm going to have to go the return route, but I'm really, really, really dreading the cablecard config nightmare with Comcast.


Replacing the OEM eSATA cable will almost certainly solve your problems as it has for many others. Since your TiVo is functioning normally now the only other possibility is that the eSATA drive itself is bad in which case I'd just return that rather than your TiVo box.

I'm not sure which "expensive" cable you're referring to. The recommended SIIG Serial ATA external cable is less than $10. IMO you shouldn't have to buy a cable at all...WD should supply decent ones to start with. 

Let us know if that fixes everything.


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## Hoopnoop

richsadams said:


> Replacing the OEM eSATA cable will almost certainly solve your problems as it has for many others. Since your TiVo is functioning normally now the only other possibility is that the eSATA drive itself is bad in which case I'd just return that rather than your TiVo box.
> 
> I'm not sure which "expensive" cable you're referring to. The recommended SIIG Serial ATA external cable is less than $10. IMO you shouldn't have to buy a cable at all...WD should supply decent ones to start with.
> 
> Let us know if that fixes everything.


I've had a similar problem of rebooting but only since I added the extra hard drive. So, I think I'll try getting a better eSATA cable as well and see what happens.


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## richsadams

Hoopnoop said:


> I've had a similar problem of rebooting but only since I added the extra hard drive. So, I think I'll try getting a better eSATA cable as well and see what happens.


Your feedback will be valuable. :up:


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## fusednova

Same problem here. My S3 has been sluggish the past month or so and started freezing completely and rebooting a few days ago. 

I called Tivo, the rep had me remove the CCs and unplug the Ethernet - still frozen. He then had me unplug my coax cable and BAM - it started working fine. The rep seemed surprised and told me to call the cable company to have them check it out. My S3 is about 14 months old so no warranty  I was going to pay for a replacement but after reading this thread, I think I'll wait it out a bit.


I've been a loyal fan of Tivo since the beginning (I have 10 Tivos in use) but the S3 has just about pushed me over.

-Dave


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## bizzy

I can't believe that Tivo tech support still acts like this is some amazing problem they've never heard of before.


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## careysm

bizzy said:


> I can't believe that Tivo tech support still acts like this is some amazing problem they've never heard of before.


 The Tivo support person that I talked to on the phone last night said that if people are having this problem, then they aren't calling. He said that he has gotten no calls about this problem (HD causing lockups/reboots on S3).


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## lees06g35

After unplugging my my coax cable and unplugging the power cables to both my S3 and external hard drive for about an hour, my S3 has been working perfect. I have been able to record HD programs and watch HD with no problems. I'm not sure if that cured it or if Tivo sent an update, but no problems since Sunday night.


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## lees06g35

I wonder if these random reboots are anyway connected to the new comcast dvr w/Tivo software? One person wrote that his first new comcast dvr was also rebooting about twice a day.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=383222


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## lees06g35

I wonder if Tivo sent an update directed at another piece of hardware (comcast dvr) and the update is some how affecting the S3?


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## richsadams

I've long wondered if TiVo "secretly" sends minor upgrades without our knowledge. However I've been assured by more than a few long-term forum folks as well as one TiVo rep that any time an update is sent that the version number will change. I know in the software world that any change to the product requires a new version designation.

Still...it does seem like changes occur to our TiVo's now and then w/o any update notice doesn't it? On the other hand the cableco's make changes to their systems on what seems like a regular basis without telling us anything about them. I suppose I should be more inclined to blame them when somethings amiss.


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## bmgoodman

My S3 would not output anything to my TV last night when I turned it on at 8:03. The display came on and showed it was recording Smallville. About one time per week, I've had this "no video" problem, but I could always, with only one exception, access the "Now Playing" list on the S3 by going into my S2 and viewing it across the network. Last night, however, I couldn't access the Now Playing list. Of course, I couldn't be sure Smallville was really recording, but I decided to just leave it alone until the show ended. At 8:13, all the lights on the front panel came on suddenly for 20-30 seconds and then everything went dark. The S3 rebooted and at 8:16 began recording Smallville again. One thing I noticed is that the first recording of Smallville listed as partial, :03 minutes despite the fact that the actual recording was 12-13 minutes. Interesting coincidence that the :03 minutes was the time I tried to turn on the Tivo.

FWIW, my S3 is 13 months old, unmodified. I have also thus far not added any external storage. I am watching over HDMI.

I have not called Tivo on this. I fully expect they'll tell me they've never heard of this and that the Tivo is bad. I just don't want to go through that hassle for what appears to be a SW bug. Sure, I could get a replacement Tivo (I bought an extended warranty), but the mind reels at the time required to redeem that warranty and THEN deal with Comcast & CableCards yet again. :down::down::down:


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## theGliberal

I've just started seeing the same thing. Turn on the TV and the S3 is not sending out a signal. It's also unresponsive to the remote. The only solution is to unplug/plug.

Funny thing is there aren't any CCs involved. Just OTA and cable.

I do use Comcast...


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## bizzy

careysm said:


> The Tivo support person that I talked to on the phone last night said that if people are having this problem, then they aren't calling. He said that he has gotten no calls about this problem (HD causing lockups/reboots on S3).


What a typical load of BS


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## mistaketv

I got my Series3 in April 2007. It has two CCs, no external HD, wireless USB wifi adapter. It's been doing random reboots since the very beginning, before the fall software update. I called TiVo tech support once, and the person was so clueless and unhelpful that I haven't bothered calling back.

Lately, I've been having a new problem, no video. Occasionally I will turn on the TV to find a blank gray screen. The TiVo display still says it's recording, but neither tuner is working. Restarting fixes the problem.

I tried switching from a wireless USB to wired ethernet, but that made it worse. The week that I had the LAN cable plugged in, the losing video happened three times. So I disconnected it from the network completely for a week or so. During this time, I didn't lose video, but I did get a random reboot.

As far as I can tell the random reboots are triggered only when one of the tuners is on an HD channel, but nothing else is consistent.

If I hadn't transferred my lifetime service to my S3, I would have smashed it to pieces by now. Nothing pisses me off more than when that $500 POS cuts out in the middle of a show and proceeds to take 5 min to restart, and then sometimes not resuming recording properly.

I don't buy for one second that this has anything to do with CCs or USB network adapters or external hard drives or anything else. And even if there IS some variable there, it's still poor hardware and/or software design that make it _my_ problem. As a consumer I just want the product to work consistently. I shouldn't have to care about minor electrical fluctuations, cable signal quality, or anything else.

So should I even bother calling TiVo?


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## careysm

I would call just to get the problem on record (not because you expect them to help). The more of us that speak up the better.


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## richsadams

Welcome to the forum...too bad it's under a negative circumstance. I agree with *careysm *and others here...a call to TiVo is in order. If the box started having problems "from the beginning" there's something wrong with it. It should have been returned under warranty immediately IMHO. It's certainly frustrating but complaining about it here isn't going to do anything except possibly make you feel better somehow.


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## ctn1983

I just received my replacement Tivo Series3 today, everything seems to be working great so far, I'm actually suprise at how quick and responsive it is (maybe because I've been so used to my old sluggish Tivo)...no issues recording and playing both standard/HD shows, I also tried recording two different HD shows at the same time and have not experience any lag or reboot...the current software is 8.0, as mention in my previous posts, I will tried to avoid the 9.2a update until Tivo releases the next version.


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## ctn1983

UPDATE:

Well TexasAg, you were right, I wasn't able to avoid the update. As I was packing up to leave town tomorrow morning for the weekend, I decided to update my guide data one last time before unplugging the USB cable to my network adapter...When the update was finish, I notice a "reboot required (or something similar)" message!!!! So I decided to reboot the system, since it's was going to eventually reboot itself anyway and I also wanted to see if I was going to get the "unresponsive/rebooting symptoms" again,...Well this time I didn't get the same issues, what I got instead is a endless rebooting Tivo!!! The "Welcome, Powering On" would appear for a minute or so, but than it would reboot itself...this happens in an endless cycle, unless I pulled the power plug, I can't even get to the menu! I've tried everything, including the "kick start" procedure.

I just got off the phone with Tivo, the lady said since this was my third unit now, its definitely something around/connected to the Tivo that is causing the issues, I told her I have removed all connections to the unit, except for the power cord (and tried it in different locations in my house)...,so guess what she says, it has to be the electricity power in my house, WTF, are you kidding me, it was working great until the system updated itself....that and the fact that everything else in my house including my Tivo Series2 powers on/and is working properly. Well she went ahead and placed an order for another replacement Tivo, this will be my fourth Tivo now (first one lasted for about a year, second one a little over a month, and now the third one in less than 6 hours). This is getting rediculous...If this next one gives me trouble, than I give up, I'll just sell it on ebay as a broken unit and get the lower model TivoHD. 

The only good thing I can say about this whole experience is they have good customer service. During the three times I called them, they were friendly (although not very helpful with the issue) and I didn't have diffculty asking for a replacement unit every time. The last one I talk to even offer to credit my account for this month's service and is sending me a replacement power cord just in case its the power cord I'm using (they also didn't charge me for the replacement and I didn't have to pay for shipping this time). 

Looks like I'm watching the Super Bowl in standard definition...yuck


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## miller890

miller890 said:


> I guess I will have to see what happens during this Sunday's Super Bowl.


Coincidently my S3 has started to randomly reboot during another NFL playoff weekend. Are the cable companies bumping up signal strength during the playoff games???


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## bizzy

This problem is far too distributed to be a provider issue. It hits people using cable with and without cablecards. It hits people doing OTA ATSC only.

It is a Tivo issue, either hardware, software, or a combination of both. And its getting to the point where their denial of the issue could be actionable.

Its funny how the Tivo employees on this forum who are so happy to give us "good" news seem to vanish when we're getting screwed.

Hey Tivo- if my replacement S3 dies the same way my original S3 died, and it is out of my warranty period, I *will* sue, and I *will* do my best to broaden the scope of the lawsuit to a class action. I'm rich and have lots of spare time. Think about it.


----------



## T-Von

bizzy said:


> This problem is far too distributed to be a provider issue. It hits people using cable with and without cablecards. It hits people doing OTA ATSC only.
> 
> It is a Tivo issue, either hardware, software, or a combination of both. And its getting to the point where their denial of the issue could be actionable.
> 
> Its funny how the Tivo employees on this forum who are so happy to give us "good" news seem to vanish when we're getting screwed.
> 
> Hey Tivo- if my replacement S3 dies the same way my original S3 died, and it is out of my warranty period, I *will* sue, and I *will* do my best to broaden the scope of the lawsuit to a class action. I'm rich and have lots of spare time. Think about it.


Hi Gang, got my TiVo HD yesterday. Using OTA only. No CC, cable, no external harddrive, etc. The system has rebooted 3 times and frozen once. I will be placing a call to TiVo. I'll be their worse nightmare until this issue is fixed. If class-action is what it takes then I say do it. The most disturbing part is no TiVo response to this thread.


----------



## asahi

Okay....this sucks...

I've had my Tivo Series 3 for about a year and half now. I was one of the early adaptors like many of you. I love my TIVO and think it is one of the best electronic items that I've ever owned. I added a SATA 750 drive once that option became available and have had no problems with it at all.

That all changed today. This morning, while watching Happy Feet in HD, my TIVO suddenly rebooted. Once it rebooted, everything was fine but about 15 minutes later, it rebooted once again. I switched over to a recording of CBS Sunday Morning in HD and it started stopping, starting and then finally it rebooted as well. I'm watching normal TV now and all channels (SD and HD) are looking fine. No reboots so far. 

I'm very concerned as I record a number of recordings in HD and watch 90% plus of my TV content in HD. 

I'm wondering if this is the software of perhaps it is the SATA drive attached to the TIVO. Very frustrating and I'm hoping it is not the TIVO.

I've read this thread and it doesn't look like there is a definite solution. I'll call TIVO and let everyone know if I come up with anything.

Thanks


----------



## greg_burns

asahi said:


> I'm wondering if this is the software of perhaps it is the SATA drive attached to the TIVO. Very frustrating and I'm hoping it is not the TIVO.


I've noticed the last couple of days playback of shows seems rather glitchy, wtih some pixelation and skipping ahead. Then today I noticed it was rebooting occasionally. To troubleshoot, I just divorced my external drive (an Antec MX-1 w/ WD 500GB with original eSata cable). (Doing this lost my recording on that drive, but I didn't mind.)

I may reattach it after finishing running Hitchaci Drive Fitness Test on it if it tests OK. I didn't have to divorce it to run the tests, but I wanted to see how the Tivo behaved w/o it attached and was too impatient to wait for the test to finish.

If I continue to have problems with it re-attached I guess I will buy the recommended SIIG eSata cable (FAQ Sec III #26).


----------



## richsadams

asahi said:


> Okay....this sucks...
> 
> I've had my Tivo Series 3 for about a year and half now. I was one of the early adaptors like many of you. I love my TIVO and think it is one of the best electronic items that I've ever owned. I added a SATA 750 drive once that option became available and have had no problems with it at all.
> 
> That all changed today. This morning, while watching Happy Feet in HD, my TIVO suddenly rebooted. Once it rebooted, everything was fine but about 15 minutes later, it rebooted once again. I switched over to a recording of CBS Sunday Morning in HD and it started stopping, starting and then finally it rebooted as well. I'm watching normal TV now and all channels (SD and HD) are looking fine. No reboots so far.
> 
> I'm very concerned as I record a number of recordings in HD and watch 90% plus of my TV content in HD.
> 
> I'm wondering if this is the software of perhaps it is the SATA drive attached to the TIVO. Very frustrating and I'm hoping it is not the TIVO.
> 
> I've read this thread and it doesn't look like there is a definite solution. I'll call TIVO and let everyone know if I come up with anything.
> 
> Thanks


Sorry to hear that you're having troubles. The very first thing I'd check is the eSATA cable on the expansion drive to ensure the connections are snug. (IIRC someone posted that they fixed the problem by reversing the connection.)

Let us know what kind of drive you have. Both the WD My DVR Expander and some of the eSATA cables supplied with the Antec MX-1 enclosure are known to cause the problems you're seeing. If either I'd replace it with one of the recommended cables such as the SIIG Serial ATA external cable (less than $10) or one of the others on this post (see #26).

You can also try running the built-in TiVo diagnostic programs called "Kickstarts".

If none of that works you'll probably want to disconnect and divorce your eSATA drive to see if TiVo runs normally. Again it could be the eSATA cable or the drive itself may be bad.

If TiVo still acts up, that would be an indication of a failing internal hard drive.

You could pull the internal and/or external drives and run a diagnostic program such as the WD Lifeguard Diagnostic. Either drive should still be under warranty.

When working with everything make sure that when you power TiVo and your expansion drive down that you follow the proper steps:

1. Unplug TiVo
2. Unplug (and disconnect if needed) the eSATA drive

When you're ready to start everything up again:

1. Connect and plug in your expansion drive
2. Plug TiVo back in

Best of luck and let us know how it goes.


----------



## danitaz

So, just to add to the "weirdness", my Tivo has been working perfectly for over 5 days after disabling all of my HD channels (not so great for an HD Tivo, but since our HDTV has been out of order for about 2 weeks in the shop and we watch via Slingbox, it hasn't been the end of the world either). I was planning on calling Tivo tomorrow anyway, because by then my Tivo SHOULD have been working for almost a week without any trouble in SD, and I was going to point out that it is definitely HD related for me at least.

Well, I sat down about 15 minutes ago to watch some TV, and the Tivo was in the middle of a reboot! I was so distressed! So, I unhooked the cable so the reboots would stop (and they did), and then I went into the history to see what was up. It started at about 9:00 this morning, when the Tivo decided it was supposed to record The Closer in HD! I had accidentally forgotten to remove this season pass, and although I had removed all of my HD channels, the season pass must override that and still attempt to switch to the HD channel if set.

Sooooooo, it has absolutely been verified for me that it's an HD issue on my Tivo (no eSATA, no HDMI), and I'll phone them tomorrow, armed with the list of people in this thread who have said they have phoned Tivo, etc.

Danita


----------



## miller890

It seem like the problem occurs when both tuners are on HD and I am watching one of them. Just before the reboot, the picture freezes for a couple seconds and recovers a few times. I am not at home at the moment, but I wonder if it has something to do with HD format and what video format tivo is configured to send the TV. Currently running 1080i fixed...just a guess.


----------



## richsadams

greg_burns said:


> I've noticed the last couple of days playback of shows seems rather glitchy, wtih some pixelation and skipping ahead. Then today I noticed it was rebooting occasionally. To troubleshoot, I just divorced my external drive (an Antec MX-1 w/ WD 500GB with original eSata cable). (Doing this lost my recording on that drive, but I didn't mind.)
> 
> I may reattach it after finishing running Hitchaci Drive Fitness Test on it if it tests OK. I didn't have to divorce it to run the tests, but I wanted to see how the Tivo behaved w/o it attached and was too impatient to wait for the test to finish.
> 
> If I continue to have problems with it re-attached I guess I will buy the recommended SIIG eSata cable (FAQ Sec III #26).


Yikes!  For some reason I thought we were immune from these things! 

I've noticed the brief macroblocking/FF once in a while (on both HD and SD recordings) ever since v9.2a. I upgraded my internal HDD fairly recently and still see the same thing, so I think it's a built-in software "feature".


----------



## acc10x

miller890 said:


> It seem like the problem occurs when both tuners are on HD and I am watching one of them. Just before the reboot, the picture freezes for a couple seconds and recovers a few times. I am not at home at the moment, but I wonder if it has something to do with HD format and what video format tivo is configured to send the TV. Currently running 1080i fixed...just a guess.


i've been having similar HD related freeze-up/random reboot issues that i posted on over at this thread: http://tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=361087

just wanted to point out the other thread as it sounds like there's A LOT of folks experiencing the same problem and spending A LOT of time trying to troubleshoot it. would be nice if tivo would do the same.


----------



## asahi

Rich, thanks very much for the advice. I really appreicate your help. I have the Antec MX-1 with a 750 drive. I will replace the cable and report back. I'm thinking it has to be the SATA drive or cable since regular TV is fine, I only have the problems when I try to watch HD recorded programs. 
Thanks again Rich!


----------



## bizzy

acc10x said:


> just wanted to point out the other thread as it sounds like there's A LOT of folks experiencing the same problem and spending A LOT of time trying to troubleshoot it. would be nice if tivo would do the same.


Before that could happen, they'd have to stop pretending that they've never heard of the problem.


----------



## That70sGAdawg

Add me to the list. After 6 great months, my 7 month old series 3 started the black screen freeze ups a month ago (1-3 a week). Picsel breakup started a week ago on some HD recorded programs, then the reboots, then the locked up menus. Tried everything suggested- disconnect cable input, attenuate, new remote batteries. I called Tivo and I have an RMA# - But it will cost me $50 to get a refurb unit. This stinks!!!!!!!!!!
I have $1200 tied up in 2 units, 2 My DVR extenders, 2 Wireless USB adapters, and $80.00 software for Tivo to go on a Mac. Plus I pay monthly subscriptions to Tivo and Cable card fees to Comcast ! Should I wait for my TivoHD to die also- or switch to satellite and call Directv??? They have more HD now anyways than Comcast!


----------



## bizzy

That70sGAdawg said:


> Should I wait for my TivoHD to die also- or switch to satellite and call Directv???


The one thing that Tivo has on DirecTV is that the S3 and THD are light years ahead of the god-awful DirecTV HD DVR.


----------



## That70sGAdawg

At this point- I've lost an entire season of Curb Your Enthusium, all the Bowl games I saved, and lots of over 80 season passes ! I'm NOT happy with my expense for a "superior product" Tivo . Not to mention the extreme hassle of Cable cards with Comcast. They have a REAL software problem that they refuse to acknowledge. Is it mostly the Series 3, not the HD Tivo that has this "issue"? I can try another Tivo HD instead of the Series 3 IF that would make a difference. Cost would be another $300.

Investment for 2 HD DVR's with DirecTv would be $300.00. I'm seriously considering it!


----------



## mdobbins

I ended up divorcing my eSATA drive and that did NOT improve the situation. I did a "Clear and Delete All" and that did NOT improve the situation.

I replaced my internal hard drive and :up:  :up: BAM! My TiVo Series 3 is back to normal. I added my eSATA expansion and all is good with the world.

My suggestion to all who are having problems and who are comfortable enough following the instructions in III.10 or III.11 of the following:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=370784



mdobbins said:


> I ordered the attenuator pack from Smarthome. I sequentially placed the 3, 6 or 10 attenuators separately in line; each time the Tivo became unresponsive immediately upon connection of the cable feed and returned to responsive with the cable feed disconnected. When I placed the 20 in-line, the unit remained responsive (menu navigation, etc.) with the cable feed connected; however, I wasn't receiving any picture or sound when I tuned to HD channels. I then combined a 10 and a 6, and at first thought I had hit upon the right combination - the unit responded to remote commands and I could tune to HD. After 2 minutes of extreme audio and video dropouts, the unit stopped responding to remote commands and eventually rebooted. The same behavior occured with a 10 and a 3. My conclusion - the assertion that the behavior I'm seeing is related to signal strength is total BS.
> 
> I now think I'm going to have to go with the route of a hardware-replacement. Before replacing the entire TiVo, I'd like to rule out the hard disk. If I replace my internal hard disk with a larger hard disk, will I still be able to use my external eSATA drive? (Something in the back of my tells me that the original drive is required for the Series 3, eSATA expansion and software 9.2.)


----------



## greg_burns

richsadams said:


> Yikes!  For some reason I thought we were immune from these things!
> 
> I've noticed the brief macroblocking/FF once in a while (on both HD and SD recordings) ever since v9.2a. I upgraded my internal HDD fairly recently and still see the same thing, so I think it's a built-in software "feature".


Since I divorced my eSata drive everything has been right with the world. No reboots, no pixelation nor skipping. Strangely, the external drive tested perfectly fine with Hitachi Fitness test. (Didn't bother testing the internal one, since it runs great with external detached.)

Think I will re-attach tonight, and if the problems reappear I'll order the recommmened eSata cable and go from there.


----------



## bjwana

That70sGAdawg said:


> At this point- I've lost an entire season of Curb Your Enthusium, all the Bowl games I saved, and lots of over 80 season passes ! I'm NOT happy with my expense for a "superior product" Tivo . Not to mention the extreme hassle of Cable cards with Comcast. They have a REAL software problem that they refuse to acknowledge. Is it mostly the Series 3, not the HD Tivo that has this "issue"? I can try another Tivo HD instead of the Series 3 IF that would make a difference. Cost would be another $300.
> 
> Investment for 2 HD DVR's with DirecTv would be $300.00. I'm seriously considering it!


The same problems described in this forum for the Series 3 (constant rebooting, slow response, frozen pictures, etc.) come with "TIVO HD". Mine is particularly ill-behaved when viewing HD channels. Go figure --- a "TIVO HD" that chokes on HD programming. Don't look to another TIVO product for answers --- only more headaches.


----------



## richsadams

bjwana said:


> The same problems described in this forum for the Series 3 (constant rebooting, slow response, frozen pictures, etc.) come with "TIVO HD". Mine is particularly ill-behaved when viewing HD channels. Go figure --- a "TIVO HD" that chokes on HD programming. Don't look to another TIVO product for answers --- only more headaches.


Sorry to hear that your TiVo isn't doing well. You may be interested in reading the posts on this thread...particularly regarding HD/reboot issues if when you disconnect your coax or remove your cable cards things improve.

IIRC you have a WD My DVR Expander and may want to look into replacing the supplied eSATA cable as noted in a post above.


----------



## danitaz

mdobbins said:


> My suggestion to all who are having problems and who are comfortable enough following the instructions in III.10 or III.11 of the following:
> 
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=370784


My Tivo is no longer under warranty, so after I see what Tivo has to say about it, I might just do that!

Danita


----------



## danitaz

Oh - btw - if I want to replace my hard drive and I have Linux and Macs here (I do have Win XP too), do I need to bother going through all of the winMFS stuff, or can I just mount the drives under Linux, etc.?

Thanks.

Danita


----------



## greg_burns

danitaz said:


> Oh - btw - if I want to replace my hard drive and I have Linux and Macs here (I do have Win XP too), do I need to bother going through all of the winMFS stuff, or can I just mount the drives under Linux, etc.?
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Danita


You don't have to use WinMFS (but it is much easier), you can use MFSLive instead and do it from its Linux boot disk via command line.

http://mfslive.org/

InstantCake is another option, but you might have to get a Pata->Sata adapter to use it. IC doesn't seem to like some Sata controllers on some motherboards. YMMV.


----------



## memphislim

Before we all start swapping out our hardrives, what kind of track record to you have so far? How long has it been since the switch and did you copy your old drive to the new one first, OS and all?


----------



## greg_burns

greg_burns said:


> Since I divorced my eSata drive everything has been right with the world. No reboots, no pixelation nor skipping. Strangely, the external drive tested perfectly fine with Hitachi Fitness test. (Didn't bother testing the internal one, since it runs great with external detached.)
> 
> Think I will re-attach tonight, and if the problems reappear I'll order the recommmened eSata cable and go from there.


Just wanted to report back that everything is continuing to run fine.

I still don't know if it was just re-seating the eSata cable (I did not need to buy a new one) or the divorcing the drive and reattaching that fixed my reboot problems. 

Note to self: next time check the cable first!


----------



## richsadams

greg_burns said:


> Just wanted to report back that everything is continuing to run fine.
> 
> I still don't know if it was just re-seating the eSata cable (I did not need to buy a new one) or the divorcing the drive and reattaching that fixed my reboot problems.
> 
> Note to self: next time check the cable first!


Good info. And as they say on South Park, "Good fer yewwww!" :up:

I wonder if TiVo is paying attention and able to give out some reasonable information when someone calls in with the same symptoms?

We here of course are able to sort through these things using our vast knowledge base and guru-like feedback. Ah hem, but the great unwashed are certainly left to their own devices and I worry about them sometimes. But not often. 

</tongue in cheek>


----------



## mdobbins

For me, it has been 6 days of glitch-free operation with the replaced internal hard disk. I did copy the old drive to the new drive using WinMFS Beta Build 8- OS and all. My TiVo with new hard disk is running version 9.2a of the software since that was the version on my old internal hard disk. Prior to using WinMFS and doing the swap, however, I transferred all of my recordings to a hard drive attached to my PC using TiVo Desktop and I did a "Clear and Delete" of the original hard disk. I had to add all of my season passes back manually after the switch because of the "Clear and Delete", but it was a small price to pay for me to have a working, usable, non-pixellating, non-rebooting, HD channel viewable TiVo Series 3 again!

FWIW, I replaced the internal WD 250Gb drive with a Seagate 250Gb drive I found on eBay for $40 shipped. My eSATA expansion is a 2x750Gb RAID box, so I didn't really need to go "big" drive internally. I was trying to keep the repair cost as low as possible since my unit has been in use more than a year - and "She Who Must Be Obeyed" decreed that cost was a factor!



memphislim said:


> Before we all start swapping out our hardrives, what kind of track record to you have so far? How long has it been since the switch and did you copy your old drive to the new one first, OS and all?


----------



## memphislim

mdobbins said:


> ...... Prior to using WinMFS and doing the swap, however, I transferred all of my recordings to a hard drive attached to my PC using TiVo Desktop and I did a "Clear and Delete" of the original hard disk.


What was the reason for the clear and delete?


----------



## mdobbins

Just another attempt at remediation prior to changing out the drive. I did note that I was able to tune to a non-HD channel after doing the clear and delete and that the TiVo appeared to be stable (10 minutes testing time); however, once I tuned to a HD channel, the machine immediately began severe macroblocking and pixellating. I also figured it wouldn't hurt since I had already transferred my recordings and if I needed to copy my hard drive contents - which I eventually did - that I would minimize the amount of "stuff" that would need to be transferred.



memphislim said:


> What was the reason for the clear and delete?


----------



## memphislim

Here's my update. Tivo sent me a refurb replacement with 8x software. Hooked it up, everything was peachy until 9x downloaded 2 days later. Then the same old locking, freezing and rebooting unless the cable was unplugged.

I called tech support and supposedly talked to the head of the dept. She said that they had heard of it before (finally admitted it) but the problem as she knew it was fixed by getting new cable cards. She couldn't explain why it worked fine before the software download and not after though. The only thing she could do was send me a 3rd series 3. So I guess I'll replace the cable cards when TW comes out to install them, just in case. 

So I hope I'm one of the lucky ones who gets a new machine and it works, otherwise I'll try putting in a new HD since that seems to be working.


----------



## bizzy

I got hit by this and used my same cablecards in the replacement. Not surprisingly, the cablecards don't seem to be the problem. I wonder why Tivo would suggest that it's a problem with the cablecards? (hmmm.)


----------



## gwar9999

bizzy said:


> I got hit by this and used my same cablecards in the replacement. Not surprisingly, the cablecards don't seem to be the problem. I wonder why Tivo would suggest that it's a problem with the cablecards? (hmmm.)


When I spoke w/ TiVo they said it was one of 4 problems:

1- Wireless adapter (did not apply, I use ethernet)
2- A/C power (not likely-- my TiVo is connected to a UPS that powers my PS3, DLP TV and A/V receiver)
3- CableCards 
4- TiVo itself

They had me remove the CableCards and it still locked up and rebooted so it wasn't 1,2 or 3. Guess which one it was? Yup, bingo, the S3. Seemed like a HDD issue. TiVo sent me a broken refurb running 8.x and it doesn't reboot-- but the OLED screen doesn't work so they have to ship me another one after they receive my original return. Kind of a pain-in-the-you-know-what but still better than using the SA HD cable box (not DVR) that I relied on for a few days awaiting my broken replacement. The SA cable box had so many glitches (pixelation, audio issues, video issues, guide data issues).

All that said, TiVo should have just shipped me an advance replacement for the broken device that they sent me but insisted on me giving them another $840 as collateral.


----------



## careysm

It wasn't the cable cards for me. The cable company rolled about 4 or so through plus we had the same locking up without the cards at one point. .....The replacement box didn't work for me either. Tivo said they would send it upstairs to their technical experts. 4 days and no call yet....I'm ready to throw in the towel...............


----------



## bizzy

"Escalate to engineering" is Tivo code for "we'll pretend you never called us".


----------



## KJW

Not the cablecards for me either. I am using the same cards in a new tivo HD and I have not had any reboots, as compared with the weekly reboots on my first machine. 

Tivo is really being deceptive on this one, particularly on blaming irrelevent things like surge protectors and wireless adapters. 250 posts on this thread and not one person has shown any association with rebooting. If my new Tivo starts having problems, I'm just going back to my cablevision dvr.


----------



## bmgoodman

KJW said:


> Tivo is really being deceptive on this one, particularly on blaming irrelevent things like surge protectors and wireless adapters. 250 posts on this thread and not one person has shown any association with rebooting. If my new Tivo starts having problems, I'm just going back to my cablevision dvr.


Isn't it Business 101 that says to first look for all scenarios where the problem is caused by a third party? Then hope you're either right or that your customer gives up before arriving at the conclusion that it's YOUR fault. 

(Every time my mother's cable box acts up, Comcast tells her the problem is caused by her Tivo!)


----------



## CharlesSchwab

bizzy said:


> I got hit by this and used my same cablecards in the replacement. Not surprisingly, the cablecards don't seem to be the problem. I wonder why Tivo would suggest that it's a problem with the cablecards? (hmmm.)


We also got hit by this and our box was not even 1 week old. Tivo is sending out a replacement. When you used the same cable cards in the new box, did you have to call your provider to "pair" the cards or re-active the cards?


----------



## memphislim

Yes, you have to have them re-paired to your new box and unfortunetly, my cable company wouldn't let me read them the new host id's over the phone, they insisted on wasting both of our time and sent out a tech.


----------



## Foobarsky

I'm pretty discouraged.

I've tried just about everything discussed here for my nearly-brand new and now rebooting Tivo HD -- cable attenuators, divorcing the external drive, etc.

Things have gotten better, but I'm still getting reboots or freezes. Of course, it always seems to freeze just before it's supposed to record something (just missed the first half of the Sarah Connor Chronicles this week  )

I think I'm going to have to a) waste a ton of time on tech support, then b) get them to send me a new box. I've had it about 60 days, so I don't know if I'll get a new one or a refurb or what. Then I'm going to have to go through all the crap with the cable co on the cablecards....

This totally sucks, and it really, really seems like a software problem to me....


----------



## bizzy

CharlesSchwab said:


> We also got hit by this and our box was not even 1 week old. Tivo is sending out a replacement. When you used the same cable cards in the new box, did you have to call your provider to "pair" the cards or re-active the cards?


I called Comcast and told them that my Tivo said the cards needed to be re-paired. Which was technically true. I did not say that it was a new unit, for fear that they'd require a truck roll. The support CSR just asked me for the host/data numbers and we were done. It was shockingly painless.


----------



## ctn1983

Foobarsky said:


> I'm pretty discouraged.
> 
> I think I'm going to have to a) waste a ton of time on tech support, then b) get them to send me a new box. I've had it about 60 days, so I don't know if I'll get a new one or a refurb or what. Then I'm going to have to go through all the crap with the cable co on the cablecards....


You will most likely get a refurbished unit, when I had to return my 1st Tivo in for exchange, I could tell it was used because of a small mark I found, which wasn't a issue for me, since it looked new, however when I had to exhange that unit (because of the rebooting/sluggish isssues a month later) for another unit, the 2nd unit had several scratches and only lasted 6 hours before it stop working properly (could never get to menu, endless reboot)...I just returned that unit and will be receiving my third refurbished unit next week, hopefully it won't be anything like the 2nd unit.


----------



## MasterCephus

Hey, I created a new thread, but I think that this needs to be here:



> I have a series 3 TV and I have just encountered some problems.
> 
> 2 Days ago my Tivo was running very, very slowly. Everything was very unresponsive. I would click the Tivo button and it would act like nothing would happen...then after about 5 minutes, the Tivo would just restart.
> 
> So I called Tivo and they told me it was my cable cards. I took them out and for a bit everything was working fine. Now everything seems to be working (still haven't gotten new cable cards), but the menus take a terrible time to show and when I click on a show I want to watch, it takes about 20 seconds for it to start playing after I hear the "ding" after I click to play it.
> 
> What's weird is that when I am looking in the NPL, when I first enter there, Tivo recognizes the list, I can scroll up and down in the list, but nothing is in the list for a couple of seconds...
> 
> Anyone else have this problem or now what the problem is?


I called the Tivo rep last night because without both CCs, the Tivo rebooted without notice. He told me to plug my Tivo into a wall outlet and if it rebooted again, they would replace my Tivo...


----------



## richsadams

MasterCephus said:


> Hey, I created a new thread, but I think that this needs to be here:
> 
> I called the Tivo rep last night because without both CCs, the Tivo rebooted without notice. He told me to plug my Tivo into a wall outlet and if it rebooted again, they would replace my Tivo...


Per many other posts and threads your TiVo has all of the symptoms of a failing hard drive and should be replaced.


----------



## MasterCephus

so should I replace my own HD, or should I just let Tivo replace my whole unit?

What's the experience people have had with replaced Tivos?

How hard is it to replace the hard drive myself*?

*I have quite a bit of experience in hardware and software, but I haven't done anything with a Tivo hardware wise.


----------



## richsadams

MasterCephus said:


> so should I replace my own HD, or should I just let Tivo replace my whole unit?
> 
> What's the experience people have had with replaced Tivos?
> 
> How hard is it to replace the hard drive myself*?
> 
> *I have quite a bit of experience in hardware and software, but I haven't done anything with a Tivo hardware wise.


It depends on how old your Series3 is. < 30 days...free replacement. < 1 year...$49 exchange. > 1 year $149 exchange. Refurbs are generally fine as they all have to be bench tested which isn't the case with new units which are randomly tested. That said there are a few posts where people have received refurb units that didn't work properly and had to be replaced. I bought a refurb Series2 for a friend a couple of years ago and it's still running just fine.

If you're comfortable with connecting a hard drive to your PC you can easily replace your TiVo's hard drive...a good time to upgrade. You can download a free program called WinMFS from http://www.mfslive.org which is very easy to use. All of the instructions are on the website as well. You can also find more info about replacing your hard drive on the Official eSATA Drive Expansion: FAQ + Discussion thread (at the end, #30.

Before doing anything you might try running the built-in TiVo diagnostic program called "Kickstarts". That may resolve your issues.

One other thing you can try is to disconnect your coax cable to see if TiVo runs normally (menus, playback, etc.). If so that may confirm an I/O problem with your hard drive as well. (Something the diagnostics will not repair.)

Best of luck and let us know how it goes. :up:


----------



## danitaz

richsadams said:


> You can also find more info about replacing your hard drive on the Official eSATA Drive Expansion: FAQ + Discussion thread (at the end, #30.


Is there a "maximum" size I can go on this drive? I mean I don't know if I want to replace the current drive with a TB drive, but since I don't already have eSATA on the unit, it would seem to me that if I'm "replacing" a drive I might as well get a BIG one . . . .

Thanks.

Danita


----------



## richsadams

danitaz said:


> Is there a "maximum" size I can go on this drive? I mean I don't know if I want to replace the current drive with a TB drive, but since I don't already have eSATA on the unit, it would seem to me that if I'm "replacing" a drive I might as well get a BIG one . . . .
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Danita


You can go up to 1TB internal and 1TB external.  :up:


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## hizhonor

George Cifranci said:


> I also have rebooting issues although it mostly happens when I turn on my entertainment system.
> 
> I have a Sony R60XBR1 (SXRD HDTV), Tivo Series 3 (connected via HDMI) with 750GB internal and eSata Antec MX-1 with 750GB Segate DB35 in it as well.


Exactly the same behavior here and a common component with the Antec MX-1. After systematically walking through the various Kickstarts, adding a UPS system to condition the power and re-seating connectors without any success, I finally purchased and installed the SIIG CB-SA0111-S1 cable as recommended in the FAQ and have been problem free for a week with numerous power on/off cycles of my TV and AV system.

I believe there are a number of problems being reported in this thread that all have the common failure symptom of video/audio freeze up and a reboot. Like George, in my case it _only_ happened when the surrounding AV equipment (also Sony) was powered on. While I'm not ready to call it fixed, for less than a $15 quality cable, it's looking good.

Steve


----------



## self

I, on the other hand, have an S3, stock drive, Seagate FreeAgentPro 750G eSATA drive, _with_ the SIIG cable... and have still had multiple reboots this past week. (Everything is plugged into a UPS.)


----------



## danitaz

richsadams said:


> You can go up to 1TB internal and 1TB external.  :up:


Cool! Of course, I accidentally got one of the WD's that won't soft restart, but I'm just going to leave it in there for awhile to make sure that the "problem" is fixed before I worry about swapping out that drive. At first blush, this really does seem to have fixed the HD rebooting problem. I've already recorded three HD programs (at one point one on each tuner), and I've not seen any problems. My old hard drive had gotten to the point that just tuning to an HD channel was enough to make it go nuts. So, I'll leave it like this until the soft reboot makes me mad <g> (probably will take awhile for it to do that - I'll just check it every morning to make sure it's not in a stuck boot), and then when I decide to go with another internal drive I'll get another 1TB drive and I'll have more room than I know what to do with <heehee>.

I'll report back in a week or so to let folks know if this hard drive swap actually fixed the reboots!

Thanks.

Danita


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## MasterCephus

An update on my situation.

I was gone for the weekend and when I got back I was going to check to see if the Tivo was ok. Well when I turned my tv on, the tivo was recording something. So I click the Tivo button on the remote and nothing happened...2 minutes later I hear the little noise it makes when you hit a button. Then the background showed up and no menu. Then it rebooted.

After it rebooted it came up and everything was ok. I watched the SG: Atlantis I missed and it when it came to the end of the recording (where it asks to delete or not) nothing showed, just a frozen screen on the last frame of the recorded show. Then it rebooted. Then it rebooted 3 times when it was trying to come up.

I called Tivo again and they are replacing my Tivo. So I should get a new Tivo by the end of the week.
----
Here is something to chew on...

So out of curiosity, I removed the cable connection to the Tivo and right when I did, everything started working (minus the cable). I could watch anything from the NPL, go to any menu, etc.

When I plugged the cable back up, it worked better than normal, but not as fast as it was doing when the cable was disconnected.

I am still thinking it's the HD going bad. Because when it receives an input signal, it's always recording (i.e. writing to the HD). So it could just be a side-effect of a going out HD. Does that sound right?


----------



## danitaz

MasterCephus said:


> I am still thinking it's the HD going bad. Because when it receives an input signal, it's always recording (i.e. writing to the HD). So it could just be a side-effect of a going out HD. Does that sound right?


From my limited personal experience that does sound like the issue. My Series 3 is over a year old, and I don't know how replacing it now would affect my lifetime subscription anyway, so I opted to replace and upgrade the drive. It's been that way for about 36 hours now, and I've recorded 96 GB of video in that time (at least that's what's "on" the TIVO - I probably recorded more and deleted a few things). About 9 hours of that was HD recording.

I went a week without HD and had no problems, but as soon as the TiVO tried HD on the original drive, I got the old symptom back - rebooting on HD channels.

So, certainly, replacing the HD has been good for me!

Danita


----------



## mdobbins

danitaz said:


> So, certainly, replacing the HD has been good for me!
> 
> Danita


Same here. More than 10 days with a replacement hard drive and no problems yet. Again - I had the symptoms where the TiVo would slow down / freeze / reboot unless the cable feed was detached.

Mike


----------



## careysm

Based on the last 2 posts, it seems that a possible resolution to this problem is to replace the hard drive? Considering I had 2 boxes that had the same problem (and I'm not the only one), I think TiVo should confront their HD supplier.


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## JimWall

I agree that if the reboot problem goes away when the cable signal is unplugged the issue is the hard drive.
This has happened to me twice. Each time S3 was working fine with no video signal. I did have to change the two channels that are always being recorded from HD stations to non-HD before plugging the video back in.
I have not replaced the hard drives yet.
My theory is there is a bad spot on the disk drive that is being used to record the video from the two live channels. When video is unplugged and channels are changed and video plugged bad in; TIVO starts recording live signal to a new file thus avoiding the bad spot on the disk until it is used again.
Several weeks went by before the problem started again.
I have a 1 TB internal and 1 TB external Hitachies. With the BB sale last week I have two WD 1 TB (older model) so I can replace both drives after I finish a full Spinrite diagnostic on new drives. If I get an error doing DD copy and have to do DD rescue then that would tell me the drive is bad for sure.
I will then use spinrite on bad drive to find and repair the bad spots.


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## MasterCephus

I should be getting my replacement tomorrow so by night's end, I should have my new Tivo running to test.

I had to unplug the coax last night to do anything with my old Tivo now...it's definately the HD.

The guy I talked to from Tivo (not sure if he knew what he was talking about) was saying they had quite a few HD problems with tivos and he said the common denominator was that they were all shipped ground. I didn't think he knew what he was talking about. He said they mostly were only about 1-3 months old, and that mine was about a year old...something they don't see that often.


----------



## bmgoodman

For any of you having these reboots, has anybody from Tivo taken any interest in reviewing your log files? Or has it just been the usual, "Oh, it's rebooting, it's defective. Send us $149 and we'll send you a refurb."?

I got a RepairMaster extended warranty for mine, but I don't want to go through the hassle if we're dealing with a software glitch vs. a failing hard drive. That warranty is also why I am reluctant to swap the drive myself.


----------



## careysm

My responses from TiVo for this problem:
1. It's the cable cards (swapped the cards and it didn't help)
2. We'll send you a refurb (fortunately for me they waved my fee but unfortunately it didn't fix the problem).
3. We'll send it to our technical team (never heard after that).

Sean


----------



## bizzy

"escalating to engineering" is tivo speak for "we're now done pretending to care".


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## miller890

TiVoPony said:


> There is a new release, almost ready for delivery. No new features in this one, it's all about addressing bugs and notching performance up. We hoped to have it ready to roll the day following the Superbowl, but it's not quite done yet.
> 
> As always, I'll post a note to let everyone know when it is ready to go, and we do plan to put up a priority list at that time for those that want to move towards the front of the release schedule.


This is a quote from the 9.3 whatever thread (Feb 12th), maybe there is a fix in that update that may help some of us here.


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## ctn1983

I just received my third Tivo unit today, unlike the first two refurbished units I received a while back, this one appears to be a brand new unit in the retail box, which included everything (new remote, manual, cables, and etc.)...Maybe they ran out of refurbished units, or they got sick of me complaining about the non-working refurbished ones.  Anyways, everything seems to be working great, but I haven't received the 9.2a update yet...hopefully 9.3 comes out real soon.


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## memphislim

memphislim said:


> Here's my update. Tivo sent me a refurb replacement with 8x software. Hooked it up, everything was peachy until 9x downloaded 2 days later. Then the same old locking, freezing and rebooting unless the cable was unplugged.
> 
> I called tech support and supposedly talked to the head of the dept. She said that they had heard of it before (finally admitted it) but the problem as she knew it was fixed by getting new cable cards. She couldn't explain why it worked fine before the software download and not after though. The only thing she could do was send me a 3rd series 3. So I guess I'll replace the cable cards when TW comes out to install them, just in case.
> 
> So I hope I'm one of the lucky ones who gets a new machine and it works, otherwise I'll try putting in a new HD since that seems to be working.


Okay, got my new (not refurb) Series 3 tivo Monday. Worked fine for about 24 hrs and then this morning noticed a one hour HD show was broken into 4 separate recordings of various lenghts. So, okay the TIVO rebooted 3 times. I looked at other recordings, same thing, multiple reboots. So I figure I must have gotten the 9x software since it originally had 8x. Checked and I still have 8x software on my box.

What the F? Still have full control on HD channels and no locking or freezing yet but the multiple reboots. Should be a brand new HDrive right? So why would replacing the HD cure my problem? Are they all failing, even brand new ones? Has anyone ever cured this problem by replacing their cable cards? I see a few have by replacing cables but I have to use component connections for mine so don't think this is my problem. I'd swap the HD in a second if I thought that was the cure but not sure an upcoming software release might fix.


----------



## acc10x

acc10x said:


> i've been having similar HD related freeze-up/random reboot issues that i posted on over at this thread: http://tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=361087
> 
> just wanted to point out the other thread as it sounds like there's A LOT of folks experiencing the same problem and spending A LOT of time trying to troubleshoot it. would be nice if tivo would do the same.


i finally received my replacement S3 yesterday, after tivo mistakenly but down the p.o. box i use for the billing addy of my credit card they put the $700 hold on as the shipping address even though the tech i spoke with confirmed the shipping address was my house addy before hanging up. GRRR! (not to mention that UPS, realizing they had a p.o. box addy, tried to deliver it to a previous address of mine!)

after getting that finally sorted the box arrived. switched the activation over to the new box and rang up comcast seattle to re-pair the cable cards. the lady i spoke to was very nice but after hearing someone whispering in her ear over the phone she proceded to tell me that comcast would have to charge me an add'l $6/month "additional digital outlet fee" for the tivo box. "no, you aren't," i said. "i have comcast stb as part of my account, and according to your rate card i get one cable card free of charge and the second at $1.50/month. you're confusing the add'l outlet as me having an add'l stb box, which i don't. cable is coming in through one outlet: period." this went around for several minutes and, honestly, i don't know how folks who aren't very much in the know about how things should be working, billed, etc., get through all this, but i finally convinced her to first finish pairing the cards and then we could talk more about the add'l charge she wanted to tack on.

so we spend 20min verifying that both cards work, during the time i go on at legnth to detail my S3 story. after it was all done she appeared to forget about trying to charge me the add'l outlet fee, which is what i hoped would happen, asked if there was anything else to which i quickly replied NOPE! and we both hung up.

watching the replaced box last night there doesn't (yet) seem to be any more issues with HD channels freezing things and up/or otherwise forcing reboots. which is good... and hopefully is the end of things. knock on wood, salt over shoulder, prayers to any listening gods.

(also posting this over on this thread.)


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## NotAZoo

Well after setting up my TiVo HD yesterday I was doing great until I got the 9.2 software....needless to say I got the standard..."check the wireless unit, the cable cards, blah blah blah". Looking at the posts here I gave in and returned my unit to Best Buy for a new one. I am in the process of downloading the software updates now. I was in the 8s and now I have been downloading what is probably the big 9.2 update. Issue is it has been about an hour and a half already and it is only at 60%. Just curious if this is typical or not? Also it isn't stuck at 60% it is just going up very gradually.

Fingers crossed though in that the 1st unit had a bad HD. THe weather sucks here and the last thing I feel like doing is schlepping over to Best Buy again.


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## flar

acc10x said:


> but after hearing someone whispering in her ear over the phone she proceded to tell me that comcast would have to charge me an add'l $6/month "additional digital outlet fee" for the tivo box. "no, you aren't," i said. "i have comcast stb as part of my account, and according to your rate card i get one cable card free of charge and the second at $1.50/month. you're confusing the add'l outlet as me having an add'l stb box, which i don't. cable is coming in through one outlet: period." this went around for several minutes and, honestly, i don't know how folks who aren't very much in the know about how things should be working, billed, etc., get through all this


I'm alarmed too for the naive user, but this is how I solved the problem.

I used to have the Comcast PVR for HD recording and when I got my Series 3 a year ago I kept the PVR for comparison (stability and PQ comparisons for instance). At that point I was being charged the 6.95 for the added outlet and 1.50 for the extra card - no problem. Sometime during the summer I decided to dump the PVR and returned it to the Comcast store. The rental on the PVR disappeared, but I was still being charged the extra outlet fee so I called up Comcast after realizing it after a couple of months.

I got the same run-around wrt the extra outlet fee for the extra cable card. She kept saying that the extra cable card was in a second box and I kept correcting her and she kept not getting it. I even talked about my old setup - Tivo with 2 cable cards and the PVR == extra outlet fee and she agreed that that billing had been correct. I then pointed out that I had returned the PVR which she verified/agreed - and so the extra outlet fee should disappear, right? No, she waved her hands and started talking about the extra cable card and ... No luck.

So, finally I said "Well if you can give me one of the multi-stream cards then I'll only need 1 card. (A lie) Do you have one of those?" Note that this was a lie because I have a Series 3 and it doesn't support the multi-stream cards, but I was betting that she didn't know that and it would point out that a pair of cable cards in the same box shouldn't be considered an extra outlet any more than a single box using a multi-stream card for 2 streams. As luck would have it, this complicated "multi-stream" mumbo-jumbo was too much for her little brain to handle and she was now over her head so she transferred me to "TiVo support" or something like that.

The TiVo support desk picked up the phone and I said "I think there is a problem with my billing ..." and before I could get any more words out of my mouth she said "Oh my god, you're right - you have a TiVo Series 3 with 2 cable cards and they are charging you and extra outlet fee - that's an error" and she proceeded to fix my billing, credit me for prior overcharges, and then hook me up with a service special that reduced my monthly fees from about $100/month to around $60/month for 6 months. Hmmm... If the first support person had only had 2 neurons to rub together I probably would have never pursued the service special and Comcast would have continued to get an extra $40/month out of me for a few months - their loss for their own incompetence.

*Back on topic*

In any case, sorry for the minor diversion on this Series 3 rebooting thread. I'm currently experiencing this problem as well and I have only had the problem for a month or so. Given the wide-spread reports here, and given that they have started for most since the fall update, I'm not willing to accept HD failure as the "cause" - perhaps a contributing factor - but clearly there is software that can deal just fine with the hardware in these boxes (pre-9.2?) so there should be software in the future that could deal with it as well if TiVo cares to acknowledge and properly diagnose the problem. I'm crossing my fingers for the 9.3 update to solve it.

If a HD swap does end up being the only viable way to stop the problems for the end consumers, then I guess maybe I'll look into upgrading to a TB internal like I've been toying with for a while, but I refuse to be complicit with using the HD as a scapegoat for this particular problem. My guess is that a bad sector may crop up on any hard drive over a year of constant use and so the HD swap will only be a temporary fix and if the software can't deal with that then they haven't done their job.

For the record - Series 3 with original HD, purchased just about a year ago, lifetime transferred, no external hard disk...


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## acc10x

flar said:


> I'm alarmed too for the naive user, but this is how I solved the problem.
> [snip]
> I got the same run-around wrt the extra outlet fee for the extra cable card.
> 
> [snip]
> If the first support person had only had 2 neurons to rub together I probably would have never pursued the service special and Comcast would have continued to get an extra $40/month out of me for a few months - their loss for their own incompetence.


the lady i spoke with was actually very nice and i don't feel she was being malicious in what she was trying to charge me. someone else near her (another customer service rep, her boss, who knows) simply told her that she had to charge me and she was following orders and didn't know any better. still frustrating, but i did have some sympathy for her.

still... it should be encumbant on them to know what they're charging for and why, and be able to answer "i think you're mistaken" questions regarding it. good to know, though, that asking for "tivo support" in the future might help things out.

two days running new box and no HD tuner hiccups of any kind. it feels weird -- like some kinda "one day at a time" milestone.


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## danitaz

Just as a followup - my TiVO has had a new hard drive since Sunday. I currently have 310GB on my 1TB drive, and not one reboot since the installation/upgrade of the new hard drive. HD programs are being recorded normally, and I'm happy 

Danita


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## Foobarsky

Having struggled with reboots and freezes since getting my TivoHD, I've tried everything -- remove the external drive, attenuate the signal, etc.

I was getting ready to swap out my unit for a new (or more likely refurb'd one) due to people suspecting the hard disk. But I've now run all of the kickstarts for disk diagnostics, and it's coming up clean.

So for those that have replaced their tivos and had the problem go away, is there any way to figure out if it's a replaced hard disk or something else they've done to the hardware? Perhaps there was a bad manufacturing run...or they have slightly changed something to deal with bad cable signals?

I guess I'm debating hanging onto my original box until the next software update (to see if that fixes things) or going through the return process....


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## greg_burns

Foobarsky said:


> But I've now run all of the kickstarts for disk diagnostics, and it's coming up clean.


I wouldn't be convinced until I pulled the drive and ran SpinRite or the free Hitachi Fitness Test.


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## Eastwood

To add another data point I have a one year old series 3 that started freezing and rebooting unless the cable and antennae feeds were disconnected. Eventually it wouldn't boot at all.

I replaced the hard drive and all is fairly well now. The replacement hard drive came with older software. Since it has upgraded to the latest release I have had only one mysterious reboot and have had no pixelation or freezing, and it is once again usable (even with two HD streams recording).


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## mdobbins

Eastwood said:


> To add another data point I have a one year old series 3 that started freezing and rebooting unless the cable and antennae feeds were disconnected. Eventually it wouldn't boot at all.
> 
> I replaced the hard drive and all is fairly well now. The replacement hard drive came with older software. Since it has upgraded to the latest release I have had only one mysterious reboot and have had no pixelation or freezing, and it is once again usable (even with two HD streams recording).





danitaz said:


> Just as a followup - my TiVO has had a new hard drive since Sunday. I currently have 310GB on my 1TB drive, and not one reboot since the installation/upgrade of the new hard drive. HD programs are being recorded normally, and I'm happy
> 
> Danita





mdobbins said:


> Same here. More than 10 days with a replacement hard drive and no problems yet. Again - I had the symptoms where the TiVo would slow down / freeze / reboot unless the cable feed was detached.
> 
> Mike


All three of us initially observed that the symptoms of freezing, rebooting, pixellation, macroblocking, etc. were mitigated when the cable and/or antenna feed was disconnected. For some of us (myself included), the problem appears to be solved by replacement of the internal hard drive. I have gone for more than 2 weeks with the replacement hard drive with nary a problem.

I believe all three of us had TiVo Series 3 units that were out of warranty, so a replacement TiVo didn't make as much sense as the internal hard drive replacement and/or upgrade. For those who are experiencing the problems with newer TiVos, a replacement TiVo could be the better route. As others in this thread have posted (I wasn't one of them), a new eSATA cable was the solution.

I still think that a strong possibility exists for a correlation between software version 9.2 and the appearance of the symptoms. I hope that I (and others) don't have to reconfirm the correlation due to the eventual rollout of new software (9.3 or whatever). For now, however, I am happy to be able to use my Series 3 to watch and record HD - especially now that the writer's strike is over and network shows in my Season Pass list will begin to appear again in the next couple of months  .


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## greg_burns

mdobbins said:


> I still think that a strong possibility exists for a correlation between software version 9.2 and the appearance of the symptoms.


You're not implying software caused your harddrive to fail are you?


----------



## danitaz

mdobbins said:


> All three of us initially observed that the symptoms of freezing, rebooting, pixellation, macroblocking, etc. were mitigated when the cable and/or antenna feed was disconnected. For some of us (myself included), the problem appears to be solved by replacement of the internal hard drive. I have gone for more than 2 weeks with the replacement hard drive with nary a problem.


Yes, and I actually went almost a week without a reboot after I had stopped recording HD programs with the old drive. Then out of the blue a Season Pass that I hadn't disabled decided to try to record HD and poof - reboot, reboot, reboot. Not one reboot (now in a week) with the new hard drive, and many HD recordings.



> I believe all three of us had TiVo Series 3 units that were out of warranty, so a replacement TiVo didn't make as much sense as the internal hard drive replacement and/or upgrade. For those who are experiencing the problems with newer TiVos, a replacement TiVo could be the better route. As others in this thread have posted (I wasn't one of them), a new eSATA cable was the solution.


Agreed here too - if mine had been under warranty I would have pursued that first.

Danita


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## mdobbins

greg_burns said:


> You're not implying software caused your harddrive to fail are you?


Caused? No. Contributed? Yes.

Mechanically, the old TiVo Series 3 hard drive still appears to be OK as determined by testing with Spinrite. Even though I haven't done so, I'm guessing that I could wipe the old drive, transfer the contents of the new drive to the old drive, and put the old drive back into use. I don't know enough about the software side to knowledgeably speculate, but I'm suggesting that something in the code may have caused one or more read/write operations to reach a point that resulted in the beginning of the observed symptoms.


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## hamilde

Long time reader first time poster!

I have a long history with Tivo boxes and have upgraded all of them with larger hard drives (1-S3, 2-TivoHD, and 4-S2s). This is kind of a long story (sorry about that) but I thought it may have some scenarios that may give some people some ideas on what is going on with the reboot issue on the S3 and HD boxes.

I got an S3 in fall of 06. Before it even had its cable cards installed, I replace the hard drive with a 500 GB WD drive. I used Winmfs to copy the drive over. Cable cards were installed, no problem and all has been well ever since. Shortly after the TivoHD came out I bought one. Before I even ran the guided setup, I replaced the hard drive with a WD 500 GB. Again the cable guys came and with a little bit of trouble getting the second CC installed no problems for a year or so. A couple of weeks ago I got a free TivoHD with Tivo Reward points and like usual I installed a larger hard drive, this time a 750. No cable cards yet but the box works just fine with an OTA and basic cable hook up. I decided that while I was at it, I would upgrade my original HD with a 750. All went well with the upgrade until the next morning when I woke up to find the box rebooting over and over. I put the old drive back in and all has been well for the last week. I wrote it off as the hard drive so I splurged and bought a 1TB Hitachi drive. Again, I used Winmfs, copied the old 500 over and installed it. I tried to make it reboot by having it record 2 HD programs while downloading from Unbox and transferring a program from my computer. It worked great from 3 in the afternoon until 12 AM when I went to bed. I woke up this morning to find it rebooting. I put the old drive back in and it is working just fine.

The only difference with the box is that I installed a 1 Gbit hub to connect both boxes to my network. This shouldnt be an issue since both boxes worked fine for two weeks. I dont know now if there is a problem when you break the 500 GB barrier but the new box still works with the 750. I guess I will know more when I have the cable cards installed. If it starts to reboot then, I will try to put a 500 in it and see if it starts rebooting. 
I just thought this would provide some more data to help people start figuring out what is going on.


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## danitaz

mdobbins said:


> Mechanically, the old TiVo Series 3 hard drive still appears to be OK as determined by testing with Spinrite.


I certainly don't know enough about the Tivo's file system to speak with any authority. That said, I DO know that Reiser, for example, seems downright prone to barfing and telling you that the hard drive is toast, and then reformatting with EXT3 gives you another 3 years on the drive (especially with SuSE Pro/Open-SuSE - I've not had one problem yet with a server using Reiser, but then again I don't "tinker" with servers the way I do workstations). So, while I would expect that "software" would cause trouble with more than HD programming, I would never rule out such a possibility. My husband is an EE, and he talks about "software fatique" as an odd phenomenon of software over time. The problems seem to pop up randomly - some have had their tivos a long time (mine is from Nov 2006) and others are almost new. some had this problem long before the 9.2 update, some of us relatively "late" - mine really didn't start until sometime in January, and you would have thought if it was 9.2 causing it, it would have shown up sooner. I do know that the new drive has "fixed" it. Whether just backing up and reformatting the original drive would have done it, I don't know. Guess someone could test that idea.

Danita


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## hizhonor

hizhonor said:


> I finally purchased and installed the SIIG CB-SA0111-S1 cable as recommended in the FAQ and have been problem free for a week with numerous power on/off cycles of my TV and AV system.
> 
> I believe there are a number of problems being reported in this thread that all have the common failure symptom of video/audio freeze up and a reboot. Like George, in my case it _only_ happened when the surrounding AV equipment (also Sony) was powered on. While I'm not ready to call it fixed, for less than a $15 quality cable, it's looking good.
> 
> Steve


Replying to myself to keep things current ...

Unfortunately, success with replacing the cable was just a two week tease. Audio/video freeze at power up of the TV is back, and rebooting is a foregone conclusion with just a few button pushes on the remote. Very frustrating.

I'm fast running out of substitution suggestions in trying to isolate the problem. Next up, after moving all the content from my 500GB WD drive is to try the supported expansion HD solution.

Steve


----------



## JimWall

Here is an update on my saga.
I pulled both Hitachi 1 TB drives and did a test with spinrite. Both drives would freeze and I would have to reboot but then would freeze in different places. I then did the same with my two new 1 TB WD drives. Had same issues. I moved to a different PC and each drive tested perfected every time with spinrite. I think the difference is with the disk controller on the machines. Also the PC having issues was the one I did the upgrade with. So that could have caused problems with took a while to surface.
I did try different esata cables and even used one with external and internal connectors bypassing the esata enclosures electronic. None made a difference on S3 or pcs.
With the restarting hitachi drives from TIVO; I got a zone map checksum error running mfsinfo on the drives. 
At the same time I put the original drive back in the S3 and it worked perfectly after applying the software updates.
On good PC I copied the 2 Hitachis from S3 to WD with no errors. I then put then into the TIVO and still had restarting problems. I removed the external and had it divorce. It works fine but a lost a lot of shows that had all or part on the B drive. It has been working perfectly since. 
Since the WD is cooler I rather have it as the internal anyway.
With my problems on one of my PCs I wonder if the latest software update does have driver and disk controller issues with some 1 TB drives. S3 may had a hiccup with communicating with the external drive, didn't handle it properly, restarted and got some corruption. Over the past year I got several alerts from S3 about external being missing. I would shut S3 down, cycle the external, check cables and all would be fine for a long while.
I plan on redeploying the hitachi drives in an external RAID 5 on my new TIVO HD.


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## memphislim

memphislim said:


> Okay, got my new (not refurb) Series 3 tivo Monday. Worked fine for about 24 hrs and then this morning noticed a one hour HD show was broken into 4 separate recordings of various lenghts. So, okay the TIVO rebooted 3 times. I looked at other recordings, same thing, multiple reboots. So I figure I must have gotten the 9x software since it originally had 8x. Checked and I still have 8x software on my box.
> 
> What the F? Still have full control on HD channels and no locking or freezing yet but the multiple reboots. Should be a brand new HDrive right? So why would replacing the HD cure my problem? Are they all failing, even brand new ones? Has anyone ever cured this problem by replacing their cable cards? I see a few have by replacing cables but I have to use component connections for mine so don't think this is my problem. I'd swap the HD in a second if I thought that was the cure but not sure an upcoming software release might fix.


Update: I now have had the 9x software for a week or so and no apparent reboots, no freezing, all apprears well on the new box Tivo sent me. So reboots with 8x, nothing at all with 9x. Keeping my fingers crossed. Only thing that has changed from a non-working to a working Tivo is the brand new box. Same cable cards, cables and 9x software as was using on 2 nonfunctional Tivos.


----------



## builtfa

I have a new Series 3, and while it does not exhibit the known issue of resetting while it is on, it has reset to the Powering Up Screen after I turn the TV back on after a short period of inactivity.

Situation:Turn off TV. Turn on TV. Tivo does not respoind. Black screen.
In a few minutes, the Powering Up screen comes on. 

This has happened three times in the last two weeks.

Does this signal possible hard drive failure?

It is connected to my Hitachi 51F59 via HDMI.

At first, I thought it was a defective HDMI cable, but it wouldn't go to the Powering Up screen if that were the case.

When it is on the "black screen," however, the red hard drive lights are on, and the orange activity light comes on when I press the remote.

TIVO Tech Support, especially the Alabama call center, is useless.

I have read through this thread, and hesitate to just return the unit if it is NOT a hard drive problem.

It seems to me the red lights would not be illuminated if the hard drive was failing but I could be wrong.

I have had the Series 3 for about 3 weeks.


----------



## greg_burns

builtfa said:


> I have a new Series 3, and while it does not exhibit the known issue of resetting while it is on, it has reset to the Powering Up Screen after I turn the TV back on after a short period of inactivity.


I would stop using HDMI and switch to component and see what happens.


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## builtfa

greg_burns said:


> I would stop using HDMI and switch to component and see what happens.


Thanks, Greg. I need to check it out. I did read something about HDMI being quirky with S3.

I'm new to the S3, and have to check the component connections. I already have a Slingbox attached to it, and see if there are any component connections left.

(Sorry if I seem too lazy to check, but I am still working (Work from home)).


----------



## greg_burns

builtfa said:


> I'm new to the S3, and have to check the component connections. I already have a Slingbox attached to it, and see if there are any component connections left.


That does complicate things. There is only one set of component outputs. But I would switch the Sling to composite (if you can) at least for awhile until you can see if it is the HDMI causing your reboots.


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## MasterCephus

Just an update:

I got my refurbed Series 3 replacement last wednesday, and got my CC going on Saturday and I have had *no* troubles whatsoever since.

I think my problem was just a bad HD...


----------



## bjnc

Here's my experience.

Short version: I have the typical slowness/freezing/reboots on my S3 that can be resolved by unplugging the cable coax input, and replacing the internal drive did not fix it. Removing HD channels did seem to "fix" it.

Longer version: Original config was stock internal plus 750G external (antec/DB35/SIIG). It was problem free for 5 months, then suddenly developed the problem to the point where it was unusable. First step was to rule out the external drive, which I eventually divorced -- didn't fix it. Next I tried replacing the internal 250 with the formerly external 750 -- no dice. Last night I tried removing the HD channels, and that stopped the problem. During all these steps I was able to fix it instantly by unplugging the cable input or by ejecting the cable cards.

I may try a few more steps before calling tivo, such as an attenuator (my signal is 95DB and 35SNR), and I might try using just 1 cable card.

Good thing I didn't turn in my 8300HD.


----------



## richsadams

bjnc said:


> Here's my experience.
> 
> Short version: I have the typical slowness/freezing/reboots on my S3 that can be resolved by unplugging the cable coax input, and replacing the internal drive did not fix it. Removing HD channels did seem to "fix" it.
> 
> Longer version: Original config was stock internal plus 750G external (antec/DB35/SIIG). It was problem free for 5 months, then suddenly developed the problem to the point where it was unusable. First step was to rule out the external drive, which I eventually divorced -- didn't fix it. Next I tried replacing the internal 250 with the formerly external 750 -- no dice. Last night I tried removing the HD channels, and that stopped the problem. During all these steps I was able to fix it instantly by unplugging the cable input or by ejecting the cable cards.
> 
> I may try a few more steps before calling tivo, such as an attenuator (my signal is 95DB and 35SNR), and I might try using just 1 cable card.
> 
> Good thing I didn't turn in my 8300HD.


Welcome to the forum and thanks for the good reference info. :up:

Have you tried having your cableco replace and/or re-pair your cable cards?

FWIW your signal strength and SNR are within tolerable limits and an attenuator probably wouldn't change much, but it would be very interesting if you found that it did.

It might be time to call TiVo and open a case as well.

Let us know how it goes.


----------



## richsadams

MasterCephus said:


> Just an update:
> 
> I got my refurbed Series 3 replacement last wednesday, and got my CC going on Saturday and I have had *no* troubles whatsoever since.
> 
> I think my problem was just a bad HD...


Good info...thanks for the follow-up. Hopefully you can now enjoy things once again.


----------



## builtfa

Thanks, Greg. I should try that. When I came home from the gym last night, the TV and TIVO had been off for a while. It sounded like the hard drive was working but I couldn't get the unit to come to life, though. All of my programs recorded. I just could not get the unit to come on (ie TIVO central and programs showing on the TV)

After a few minutes of waiting, I just pulled the power cord and make it reboot itself.

Sounds to me like the TIVO is going to sleep and has trouble waking up.

I have not switched cables yet, and really want to avoid calling that useless TIVO Tech Support Department.

There is no pixellation; freezing; or stuttering which would indicate a bad disk drive.

Anybody else having this happen on a "virgin" series 3?


----------



## acc10x

well, after a week of working flawlessly, the refurb'd box started misbehaving yesterday. some problems: when one or both tuners on an HD channel everything starts to get choppy and freeze up. remote commands unresponsive, tivo menu unresponsive, sometimes it reaches a freeze point where it randomly reboots, othertimes it just stays hung. unplug the coax and... voila!... everything unfreezes.

grrrr.

i was hoping replacing it would work, and from the numerous pages across several threads the one common thing is something to do with either tivo's hardware or software. with so many folks posting about the same problem from all across the county with different cable providers, trying to swap and/or re-pair cable cards, it's pretty obvious it's something on tivo's end.

guess i'll call them up and go through the hell to get another replacement. hopefully this time they'll ship it to the correct address and not charge ME to send back their defective unit.

again, grrr....



acc10x said:


> i finally received my replacement S3 yesterday, after tivo mistakenly but down the p.o. box i use for the billing addy of my credit card they put the $700 hold on as the shipping address even though the tech i spoke with confirmed the shipping address was my house addy before hanging up. GRRR! (not to mention that UPS, realizing they had a p.o. box addy, tried to deliver it to a previous address of mine!)
> 
> after getting that finally sorted the box arrived. switched the activation over to the new box and rang up comcast seattle to re-pair the cable cards. the lady i spoke to was very nice but after hearing someone whispering in her ear over the phone she proceded to tell me that comcast would have to charge me an add'l $6/month "additional digital outlet fee" for the tivo box. "no, you aren't," i said. "i have comcast stb as part of my account, and according to your rate card i get one cable card free of charge and the second at $1.50/month. you're confusing the add'l outlet as me having an add'l stb box, which i don't. cable is coming in through one outlet: period." this went around for several minutes and, honestly, i don't know how folks who aren't very much in the know about how things should be working, billed, etc., get through all this, but i finally convinced her to first finish pairing the cards and then we could talk more about the add'l charge she wanted to tack on.
> 
> so we spend 20min verifying that both cards work, during the time i go on at legnth to detail my S3 story. after it was all done she appeared to forget about trying to charge me the add'l outlet fee, which is what i hoped would happen, asked if there was anything else to which i quickly replied NOPE! and we both hung up.
> 
> watching the replaced box last night there doesn't (yet) seem to be any more issues with HD channels freezing things and up/or otherwise forcing reboots. which is good... and hopefully is the end of things. knock on wood, salt over shoulder, prayers to any listening gods.
> 
> (also posting this over on this thread.)


----------



## acc10x

acc10x said:


> well, after a week of working flawlessly, the refurb'd box started misbehaving yesterday. some problems: when one or both tuners on an HD channel everything starts to get choppy and freeze up. remote commands unresponsive, tivo menu unresponsive, sometimes it reaches a freeze point where it randomly reboots, othertimes it just stays hung. unplug the coax and... voila!... everything unfreezes.
> 
> grrrr.
> 
> i was hoping replacing it would work, and from the numerous pages across several threads the one common thing is something to do with either tivo's hardware or software. with so many folks posting about the same problem from all across the county with different cable providers, trying to swap and/or re-pair cable cards, it's pretty obvious it's something on tivo's end.
> 
> guess i'll call them up and go through the hell to get another replacement. hopefully this time they'll ship it to the correct address and not charge ME to send back their defective unit.
> 
> again, grrr....


also, i tried swapping the hdmi cables, and also tried using component and composite cables. no dice.


----------



## fusednova

Update: I swapped out my factory S3 drive with a 500GB using a direct copy (so same software version 9.2) and ALL is well. I can tune in 2 HD channels and stream another HD show from another S3. 

I paid $99 for the 500GB drive so I saved $50 and a ton of hassles going through Tivo for a replacement.

Thanks guys!!!

-Dave


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## richsadams

fusednova said:


> Update: I swapped out my factory S3 drive with a 500GB using a direct copy (so same software version 9.2) and ALL is well. I can tune in 2 HD channels and stream another HD show from another S3.
> 
> I paid $99 for the 500GB drive so I saved $50 and a ton of hassles going through Tivo for a replacement.
> 
> Thanks guys!!!
> 
> -Dave


Awesome! (Do people say that anymore? ) Thanks for the update! :up:


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## Emacee

My two cents worth (like others, I hope Tivo is paying attention to all this):

I encountered THE GREEN SCREEN OF DEATH (reminiscent of Windows "Blue Screen of Death") for the first time this evening.

I have had my SR3 for about 15 months. I was recording two shows (one SD; one HD, both Season Pass recordings) and watching one of them (about 30 minutes behind live broadcast). I was not doing anything with the remote at the time. All of a sudden the screen goes black and then I get the "powering up" screen (while recording lights stay on). Then the "Green Screen" error message already quoted in this thread. The unit was back online in about 10 minutes (not the three hours mentioned in the error message). It's been - what? - a couple of months since the last software update.


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## richsadams

Emacee said:


> My two cents worth (like others, I hope Tivo is paying attention to all this):
> 
> I encountered THE GREEN SCREEN OF DEATH (reminiscent of Windows "Blue Screen of Death") for the first time this evening.
> 
> I have had my SR3 for about 15 months. I was recording two shows (one SD; one HD, both Season Pass recordings) and watching one of them (about 30 minutes behind live broadcast). I was not doing anything with the remote at the time. All of a sudden the screen goes black and then I get the "powering up" screen (while recording lights stay on). Then the "Green Screen" error message already quoted in this thread. The unit was back online in about 10 minutes (not the three hours mentioned in the error message). It's been - what? - a couple of months since the last software update.


The GSOD indicates that TiVo encountered data corruption which can be caused by a number of things including bad sectors, read/write head malfunction, power surges, brownouts or a failing hard drive.

The GSOD is TiVo's built-in diagnostic program similar to Windows "check disk". It triggers an MFS assert which marks the file system as being damaged. The repair process detects and repairs inode/data problems, and then runs mfscheck to clean up database and directory problems.

The cause generally has something to do with the hard drive, not with any software updates. If the program was able to do its job, you shouldn't see any more problems. If your hard drive has begun to fail you will probably see it reappear or witness other symptoms in which case it may be time to replace the hard drive.


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## Emacee

Thanks, Rich...

I saw references to a disk utility earlier in the thread. I was searching for a way to run it or acquire it. From what you say, sounds like it kicked it in on its own. Is there any way to activate GSOD from time to time as a preventative (like I used to do with Norton Disk Doctor)?


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## bjnc

Update to post #302 (hangs/reboots not fixed by replacing internal drive):

I put in the only attenuator I had, a splitter that drops the signal by 7db, and it dropped the signal strength from 95 to 90, and the SNR from 35 to 34. I then added back the HD channels and set the tivo to record HD all night.

Surprisingly, the problem has not returned [yet]. I'm about as inclined to attribute it to the phase of the moon (there was an eclipse) as to the attenuator, but who knows. I fully expect to post the obligatory "problem has returned" message in the next day or two.


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## richsadams

Emacee said:


> Thanks, Rich...
> 
> I saw references to a disk utility earlier in the thread. I was searching for a way to run it or acquire it. From what you say, sounds like it kicked it in on its own. Is there any way to activate GSOD from time to time as a preventative (like I used to do with Norton Disk Doctor)?


TiVo's diagnostic programs, commonly known as "Kickstarts", can be run by following these directions.

However, unless the hard drive is failing (writing bad data) you shouldn't have to, and even then replacing the HDD would be in order. Unless TiVo is not working properly or you know that there has been data corruption from a power failure, etc. there's really no reason to run any of them. I'd error on the side of caution knowing that when you do run them that data can in fact be altered and it's possible things could get worse rather than better...the old "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" rule.

A good way to avoid data corruption due to power fluctuation is to have TiVo connected to a uninterpretable power supply (UPS)/battery backup/surge protector. We have all of our TiVo's on this APC UPS. I've used APC equipment on all of our computers and other CE equipment for years as well and they've been flawless. Some people go so far as to use a power conditioner like this. That costs more, but either way, it's very good insurance. :up: The only caution when using this equipment is to beware of using the coax surge protection as it can degrade or ruin the broadcast signal to TiVo. I've tried it and they attenuated the signal to the point of causing macroblocking/tiling/pixelization, etc. so I keep the coax running directly to TiVo instead.

Hope your problems are now solved. Let us know how it goes.


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## grapictodd

Just got my new S3 hooked up yesterday... Time Warner cable card install was flawless and quick and all was working perfectly. I too am now having the reboot issues and in total have had at least 8 on my first day. I first noticed it when trying to use the Rhapsody free trial, once in Rhapsody I search for song tried to play it then reboot... this went on over and over again while trying to use Rhapsody and not once did I get to experience the service. Then while watching a show that was being recorded reboot again and again and again! This TiVo is 3 days old and it's just not acceptable! I don't know nor do I see a solution here in this forum but at this point I think TiVo is in some serious trouble. Not sure what to do at this point other than return this piece of crap and just go with my cable companies DVR.


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## richsadams

grapictodd said:


> Just got my new S3 hooked up yesterday... Time Warner cable card install was flawless and quick and all was working perfectly. I too am now having the reboot issues and in total have had at least 8 on my first day. I first noticed it when trying to use the Rhapsody free trial, once in Rhapsody I search for song tried to play it then reboot... this went on over and over again while trying to use Rhapsody and not once did I get to experience the service. Then while watching a show that was being recorded reboot again and again and again! This TiVo is 3 days old and it's just not acceptable! I don't know nor do I see a solution here in this forum but at this point I think TiVo is in some serious trouble. Not sure what to do at this point other than return this piece of crap and just go with my cable companies DVR.


Welcome to the forum...sorry to hear it's under a negative circumstance. What you're seeing isn't normal and although there are plenty of "problem posts" remember that there are over four million TiVo subscriptions (not all for Series3's of course) and that most of the people, like yourself, that find their way here have a problem and by percentage it's a pretty small sample. That said, you have a right to expect your new TiVo to work properly.

Before you give up you might want to have a look at a couple of options. Everything may be resolved once you have the latest TiVo software. The Rhaposdy Music Service is known to have been troublesome. (More on this thread.) I believe that the problems were corrected with the latest software update which you should receive in the next 48 to 72 hours. Your TiVo likely came with software v8.x. The latest, v9.2a will automatically download and install on its own after all of the guide data is loaded (takes up to a couple of days to do that) or you can "force" it by connecting to the TiVo service.

You can try to force an upgrade by going to Messages & Settings->Settings->Phone & Network->Connect now. Try that a few times. Once the download has completed you may see "Pending restart" listed in the "Last Status" line on the Phone & Network Screen or on the System Information screen. TiVo will automatically install the upgrade at 2 a.m. your time or you can reboot it (unplug it and plug it back in) and it will update immediately.

If that doesn't do it, try disconnecting your broadband connection. If that fixes it you may have a network problem.

If that doesn't remedy things try disconnecting the coax cable from TiVo and watching some recordings (if you have some) or let it sit for a while and see if it experiences any reboots. If it runs fine w/o the coax it may be that your cable cards are causing problems. There are built-in diagnostic screens that can tell you if there are signal problems on one or both cards. (Scientific Atlanta cable cards are particularly troublesome for some folks.) Often new cable cards will correct the problem.

I/O processing can cause the problems you're seeing as well and that may be due to a bad tuner or hard drive.

If it continues to reboot after the software update, w/o the coax or broadband connections and you've had the cable cards replaced (if applicable), there is something wrong with your TiVo. It's under a 30 day free replacement warranty and you are entitled to one that does work.

I'd call TiVo now and open a case. Try the "fixes" suggested and any others posted here. If no joy...a new one would be in order.

I can attest as a long-time user that although TiVo can have troubles like any other computer, ours have worked flawlessly for years and that yours should too.


----------



## grapictodd

WOW! Thank you so much richsadams! What a great post and so informative. After posting my message here and reading your reply I turned on my TV and I had a message from TiVo stating that a software update had occured so I check to see what version I had and it is now the 9.2a. One thing that has changed is that Rhapsody now works without the reboot which for me is a step in the right direction... now I'll just have to wait and see if I get any random reboots. Again thank you richsadams, your information was priceless, on point and just plain smart!



richsadams said:


> Welcome to the forum...sorry to hear it's under a negative circumstance. What you're seeing isn't normal and although there are plenty of "problem posts" remember that there are over four million TiVo subscriptions (not all for Series3's of course) and that most of the people, like yourself, that find their way here have a problem and by percentage it's a pretty small sample. That said, you have a right to expect your new TiVo to work properly.
> 
> Before you give up you might want to have a look at a couple of options. Everything may be resolved once you have the latest TiVo software. The Rhaposdy Music Service is known to have been troublesome. (More on this thread.) I believe that the problems were corrected with the latest software update which you should receive in the next 48 to 72 hours. Your TiVo likely came with software v8.x. The latest, v9.2a will automatically download and install on its own after all of the guide data is loaded (takes up to a couple of days to do that) or you can "force" it by connecting to the TiVo service.
> 
> You can try to force an upgrade by going to Messages & Settings->Settings->Phone & Network->Connect now. Try that a few times. Once the download has completed you may see "Pending restart" listed in the Last Status line on the Phone & Network Screen or on the System Information screen. TiVo will automatically install the upgrade at 2 a.m. your time or you can reboot it (unplug it and plug it back in) and it will update immediately.
> 
> If that doesn't do it, try disconnecting your broadband connection. If that fixes it you may have a network problem.
> 
> If that doesn't remedy things try disconnecting the coax cable from TiVo and watching some recordings (if you have some) or let it sit for a while and see if it experiences any reboots. If it runs fine w/o the coax it may be that your cable cards are causing problems. There are built-in diagnostic screens that can tell you if there are signal problems on one or both cards. (Scientific Atlanta cable cards are particularly troublesome for some folks.) Often new cable cards will correct the problem.
> 
> I/O processing can cause the problems you're seeing as well and that may be due to a bad tuner or hard drive.
> 
> If it continues to reboot after the software update, w/o the coax or broadband connections and you've had the cable cards replaced (if applicable), there is something wrong with your TiVo. It's under a 30 day free replacement warranty and you are entitled to one that does work.
> 
> I'd call TiVo now and open a case. Try the "fixes" suggested and any others posted here. If no joy...a new one would be in order.
> 
> I can attest as a long-time user that although TiVo can have troubles like any other computer, ours have worked flawlessly for years and that yours should too.


----------



## richsadams

grapictodd said:


> WOW! Thank you so much richsadams! What a great post and so informative. After posting my message here and reading your reply I turned on my TV and I had a message from TiVo stating that a software update had occured so I check to see what version I had and it is now the 9.2a. One thing that has changed is that Rhapsody now works without the reboot which for me is a step in the right direction... now I'll just have to wait and see if I get any random reboots. Again thank you richsadams, your information was priceless, on point and just plain smart!


No problem, glad to help. Glad to hear things are okay now. Welcome to the TiVolution!


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## fusednova

FYI - Due to my crappy cable cards, I have 2 S3s on a timer which hard reboots them every night. They've been turned on/off over 400 times each. I guess this could have been the cause of my recent bad hard drive though 

-Dave


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## ccoulson

richsadams (and others that can chime in!)

I suspect I have a bad HD in my S3. Here are the symptoms:
- jerky viewing of live TV
- VERY slow response in accessing Tivo menus (sometimes will reboot itself)
- occasional random reboots
- Recording seems to occur fine in the background
- If I disconnect cable, playback and system performance seems fine

I have tried swapping cable inputs, HDMI cables, HDMI inputs, and removing splitters, surge protectors, etc. I have no external expansion and the system is completely vanilla 9.2a with the exception of a Tivo Wireless Adapter.

Tivo Helpdesk believes this is a failing hard drive. This unit was purchased in July and Tivo has offered my the $49 swap deal. However, that means I will lose all of my recorded programs. I have considered a Weaknees transfer and upgrade, but they stipulate that everything must be in working order. 

Suggestions?


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## greg_burns

ccoulson said:


> Tivo Helpdesk believes this is a failing hard drive. This unit was purchased in July and Tivo has offered my the $49 swap deal. However, that means I will lose all of my recorded programs. I have considered a Weaknees transfer and upgrade, but they stipulate that everything must be in working order.
> 
> Suggestions?


Have you ruled out buying a bare drive and copying your recordings over yourself using WinMFS?


----------



## richsadams

ccoulson said:


> richsadams (and others that can chime in!)
> 
> I suspect I have a bad HD in my S3. Here are the symptoms:
> - jerky viewing of live TV
> - VERY slow response in accessing Tivo menus (sometimes will reboot itself)
> - occasional random reboots
> - Recording seems to occur fine in the background
> - If I disconnect cable, playback and system performance seems fine
> 
> I have tried swapping cable inputs, HDMI cables, HDMI inputs, and removing splitters, surge protectors, etc. I have no external expansion and the system is completely vanilla 9.2a with the exception of a Tivo Wireless Adapter.
> 
> Tivo Helpdesk believes this is a failing hard drive. This unit was purchased in July and Tivo has offered my the $49 swap deal. However, that means I will lose all of my recorded programs. I have considered a Weaknees transfer and upgrade, but they stipulate that everything must be in working order.
> 
> Suggestions?


It does indeed sound like the HDD is going away. 

You could give TiVo's built-in diagnostic programs called "Kickstarts" a try. That might cure things if the HDD problem or data corruption isn't too bad.

It's possible that one or both of your cable cards are going bad and you could try having them replaced. If you view the diagnostics screen you can see if there are corrected or uncorrected errors. But if the recordings are okay it's more likely a hard drive problem.

One other thing you could try is to disconnect the TiVo adapter to see if it has any effect. IIRC there have been a couple of reports that folk's broadband adapters caused TiVo some problems...but I think that was with a Ethernet adapter, not the wireless...but it's worth a try.

Otherwise, as Greg suggests, you could replace the HDD yourself using WinMFS (quite easy if you're comfortable connecting a hard drive to your computer) and save all of your recordings. Or you could have TiVo go ahead and ship you a new box, watch as many recordings as you can and then ship yours back. They'll likely charge your credit card for a new TiVo and then credit it when they get yours less the $49. If you're happy with the recording space you have $49 is a pretty good way to get another TiVo though.

Best of luck and let us know what you find out.


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## Teeps

Well, count me in with the Green Screen crowd, as last night my S3 produced the system has detected a serious problem green screen. 
This was the first time it happened, I think tivo was recording 2 programs non-hd, I was watching Welcome to the Captain, when the picture froze. Just like hitting the pause button but no time bar at the bottom of the screen.
Then it went to the GSOD. About 15 minutes later tivo was back on line. 

If this happens again, I will call tivo support so the complaint gets logged. And, I hear what tivo offers to do.


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## bjnc

Update to #302/313:

I had put in a -6db attenuator and it appeared to fix my freezing/rebooting problems (after internal drive replacement didn't fix it). I have since removed the attenuator and my S3 is still working fine, so it seems the problem has just gone away.

....mostly. I still see a bit of a video stutter right after I change channels, which was one symptom of an imminent freeze/reboot in the past. The stutter isn't in the recording itself -- if I rewind it is not visible. Perhaps my problem is flaky cable cards.


----------



## acc10x

opted not to go through the tivo rma hell again and went ahead and purchased a replacement drive through weaknees, which arrived yesterday and i installed. currently can watch two HD channels simulataneously while streaming another HD recorded program up from my S2 that's in the basement... and no probs. but my refurb'd box worked fine for about a week before going on the fritz.

interesting that in replacing the drive i left the cable cards in hoping i wouldn't need to repair them, but after post-drive installation bootup it appears the cards changed host id #'s, so i ended up having to call comcast and once again narrowly avoided getting into an argument about why having two cable cards does not mean i also get charged an add'l outlet fee.

fingers crossed... salt over shoulder... prayers to any listening gods.



acc10x said:


> well, after a week of working flawlessly, the refurb'd box started misbehaving yesterday. some problems: when one or both tuners on an HD channel everything starts to get choppy and freeze up. remote commands unresponsive, tivo menu unresponsive, sometimes it reaches a freeze point where it randomly reboots, othertimes it just stays hung. unplug the coax and... voila!... everything unfreezes.
> 
> grrrr.
> 
> i was hoping replacing it would work, and from the numerous pages across several threads the one common thing is something to do with either tivo's hardware or software. with so many folks posting about the same problem from all across the county with different cable providers, trying to swap and/or re-pair cable cards, it's pretty obvious it's something on tivo's end.
> 
> guess i'll call them up and go through the hell to get another replacement. hopefully this time they'll ship it to the correct address and not charge ME to send back their defective unit.
> 
> again, grrr....


----------



## richsadams

acc10x said:


> opted not to go through the tivo rma hell again and went ahead and purchased a replacement drive through weaknees, which arrived yesterday and i installed. currently can watch two HD channels simulataneously while streaming another HD recorded program up from my S2 that's in the basement... and no probs. but my refurb'd box worked fine for about a week before going on the fritz.
> 
> interesting that in replacing the drive i left the cable cards in hoping i wouldn't need to repair them, but after post-drive installation bootup it appears the cards changed host id #'s, so i ended up having to call comcast and once again narrowly avoided getting into an argument about why having two cable cards does not mean i also get charged an add'l outlet fee.
> 
> fingers crossed... salt over shoulder... prayers to any listening gods.


Best of luck with your "new" TiVo and hard drive. :up: If it starts acting up again I'd say the odds of you having two bad TiVo's and a total of three bad hard drives is very remote. I'd start eyeballing your cableco service, cable cards, etc. But hopefully things will just work from now on.

Thanks for the update and keep us posted!


----------



## ccoulson

Rich, Greg- Thanks for your responses. Not sure I can go the WinMFS route as I am a Mac shop...

Seems like there are a lot of S3's with bad drives. I have a Series 2 and a Series 2 DT that have both been humming along for almost 5 years! Has Tivo changed the drives in the replacement S3's? I'd hate to have to go through this again in another 6-12 months.


----------



## HPD

Cajun Man said:


> My S3 is acting similar to yours, it reboots almost every day. And I strongly agree with your thoughts regarding the cause. Given how rock-solid reliable S3's were prior to the last update, it certainly looks like a software bug.


I seriously doubt it is the software. I have had 9.2 for approximately three months and have not experienced even the slightest problem. It sounds to me like your hard drive has developed bad sectors. On computers there are scans that can be run to isolate bad sectors so that they are not used. However, I do not know if the Tivo does that from time to time automatically. Sounds like data on the bad sectors causes the need for a reboot until that data is needed again, then it reboots again.


----------



## HPD

Foobarsky said:


> Any thoughts? Could it really be the software? If so, wouldn't we be seeing *a lot* more reports?


My S3 is doing just fine. 15 years working on computers has taught me that when sectors go bad on a hard drive, it leads to lock ups and needed reboots. Many people do not understand that the heads on a hard drive float above the disk about the thickness of a human hair. Bumping the drive while it is spinning causes the heads to make contact with the disk and destroys the magnetic coating on that part of the disk. Laptop hard drives supposedly have some way to make them more resistant to bumps but treating a Tivo with kid gloves is crucial. Never bump it or move it while the disk is spinning.


----------



## greg_burns

HPD said:


> Never bump it or move it while the disk is spinning.


My mother's Dish DVR has a giant warning sticker plastered on it warning her that. It is good advice.


----------



## HPD

Rich584 said:


> I am convinced it is the software.
> 
> even sent out a hard drive to the company I bought it from and had it diagnosed. Came back with a clean bill of health.


If it was the software then everyone would be having problems.

As for the hard drive, let me tell you a story. I wanted to upgrade my Tivo series 2. From a company that shall remain nameless, I bought their kit with two 120GB drives. They were Samsung drives. I installed them and got the green screen of death immediately. They sent me two more - same problem - then two more - same problem - then two more - same problem. This was on a brand new Tivo that worked fine with its original drive.

After sending eight drives back I demanded a refund. They told me they had tested all eight and that there was nothing wrong with them. So at first they balked at refunding my money until I threated to smear their name all over the internet.

Bought from a different company that used a different brand of drive. Problem solved. Used that machine for many years now without a single problem.

Moral of the story. They say they test the drives but they really do not.


----------



## HPD

Rich584 said:


> I have six SD units that all reboot randomly or at the same time. No eSATAs. It's the software. Logic must prevail. There is no other commonality that I can find.
> 
> Rich


You have six and I have none. Somebody telling a big fib here?


----------



## HPD

DingoAce10 said:


> The power in my house was going up and down so much it was effecting the tivo with low voltage.
> 
> I went out and purchased a UPS backup with AVR (Automatic Voltage Regulator) and my Tivo S3 has worked flawlessly since


Very interesting, I have often wondered if people experiencing reboots had voltage fluctuations. My power from the street is rock steady at 130 volts.

Curious, what brand of UPS did you buy? Automatic voltage regulation means its a good one.


----------



## bmgoodman

Is there any easy way to see any of the log files without having to hack the Tivo? Would there be anything useful in the logs, assuming you could see them? Does Tivo look at these logs if you call and report that your unit is rebooting occasionally? (Or do they just offer you a for-fee replacement?)


----------



## daveafree

I have 3 s3's 2 I have had since they first came out. The third I just purchased, from Tivo (refurbished unit) The third one had to be sent back because of constant reboots. When I got its replacement I no longer had that problem. The first 2 taht I have had for 1 1/2 years have always worked great until about a week ago. Now one of them continually reboots itself but never quite makes it. Tivo central will come up but I can not access any of the menus or live tv from either the remot or the buttons on the box. I think it almost certainly has to be a hardware issue because the other unit that was purchased at the same time still works great.


----------



## greg_burns

ccoulson said:


> Rich, Greg- Thanks for your responses. Not sure I can go the WinMFS route as I am a Mac shop...
> 
> Seems like there are a lot of S3's with bad drives. I have a Series 2 and a Series 2 DT that have both been humming along for almost 5 years! Has Tivo changed the drives in the replacement S3's? I'd hate to have to go through this again in another 6-12 months.


I've had my original S3 drive running in my Tivo since Oct '06. YMMV

I have not heard that Tivo is using different HDs in the S3 (or the refurbs).


----------



## HPD

jordanfrank said:


> I REALLY wish they would have put an adequate cable in the box, but so it goes.


I am using the Tivo supplied HDMI cable with my S3 and have not experienced any problems.


----------



## HPD

memphislim said:


> It has to be a software thing. It's the only thing we all have in common!!! All of our drives/hardware wouldn't stop working at the same time regardless of their age


That statement makes no sense. My S3 has the same software but I have no problems. Also, hard drive problems would effect a random sampling of people. The people on this thread represent that random sample.


----------



## richsadams

HPD said:


> I seriously doubt it is the software. I have had 9.2 for approximately three months and have not experienced even the slightest problem. It sounds to me like your hard drive has developed bad sectors. On computers there are scans that can be run to isolate bad sectors so that they are not used. However, I do not know if the Tivo does that from time to time automatically. Sounds like data on the bad sectors causes the need for a reboot until that data is needed again, then it reboots again.


TiVo has built in diagnostics called Kickstarts, two of which will isolate bad sectors and correct data corruption. They can be run manually but if TiVo finds a problem it can may run it automatically. Click here for Kickstart info.

BTW, good advice about not getting "physical" with moving HDD's while they are spinning...and TiVo HDD's are spinning 24/7. Plus power fluctuations, EMI, cableco signal interruption and other things can cause data corruption as well. They're tough but not infallible.

Our older TiVo's are still cranking along as well, no HDD problems. We've only had our Series3 for a little over a year and our TiVo HD for a few months and they're doing fine. Can't say as to whether there are more or less HDD problems cropping up...but it does seem that more complaints come from Series3 owners than those w/Series2's or Series1's. It seems logical that it might have to do with the "extra duty" demanded of hard drives to deal with some of the additional features (MRV, broadband applications, etc.) not to mention the additional data associated with Hi-Def programming.


----------



## daveafree

I just ordered a replacement drive for my dead tivo hopefully that will fix the problem. I will post results once I get it installed.


----------



## HPD

danitaz said:


> I'm suspicious that it's the latest software update that we got that brought in the TiVO2Go features, etc. It seems like everyone started falling apart in December sometime. I just noticed mine about 10 days ago now though


If it was the software you would have had problems right away.


----------



## HPD

ckelly5 said:


> it's 9.2a. It was 8.01 to start, and then the service updates followed - can't really stop them
> 
> but yeah, same cablecards, same signal coming in. Something about the box was funky.


Aha, NOT the software.


----------



## HPD

lqaddict said:


> Now the question is - what Tivo broke in 9.2 release of the software, and what it is doing to fix it.
> Tivo, are you listening?


I have 9.2 and no problems at all. NOT the software.


----------



## HPD

Bodie said:


> I read some (and scanned the rest) of the thread and didn't see this so I thought I'd add it. Some are claiming that it can't be the drive and must be software because it happens right around the time a new version is loaded. There's two partitions for the SW on the drive and only one is in use at a time. The new SW is loaded into the unused partition and then when the system reboots with the new SW, it does so into the new partition. If this partition has a bad or failing sector, it will appear that the SW is the cause and not the drive, while that is not the case.
> 
> I hope this helps and sorry if that's been said already and I missed it.


That is correct. There are too many non-computer savvy people trying to apply amateur diagnosis.


----------



## HPD

NJChris said:


> Ok, so I was complaining a lot in here about my S3 rebooting since the last update. It has gotten progressively worse. I was reading another thread about an SATA cable issue someone was having and decided to replace mine. I was willing to try anything.
> 
> I put it in yesterday afternoon and have not had one single reboot since. The now playing list even seems more responsive, as well as the functions I'm getting from pausing, rewinding, etc.
> 
> It would have definitely rebooted by now with all the show switching I did testing this out, but it has been rock solid (crossing fingers).
> 
> So, I may have to take back my blame on the software update for my issue.


The body that oversees SATA made some major screw ups with SATA l and SATA ll cables. Low quality connector design does not fit snugly and can work loose and other problems too numerous to mention. Hopefully they are addressing the issues.


----------



## HPD

bizzy said:


> I was going to type a long rant on how great it is that Tivo hasn't bothered to notice this problem, but it really would be a wasted effort.


Tivo is smart enough to know that amateurs claiming this is a software problem are totally wrong. These are hard drive problems (reboots) and are not Tivo's fault.


----------



## richsadams

HPD said:


> If it was the software then everyone would be having problems.
> 
> As for the hard drive, let me tell you a story. I wanted to upgrade my Tivo series 2. From a company that shall remain nameless, I bought their kit with two 120GB drives. They were Samsung drives. I installed them and got the green screen of death immediately. They sent me two more - same problem - then two more - same problem - then two more - same problem. This was on a brand new Tivo that worked fine with its original drive.
> 
> After sending eight drives back I demanded a refund. They told me they had tested all eight and that there was nothing wrong with them. So at first they balked at refunding my money until I threated to smear their name all over the internet.
> 
> Bought from a different company that used a different brand of drive. Problem solved. Used that machine for many years now without a single problem.
> 
> Moral of the story. They say they test the drives but they really do not.


Good example of what can go wrong. It's quite possible that the drives that they sent you may have been good in other applications, but not compatible w/TiVo for some reason.

We've been dealing with this exact problem on several theads wherein one particular version of a Western Digital 1TB hard drive will not work as an internal upgrade in TiVo Series3's (due to a soft reboot failure) but work fine in TiVo HD's or as an expansion drive for either model. No one has been able to say exactly why (including Western Digital). In this case, they are "good" drives, they just don't work w/TiVo Series3's.

I also agree that more often than not a lot of problems people run into can be attributed to failing hard drives.

One "quirk" that has some historical significance is that when an upgrade is issued there has always been a sudden burst of failing hard drives reported. When KS52 is used for an emergency reinstall of the O/S on the alternate partition, no joy. For whatever reason it appears that a software upgrade can push what is probably a marginal drive over the edge. Over the years, every time there is an upgrade the complaints about HDD problems always follow. I suspect we'll see the same thing after the next upgrade...let's hope the impact is minimal though.


----------



## HPD

gwar9999 said:


> I don't know why they switched from SCSI to SATA drives considering SCSI drives are far more reliable-- oh wait, I know why, price.


Owned five Tivos, never seen one with a SCSI drive. They used to use ATA which is parallel ATA (PATA)

Now they use SATA (serial ATA)

The physical drives are the same, it is just an interface change that allows for higher speeds and a more compact cable. SATA


----------



## HPD

That70sGAdawg said:


> Add me to the list. After 6 great months, my 7 month old series 3 started the black screen freeze ups a month ago (1-3 a week). Picsel breakup started a week ago on some HD recorded programs, then the reboots, then the locked up menus. Tried everything suggested- disconnect cable input, attenuate, new remote batteries. I called Tivo and I have an RMA# - But it will cost me $50 to get a refurb unit. This stinks!!!!!!!!!!
> I have $1200 tied up in 2 units, 2 My DVR extenders, 2 Wireless USB adapters, and $80.00 software for Tivo to go on a Mac. Plus I pay monthly subscriptions to Tivo and Cable card fees to Comcast ! Should I wait for my TivoHD to die also- or switch to satellite and call Directv??? They have more HD now anyways than Comcast!


The more of this thread I read, the more I am becoming convinced that bad eSATA cables are the culprit for many of you.


----------



## HPD

mdobbins said:


> I ended up divorcing my eSATA drive and that did NOT improve the situation. I did a "Clear and Delete All" and that did NOT improve the situation.
> 
> I replaced my internal hard drive and :up:  :up: BAM! My TiVo Series 3 is back to normal. I added my eSATA expansion and all is good with the world.
> 
> My suggestion to all who are having problems and who are comfortable enough following the instructions in III.10 or III.11 of the following:
> 
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=370784


Ah yes, just what I have been thinking. 
REBOOT = hard drive problem. Whether original, eSATA drive or eSATA cables.

A certain function needs to execute, hard drive needed to execute the function, BAM, reboot time due to faulty hard drive function.


----------



## HPD

greg_burns said:


> Since I divorced my eSata drive everything has been right with the world. No reboots, no pixelation nor skipping. Strangely, the external drive tested perfectly fine with Hitachi Fitness test. (Didn't bother testing the internal one, since it runs great with external detached.)
> 
> Think I will re-attach tonight, and if the problems reappear I'll order the recommmened eSata cable and go from there.


The eSATA spec has seen recent revisions to the connector specs. The cables are getting better. It is just hard to know which ones are good. Experiment away and great luck to you. That thread recommends a good one, I do believe.

I believe both your drives are good.


----------



## HPD

greg_burns said:


> Just wanted to report back that everything is continuing to run fine.
> 
> I still don't know if it was just re-seating the eSata cable (I did not need to buy a new one) or the divorcing the drive and reattaching that fixed my reboot problems.
> 
> Note to self: next time check the cable first!


The reading I have done about SATA cables said that they can come loose rather easily. That is why they sanctioning body that is responsible for their design recently altered the specs to provide a fit that is nice and tight like PATA. Not sure how well it worked out though. Time will tell.


----------



## HPD

mdobbins said:


> For me, it has been 6 days of glitch-free operation with the replaced internal hard disk. I did copy the old drive to the new drive using WinMFS Beta Build 8- OS and all.


At first glance one would ask:
Why did this work if the old (bad) drive was copied? Shouldn't the problem have been copied to the new drive?

I think I have the answer for that. During copy functions, error checking comes into play. If the bad drive has trouble being read the drive will go back to the bad sector over and over again to see if it can extract the information. I seem to recall that it will try something like ten times before it finally gives up on that sector. This will slow down the copy process but eventually it will probable read all the data. Maybe not in some cases.

But when that same drive is dealing with Tivo functions that need to execute correctly the first time, it causes proplems.

One more thought. If some of the bad sectors on your bad drive were unreadable after many tries, that data may not have made it to the new drive. That could cause some minor problems in the future that have yet to be discovered.


----------



## HPD

bizzy said:


> "Escalate to engineering" is Tivo code for "we'll pretend you never called us".


I do not agree at all. The one time that happened to me they called me back about eleven days later. They solved my problem but you have to remember that they might be busy or not fully understand the problem. Some things take time.


----------



## HPD

Foobarsky said:


> I'm pretty discouraged.
> 
> I've tried just about everything discussed here for my nearly-brand new and now rebooting Tivo HD -- cable attenuators, divorcing the external drive, etc.
> 
> Things have gotten better, but I'm still getting reboots or freezes. Of course, it always seems to freeze just before it's supposed to record something (just missed the first half of the Sarah Connor Chronicles this week  )
> 
> I think I'm going to have to a) waste a ton of time on tech support, then b) get them to send me a new box. I've had it about 60 days, so I don't know if I'll get a new one or a refurb or what. Then I'm going to have to go through all the crap with the cable co on the cablecards....
> 
> This totally sucks, and it really, really seems like a software problem to me....


NOT a software problem. I just started reading this entire thread and some people have found solutions with attenuating the signal, changing eSata cables, divorcing eSata drives, installing new internal drive and maybe some other things that I already forgot. One guy said a UPS with an voltage regulator solved his problem. NOT all UPS's have good voltage regulators. Some are a joke.

If it was the software then then everyone would have the problem. I do not have any problems.


----------



## greg_burns

HPD said:


> If it was the software then then everyone would have the problem. I do not have any problems.


Not always true. Sometimes it is your channel source (which can vary by location of course). Remember the whole Toxic Channel problem when the S3 first came out?

But since you still have another 100 threads to respond to you probably won't see this post for awhile.


----------



## HPD

self said:


> I, on the other hand, have an S3, stock drive, Seagate FreeAgentPro 750G eSATA drive, _with_ the SIIG cable... and have still had multiple reboots this past week. (Everything is plugged into a UPS.)


Not sure, but I think I read that there are specific problems when using the FreeAgentPro with Tivo. You might want to search all threads.


----------



## HPD

danitaz said:


> Cool! Of course, I accidentally got one of the WD's that won't soft restart, but I'm just going to leave it in there for awhile to make sure that the "problem" is fixed before I worry about swapping out that drive. At first blush, this really does seem to have fixed the HD rebooting problem. I've already recorded three HD programs (at one point one on each tuner), and I've not seen any problems. My old hard drive had gotten to the point that just tuning to an HD channel was enough to make it go nuts. So, I'll leave it like this until the soft reboot makes me mad <g> (probably will take awhile for it to do that - I'll just check it every morning to make sure it's not in a stuck boot), and then when I decide to go with another internal drive I'll get another 1TB drive and I'll have more room than I know what to do with <heehee>.
> 
> I'll report back in a week or so to let folks know if this hard drive swap actually fixed the reboots!
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Danita


Its the failing hard drive people. I just knew it.


----------



## HPD

MasterCephus said:


> An update on my situation.
> 
> I was gone for the weekend and when I got back I was going to check to see if the Tivo was ok. Well when I turned my tv on, the tivo was recording something. So I click the Tivo button on the remote and nothing happened...2 minutes later I hear the little noise it makes when you hit a button. Then the background showed up and no menu. Then it rebooted.
> 
> After it rebooted it came up and everything was ok. I watched the SG: Atlantis I missed and it when it came to the end of the recording (where it asks to delete or not) nothing showed, just a frozen screen on the last frame of the recorded show. Then it rebooted. Then it rebooted 3 times when it was trying to come up.
> 
> I called Tivo again and they are replacing my Tivo. So I should get a new Tivo by the end of the week.
> ----
> Here is something to chew on...
> 
> So out of curiosity, I removed the cable connection to the Tivo and right when I did, everything started working (minus the cable). I could watch anything from the NPL, go to any menu, etc.
> 
> When I plugged the cable back up, it worked better than normal, but not as fast as it was doing when the cable was disconnected.
> 
> I am still thinking it's the HD going bad. Because when it receives an input signal, it's always recording (i.e. writing to the HD). So it could just be a side-effect of a going out HD. Does that sound right?


Sounds right to me. If the hard drive cannot access data in a timely fashion, (hard drive failure) then not so good things happen.


----------



## HPD

danitaz said:


> I went a week without HD and had no problems, but as soon as the TiVO tried HD on the original drive, I got the old symptom back - rebooting on HD channels.
> 
> So, certainly, replacing the HD has been good for me!
> 
> Danita


Yippe yaba do day. I just love happy endings.


----------



## HPD

mdobbins said:


> Same here. More than 10 days with a replacement hard drive and no problems yet. Again - I had the symptoms where the TiVo would slow down / freeze / reboot unless the cable feed was detached.
> 
> Mike


Wow, I sure am glad I read your post. That detaching the cable thing was making me doubt my own sanity. He He The tech works if the hard drive works. Yippe


----------



## HPD

JimWall said:


> after I finish a full Spinrite diagnostic on new drives. If I get an error doing DD copy and have to do DD rescue then that would tell me the drive is bad for sure. I will then use spinrite on bad drive to find and repair the bad spots.


Finally, someone with Spinrite experience. I have been thinking of getting it. How do you like it? Is there a large learning curve?


----------



## HPD

MasterCephus said:


> The guy I talked to from Tivo (not sure if he knew what he was talking about) was saying they had quite a few HD problems with tivos and he said the common denominator was that they were all shipped ground


Wow, I have seen many a UPS drivers drop boxes on purpose from about waist height. No respect for other peoples property.


----------



## HPD

memphislim said:


> Should be a brand new HDrive right? So why would replacing the HD cure my problem? Are they all failing, even brand new ones?


Perhaps damaged by rough shipping treatment?

Perhaps another problem I have read about. Cheap washing fluid from China not washing the disk properly before the magnetic coating is applied. Causes magnetic coating to come off in pieces. Really screws up the drive.

I am in no way saying this is the problem but it makes me go Hmm.

Send it back immediately.

By the way, Seagate makes excellent drives. 5 year warranty. Much better than most.


----------



## HPD

danitaz said:


> Just as a followup - my TiVO has had a new hard drive since Sunday. I currently have 310GB on my 1TB drive, and not one reboot since the installation/upgrade of the new hard drive. HD programs are being recorded normally, and I'm happy
> 
> Danita


New hard drive heaven. Glad to hear it.


----------



## HPD

Eastwood said:


> Since it has upgraded to the latest release I have had only one mysterious reboot and have had no pixelation or freezing, and it is once again usable (even with two HD streams recording).


I bet that reboot was the required one to install the newly downloaded software.


----------



## HPD

mdobbins said:


> the problem appears to be solved by replacement of the internal hard drive. I have gone for more than 2 weeks with the replacement hard drive with nary a problem.
> 
> I still think that a strong possibility exists for a correlation between software version 9.2 and the appearance of the symptoms.


With the new hard drive fixing your problem, how can you suspect the software that works perfectly on your machine right now? That does not compute.


----------



## HPD

richsadams said:


> TiVo has built in diagnostics called Kickstarts, two of which will isolate bad sectors and correct data corruption. They can be run manually but if TiVo finds a problem it can may run it automatically. Click here for Kickstart info.


Excellent. Thank you Rich


----------



## HPD

greg_burns said:


> Not always true. Sometimes it is your channel source (which can vary by location of course). Remember the whole Toxic Channel problem when the S3 first came out?


First time I have heard about Toxic channel. Hmm


----------



## greg_burns

HPD said:


> First time I have heard about Toxic channel. Hmm


Toxic search


----------



## JimWall

Spinrite is very simple. Boots to freedos and run with simple menus. If it finds bad spots it does a great job trying to recover the data. On the other hand if there are a lot of bad spots it can take many days to run as it may read a bad sector thousands of times from different head positions to determine what the true data really is using statistics on how often different data patterns are seen.


----------



## greg_burns

JimWall said:


> Spinrite is very simple. Boots to freedos and run with simple menus. If it finds bad spots it does a great job trying to recover the data. On the other hand if there are a lot of bad spots it can take many days to run as it may read a bad sector thousands of times from different head positions to determine what the true data really is using statistics on how often different data patterns are seen.


It is pratically cheaper to buy a new drive then to buy Spinrite.


----------



## JimWall

I have used spinrite on two Windows PC's that had strange hanging problems. Both turned out to be bad spots on hard drive. One took a few minutes to fix and the other I had to run off and on for a week. A large chunk at the end of the drive was bad. Drive was probably dropped during shipment. Windows would freeze when trying to use that area I guess. Since then I have had no trouble with either PC. Great utility to have around. I try to use it once a year on my PCs to keep drives stable. 

Unfortunately the bigger the drives get the longer it takes to do a full check of the entire drive at level 4.

Accoring the spinrite's developer/owner drive manufacturors have reduced quality. At 20 GB they cared about having 20 GB of reliable space. With 200 Gb, 1 TB etc. there are lots of extra space over the official size. When drive gets an i/o failure automatic defect sector management marks it bad and allocates one of the sectors from the "extra ones"; I wonder if the OS even knows this happens. Spinrite turns this off when testing and trys super had to retrive the data and reformat before using an new sector and can put its best guess of the original data in the new sector from the "extra ones".

I wonder if the 1 TB drives people take from external USB drives have even lower quality. They have shorter warrenties than the bare internal drives. Is it because they failed testing but are good enough for external drives or vendor thinks they will fail sooner because they are external and will be dropped, kicked etc.


----------



## richsadams

JimWall said:


> I wonder if the 1 TB drives people take from external USB drives have even lower quality. They have shorter warrenties than the bare internal drives. Is it because they failed testing but are good enough for external drives or vendor thinks they will fail sooner because they are external and will be dropped, kicked etc.


My guess is the later. Having a shorter warranty on an external drive/enclosure makes sense. Odds are that such a drive will be damaged at some point because it sits outside of a normal PC/server and is subject to continued "abuse". Lord knows the one I have for my PC has taken more than a couple of tumbles...so far so good (Seagate OEM in an Antec case).


----------



## ccoulson

It sounds like a number of folks have had success replacing their hard drives. I've just ordered an replacement from WeeKnees.

I'm interested if anybody has run any disk diagnostics on their OLD drives after they were replaced? The Kickstart utilities don't seem to be detecting/reporting any issues.


----------



## greg_burns

ccoulson said:


> I'm interested if anybody has run any disk diagnostics on their OLD drives after they were replaced? The Kickstart utilities don't seem to be detecting/reporting any issues.


You don't have to wait until you order a replacement drive to pull the drive and run diagnostics on it. That should be one of your first steps (after trying a KS).


----------



## demonmucha

HPD said:


> You have six and I have none. Somebody telling a big fib here?


HPD - Are you trying to sell Tivo hard drives here? Seriously, being a tech for 15 years you should know not everyone experiences the the same problem with a device.

For instance, I could be using the optical for my audio to my receiver, and HDMI for my video, whereas you could be using component and optical. There could be some encoding that is done through software for the HDMI output, but not component (HDCP). My cable company could have something running on another frequency than yours... I could keep going.

So unless you have run an S3 in every possible configuration for the past 1.5 years, in every environment, don't say software can't be the cause.


----------



## HPD

demonmucha said:


> HPD - Are you trying to sell Tivo hard drives here? Seriously, being a tech for 15 years you should know not everyone experiences the the same problem with a device.
> 
> For instance, I could be using the optical for my audio to my receiver, and HDMI for my video, whereas you could be using component and optical. There could be some encoding that is done through software for the HDMI output, but not component (HDCP). My cable company could have something running on another frequency than yours... I could keep going.
> 
> So unless you have run an S3 in every possible configuration for the past 1.5 years, in every environment, don't say software can't be the cause.


Nope, just that after starting to read the thread from the very first post, I knew that alot of the people were having hard drive problems. Then after some of them naged naged naged that it must be the software, some of them replaced their hard drive and wala, problem solved. It just stands to reason that if other people do not have any problems than it cannot be the software. But unreadable data on a hard drive, now that is the culprit so many times. CPU, ram and motherboard rarely fail in any computer. In other words, software and electronics are very stable but hard drives have a tough job to do.

For instance, Western Digital now holds the record for Areal density. They have achieved 520 Gigabits per square inch. That is 520 BILLION bits. Now picture a one inch square and picture in that square 520 BILLION dots and imagine a device trying to write to and read each one of those dots. It boggles the mind. If the heads seek off target by just a microscopic amount, you have problems.


----------



## ccoulson

greg_burns said:


> You don't have to wait until you order a replacement drive to pull the drive and run diagnostics on it. That should be one of your first steps (after trying a KS).


Assuming you have the tools...


----------



## memphislim

memphislim said:


> Update: I now have had the 9x software for a week or so and no apparent reboots, no freezing, all apprears well on the new box Tivo sent me. So reboots with 8x, nothing at all with 9x. Keeping my fingers crossed. Only thing that has changed from a non-working to a working Tivo is the brand new box. Same cable cards, cables and 9x software as was using on 2 nonfunctional Tivos.


Just wanted to update those who are having this problem and not sure what to do. I have now been running 3 weeks with brand new S3, (second replacement under warranty) and everything is working beautifully. Just hound Tivo to keep sending you boxes (brand new if you can get them to) until you get one that works. Stop bashing your brains out and either get the new box under warranty or replace your HD if out of warranty.


----------



## bmgoodman

Has anybody experiencing occasional S3 reboots tried either Kickstart 54 or 57? I searched this thread, but I only found an attempt by someone whose Tivo wouldn't boot at all. My reboots seem to occur maybe once per week that I am aware of.

If nobody has tried this, I'm willing to try one or both, assuming there's no expected harm.


----------



## richsadams

bmgoodman said:


> Has anybody experiencing occasional S3 reboots tried either Kickstart 54 or 57? I searched this thread, but I only found an attempt by someone whose Tivo wouldn't boot at all. My reboots seem to occur maybe once per week that I am aware of.
> 
> If nobody has tried this, I'm willing to try one or both, assuming there's no expected harm.


KS57 or KS58 will not cause any issues and may resolve some problems. More here.


----------



## bmgoodman

richsadams said:


> KS57 or KS58 will not cause any issues and may resolve some problems. More here.


Rich,

Thanks for the fast response and the link. You're a godsend on this board! (Now if you could tell me if there is data in any of the Tivo's log files that I can easily view that could help me determine how frequently my Tivo is rebooting....)


----------



## richsadams

bmgoodman said:


> Rich,
> 
> Thanks for the fast response and the link. You're a godsend on this board! (Now if you could tell me if there is data in any of the Tivo's log files that I can easily view that could help me determine how frequently my Tivo is rebooting....)


Although I count myself as a TiVo wonk of sorts but AFAIK TiVo logs aren't accessible by anyone except TiVo. However there may be someone here that knows the secret and is willing to share...


----------



## ccoulson

Got a replacement/upgraded hard drive from WeaKnees (1TB). No problems since installing it. Of course, I am also have very few recordings on it and there ar every few recordings scheduled. We'll see how things go once the disk gets active...

Incidentally, WeaKnees sent me a Seagate to replace the OEM Western Digital drive.


----------



## bmgoodman

richsadams said:


> KS57 or KS58 will not cause any issues and may resolve some problems. More here.


I started a "kickstart 57" this morning and saw the GSOD telling me the process could take up to 3 hours (IIRC). I came back to the TV ten minutes later and I was already at the Tivo Main Menu. That seems awfully fast to have done anything. Thoughts?


----------



## Foobarsky

Interesting...

I've been plagued by the reboot problems with my 3 month-old Tivo HD (had reboot problems almost from the beginning.) I've tried all of the solutions here, including the kickstarts, but haven't yet replaced the HD.

Here's something new, though: Before, I would frequently return to the Tivo at night and find it hung and have to reboot it by pulling the power cord. I now leave it in "standby" mode after watching something -- and I've *never* come back to find it hung, it's always ready to go. (It still reboots sometimes while watching -- both recorded and live TV, I think always HD).

Does that shed any light on anything for anyone?


----------



## richsadams

bmgoodman said:


> I started a "kickstart 57" this morning and saw the GSOD telling me the process could take up to 3 hours (IIRC). I came back to the TV ten minutes later and I was already at the Tivo Main Menu. That seems awfully fast to have done anything. Thoughts?


It's not unusual and probably more common than not for TiVo's diagnostic program to take less than several hours to complete, often about ten minutes. Isolating one or a few sectors shouldn't take very long. If there are multiple problems on multiple platters, then the process could be extended.

Bottom line is the result. If the problem has been fixed, it's done it's job. If not, there may be more to it than can be "repaired" by the program.


----------



## bmgoodman

richsadams said:


> It's not unusual and probably more common than not for TiVo's diagnostic program to take less than several hours to complete, often about ten minutes. Isolating one or a few sectors shouldn't take very long. If there are multiple problems on multiple platters, then the process could be extended.
> 
> Bottom line is the result. If the problem has been fixed, it's done it's job. If not, there may be more to it than can be "repaired" by the program.


I've been seeing the reboots about once in two weeks, but how would I know if they are occurring at other times? It could be rebooting every night when I'm asleep and I wouldn't be the wiser.

Only time will tell, I suppose. Thanks, Rich.


----------



## greg_burns

bmgoodman said:


> I've been seeing the reboots about once in two weeks, but how would I know if they are occurring at other times? It could be rebooting every night when I'm asleep and I wouldn't be the wiser.


Turn on the clock. It will automatically go away after a reboot. 30 sec skip used to do this, but no more.

S-P-S-9-S

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=122090


----------



## richsadams

bmgoodman said:


> I've been seeing the reboots about once in two weeks, but how would I know if they are occurring at other times? It could be rebooting every night when I'm asleep and I wouldn't be the wiser.
> 
> Only time will tell, I suppose. Thanks, Rich.


As Greg noted above, you can tell by the clock. Best of luck and let us know how it goes.


----------



## bmgoodman

greg_burns said:


> Turn on the clock. It will automatically go away after a reboot. 30 sec skip used to do this, but no more.
> 
> S-P-S-9-S
> 
> http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=122090


Thanks, Greg, but I'm a bit paranoid about the clock getting burned in on my new plasma TV. Any other codes that might be useful without putting something on the screen? Thanks.


----------



## greg_burns

bmgoodman said:


> Thanks, Greg, but I'm a bit paranoid about the clock getting burned in on my new plasma TV. Any other codes that might be useful without putting something on the screen? Thanks.


I am not really sure if this one turns back off after a reboot or not. Have to try it and see. (Edit: it does turn off after reboot.)

S-P-S-Pause-S - Toggles the fast disappear of the Play bar.

Make sure you enter these while playing back a recording or they won't take.


----------



## Hoopnoop

Hi all,

I have been having reboot and "fatal" error problems with my Series 3 ever since I added the DVR expander several months ago. I recently purchased the Esata cables recommended in this forum and that has not helped. Any suggestions regarding possible fixes of my problem?

thanks

Rob


----------



## greg_burns

Hoopnoop said:


> Hi all,
> 
> I have been having reboot and "fatal" error problems with my Series 3 ever since I added the DVR expander several months ago. I recently purchased the Esata cables recommended in this forum and that has not helped. Any suggestions regarding possible fixes of my problem?
> 
> thanks
> 
> Rob


I would divorce your eSata drive and see if the problems go away. If they do you can be fairly certain it is a problem with the drive in the expander.


----------



## Hoopnoop

Thanks! But if I do this I will lose everything that I've saved since getting the drive, correct? If so, I might need to do it but it will be painful!


----------



## greg_burns

Hoopnoop said:


> Thanks! But if I do this I will lose everything that I've saved since getting the drive, correct? If so, I might need to do it but it will be painful!


You will loose everything saved on that drive, yes.

When I've divorced mine in the past I still had the shows recorded prior to adding the drive. I'm not entirely sure if all shows recorded since adding it will be gone or just the ones "associated" with the eSata drive will be.


----------



## richsadams

When I divorced my expansion drive I lost all of the recordings created since the drive was attached...but like Greg's experience, a few remained that were recorded prior. 

Since TiVo treats both the internal and external drive as a single drive (by striping recordings across both) the recordings will be lost upon divorcing the eSATA drive.


----------



## tivochiguy

I reported my reboots on this thread back in January after I received my extender. I exchanged my Tivo, waited before installing the extender for two weeks and had no issues. I added the extender and started having reboots. As soon as I detached the drive, all was well again. I finally purchased a esata cable and replaced it with the extender cable and have had NO ISSUES.

This was recommended by someone else in the thread. Thank you to them.


----------



## MookieNJ

I have been enjoying random restarts on my TiVo HD with increasing frequency over the past few weeks. This never happened the first year or so that I had it and I haven't changed anything in regards to my set up. Ugh


----------



## taf29

Another TIVO with random resets. The unit was put into operation November, 2007 and subsequently had an extender HD from TIVO. It has worked flawlessly until about 1 week ago. One day, the screen froze and the TIVO then went through the power sequence. This happened more andmore fequently. It happenedd during playback viewing as welll as live TV viewing. A first I thought that it might be related to the fact that I was doing several transfers of video files from the TIVO to a PC over an ethernet line. I called TIVO technical support and tried to desribe the situation. They gave me a case number. We agreed that I should observe the situation and call back when I knew more. They also suggesting visitint the bulletin boards.

I quickly realized that it had nothing to do with file transfers.

From the bulletin boards I learned that my unit is not unique. Several listings suggesting using the KIckstart routines. Last night, I started KS 57. The TIVO showed the green screen saying that it was investigating the drive and since it might take as long as 3 hours, it suggesting shutting down the TV. About 90 minutes later, I turned on the TV and saw the initial power up screen. The screen did not change. I unpluggedd the TIVO several times but never got past the initial startup screen.

When the unit is plugged in the front panel gives a fleeting display consisting of, from left to right, green light, red light, blue light, "FIXED", "NEGATIVE", and "HYBRID".

Can anyone relate to this situation?

Thank you.,


----------



## greg_burns

taf29 said:


> Can anyone relate to this situation?


I would start by disconnecting (aka divorce) your eSata drive and see how far you get. You will loose your recordings, but that is just about a giving at this point.

It is probably an issue with the eSata drive or the internal one.


----------



## Foobarsky

I have a similar situation. I had pretty frequent random restarts back when I first got my Tivo HD, about a year ago. Then (maybe with system updates?) it pretty much stopped -- down to once a month, maybe less. 

All of a sudden, beginning last week, it's been randomly rebooting with great frequency -- during just about any active watching session.

Has something changed on the Tivo or system software end?


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## jon96cobra

I wish the users could decide on the updates to the tivo if we wanted them to be installed or at least go back to an older version that was stable.


----------



## bda001

I'm having the same problem with the freezing and rebooting. I had no problem with my TiVo rebooting repeatedly until the V11 update. I have the S3 and the MyDVRexpander.

I'm also on a prepaid 3 year plan and now the system is fairly useless. The warranties have expired and what are my choices? I agree that we shouldn't automatically get the updated software if these are the types of problems we can expect.

I have also noticed that the system must not reboot when no one is watching. All my season passes record and are available. But once we start watching them is when the reboots start. Sometimes it's if we hit the pause button for a minute or if we hit rewind or fast forward. And then other times we're just watching and it freezes and reboots. Sometimes it will go an hour or so then reboot during playback - and other times it'll reboot, come back up, and then a few minutes later it will reboot itself again.

But like I said, I do find it strange that all my season passes seemed to have recorded in their entirety when we are not watching and the tv is not turned on. So there seems to be no rebooting taking place when we are not watching the or using the system.

I have replaced the batteries in my remote as someone suggested, and my Pioneer Plasma is connect via HDMI.

But I definitely had no problems before the v11 update. The message was on the screen that morning, and the reboots started happening that same day.


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## taf29

greg_burns said:


> I would start by disconnecting (aka divorce) your eSata drive and see how far you get. You will loose your recordings, but that is just about a giving at this point.
> 
> It is probably an issue with the eSata drive or the internal one.


Many thanks to Greg_Burns for pointing me to a hard drive problem to explain my problem with constant TIVO resets.

I disconnected the expander hard drive (eSata) and the problem immediately went away. Subsequently, I was referred to Western Digital by the TIVO help line. Western Digital replaced the expander drive which was still in warranty.


----------



## MookieNJ

After trying the kickstart methods recommended here and reinstalling the CableCards as suggested over at WeaKnees, I'm at a loss for what to do here. My TiVo is now freezing or rebooting 2 or 3 times a day. I've had it for a little more than a year now with no problems until the last month or so.

As an owner of a Series 2 with a lifetime subscription for over 5 years now, I have never experienced any difficulties with TiVo until my 1 year old TiVo HD started acting up.

Any suggestions would be welcomed, as my next idea is to throw the thing out the window .


----------



## richsadams

MookieNJ said:


> After trying the kickstart methods recommended here and reinstalling the CableCards as suggested over at WeaKnees, I'm at a loss for what to do here. My TiVo is now freezing or rebooting 2 or 3 times a day. I've had it for a little more than a year now with no problems until the last month or so.
> 
> As an owner of a Series 2 with a lifetime subscription for over 5 years now, I have never experienced any difficulties with TiVo until my 1 year old TiVo HD started acting up.
> 
> Any suggestions would be welcomed, as my next idea is to throw the thing out the window .


Unfortunately those are classic signs of hard drive failure.

If it's just over a year old you may be able to convince TiVo to do an exchange under the parts warranty ($49). Or you can replace the drive using one from DVRUpgrade or Weaknees. Or if you're comfortable with opening TiVo and a PC, you can buy a bare drive and image it yourself using your existing drive (might or might not work depending on the problem) or with a copy of Instant Cake.

If you want to DIY, a visit to the Official eSATA Drive Expansion: FAQ + Discussion sticky thread is in order. Even though it started out as an eSATA drive thread, it has everything you need to know about upgrading your TiVo HD including recommended hard drives and Section III, #30 covers internal upgrades.

Best of luck and let us know how it goes!


----------



## prices10

I'm convinced that the version 11 (Netflix) software upgrade is causing this problem (hard drive errors/reboots) even without using the Netflix feature. It also seems to affect people with external drives.
I understand that the software is not installed on the external drive but clearly something has changed in the way it records onto it or organizes the recordings. I just don't believe that all these external drives have coincidentally failed at the same time as this release was pushed out.
I haven't tried disconnecting mine yet (too many recordings I haven't watched yet) but it seems crazy to me that a problem caused by a s/w update can't be fixed without replacing the drive. Can't it be reformatted? Or is everyone's problem really a physical issue?


----------



## greg_burns

prices10 said:


> I just don't believe that all these external drives have coincidentally failed at the same time as this release was pushed out.


If I had a dollar for every time I've read that here. 

The only real way to find out if it is a defective drive is to test it on a PC.


----------



## richsadams

prices10 said:


> I'm convinced that the version 11 (Netflix) software upgrade is causing this problem (hard drive errors/reboots) even without using the Netflix feature. It also seems to affect people with external drives.
> I haven't tried disconnecting mine yet (too many recordings I haven't watched yet) but it seems crazy to me that a problem caused by a s/w update can't be fixed without replacing the drive. Can't is be reformatted? Or is everyone's problem really a physical issue?


I can't say with authority that the Netflix feature isn't causing some problems or that v11.0 isn't impacting those with eSATA drives in some negative way. However if it were a global problem everyone would be affected and that's clearly not the case.

As mentioned (ad nauseam ) every update has historically caused some problems for some folks; some updates being more "problematic" than others. A hard reboot fixes things for many, others end up replacing hard drives that failed...and there are other resolutions in between. So it can be a software and/or hardware issue. To date AFAIK there has never been a silver bullet fix nor IIRC a single update issue that's affected every single TiVo.

Also as mentioned there are tens of thousands of forum members and when something is amiss it surfaces very quickly. The more people affected, the more people complain. Based on years of watching posts this particular update doesn't seem to have generated any more (possibly less?) than the average amount of post-update complaints. And so far none are really out of the ordinary or new IMHO with the possible exception of some network issues which I and some others have experienced.

I can certainly sympathize with anyone having problems, it's terribly frustrating when your TiVo stops working properly after an update. Everyone's first line of action should be to call TiVo. If there's a problem and TiVo isn't made aware of it no one should expect it to be fixed. Even if they initially deny an issue they still log a ticket with the details. The more calls they get the better the chances that they'll address something if they can. Then it's up to you to either continue to deal with them if they don't immediately and satisfactorily address your concerns or heed the (usually) good advice given freely by forum members to resolve the specific problem. Or some just wait it out and suffer...which wouldn't work for me. 

Best of luck and keep us posted on how things go. :up:


----------



## JuniorSir

My series 3 has gone off the deep end this week. It's slow and reboots frequently. I've had it for 2 years. I remember it received a software upgrade about 1-2 weeks ago. It could be the software upgrade or perhaps the harddrive is done. I have a Tivo HD too, which is functioning fine, post the same upgrade, so that leads me to think its a hardware issue. 

I also have two series 2 sitting in the closet (even one with a lifetime...), are the harddrives within those capable with series 3 so i can do a swap, as a test? Or I need to order new one from weaknees.


----------



## hillstones

My Series3 is 2 1/2 years old. I got it when they were first released. I do not have any external storage. I have never had any problems until now. I have noticed the menus and guide have been slower over the past few months. This morning the front panel was lit up. Both record lights, remote light and download light with the TiVo logo in the display. I thought the power went out or something. I left for an hour and came back to the same display. I turned the TV on and it was on the Powering Up screen. I realized it had frozen. I unplugged it and plugged it back in to reboot it. I thought everything was ok. However, it has rebooted and frozen three times today.

Went out and returned tonight, thinking it was ok, but it wasn't. I turned on TV and TiVo had a channel update displayed. I deleted the message and I got the THX logo and the TiVo animation and realized it crashed again! It crashed during a recording because it is recorded twice, with 5 min on one recording and 35 min on the other. So it was down for about 20 minutes during the reboot.

I am transferring a show now, but willing to try the kickstart57. Is this the sign of a bad hard drive? I don't know when the v11 software was pushed out. May have been awhile ago since I saw the last system update message.


----------



## richsadams

hillstones said:


> My Series3 is 2 1/2 years old. <snip>


Unfortunately your TiVo is displaying all of the symptoms of a failing hard drive. You can try running KS57 and KS58 to see if it can resolve any issues, but by your description it sounds like it's more serious than simple data corruption or a few bad sectors. Running KS54 may give you some idea about how bad it is.

If you're comfortable opening a computer and connecting a hard drive you can probably replace the drive yourself and upgrade it in the process. Everything you need to know can be found on the sticky thread that's linked below my sig.

Best of luck!


----------



## hillstones

Here is an update: After successfully transferring Lost, tried to reboot and enter diagnostics to check drive. Could not even do that. When I went into Settings to reboot, it spontaneously rebooted before I even got there! Followed the steps, but after I entered 54, it would lock up and freeze, every single time. I could hear the hard drive trying to read the same sector over and over again. So I am guessing my hard drive is history. So I ordered a 500GB drive from WeaKnees.com for $169. Good upgrade price and I will have twice as much storage as before.


----------



## richsadams

hillstones said:


> So I ordered a 500GB drive from WeaKnees.com for $169. Good upgrade price and I will have twice as much storage as before.


Sounds like a plan. You should be back in business with room to spare in no time. :up:


----------



## hillstones

richsadams said:


> Sounds like a plan. You should be back in business with room to spare in no time. :up:


Just for fun, I tried to run the diagnostic. Now it freezes right on startup and the 4 lights don't even go off to give me the option to enter a code. I can hear the drive trying to read the same sector over and over again.

Nice thing is that I learned that the latest TiVo Desktop for Mac will let me transfer "Lost" to my second TiVo HD box. I transferred it to my Mac while the TiVo was still running without thinking that I should have transferred it directly to my second TiVo HD.


----------



## JimWall

hillstones said:


> Just for fun, I tried to run the diagnostic. Now it freezes right on startup and the 4 lights don't even go off to give me the option to enter a code. I can hear the drive trying to read the same sector over and over again.
> 
> Nice thing is that I learned that the latest TiVo Desktop for Mac will let me transfer "Lost" to my second TiVo HD box. I transferred it to my Mac while the TiVo was still running without thinking that I should have transferred it directly to my second TiVo HD.


The only suggestion I have is to put drive in a PC and run spinrite against it. I might be able to recover the bad sectors. It if works drive could last a long time or may have another sector go bad any day.
http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm


----------



## hillstones

JimWall said:


> The only suggestion I have is to put drive in a PC and run spinrite against it. I might be able to recover the bad sectors. It if works drive could last a long time or may have another sector go bad any day.
> http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm


I have a Mac. I am tempted to get an external SATA enclosure to see if I can run some diagnostics on it. If there are bad sectors, I wouldn't trust it for using as another hard drive.


----------



## dmess0r

Reboots just started on my S3 as well. I'm currently in the process of divorcing my eSata drive. We'll see if the problem disappears.


----------



## dmess0r

dmess0r said:


> Reboots just started on my S3 as well. I'm currently in the process of divorcing my eSata drive. We'll see if the problem disappears.


In a nutshell the issue was the following. Internal WD2500BS was beginning to fail. I pulled out the drive and ran the Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostics against the drive. Sure enough, under the Extended Test, the drive suffered from Non-Relocatable Sectors; which is an unrecoverable error and the drive had to be replaced. :down:

Luckily I caught the issue in advance. :up: I used MFSLive to backup/restore old->new drives. I just performed the drive-swap. We'll see how it goes when I get home. 

I detailed the experience pretty exhaustively on my blog:

el8.org/2009/06/10/tivo-series-3-western-digital-wd2500bs-55rpb1-failure/


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## richsadams

dmess0r said:


> In a nutshell the issue was the following. Internal WD2500BS was beginning to fail. <snip>


Sorry to hear that your TiVo's internal hard drive gave up. But thanks for the follow-up post. Nice job on the blog too...all good info for those that follow. And very good advice about being sure TiVo is on a UPS, not just a surge protector. Well done. :up:


----------



## Naugahide

Sorry, I haven't waded through all 15 pages but can someone tell me if there's some sort of troubleshooting aid for a failing drive?

Does any of the screens show any hard drive error counts, etc?

I'd need to know if it's the internal drive or the (legit) external drive that's throwing errors.


----------



## richsadams

Naugahide said:


> Sorry, I haven't waded through all 15 pages but can someone tell me if there's some sort of troubleshooting aid for a failing drive?
> 
> Does any of the screens show any hard drive error counts, etc?
> 
> I'd need to know if it's the internal drive or the (legit) external drive that's throwing errors.


There isn't a hard drive diagnostic screen, but TiVo has some built-in diagnostic and repair programs called "Kickstarts". KS54 is an MFS drive diagnostic that may be able to determine if one of your hard drives has some issues. I say "may" because it is not always reliable. The only way to fully know if there's something wrong with a hard drive is to connect it to a computer and run a full diagnostic like Western Digital's Lifeguard. Here's a link to the Kickstarts including a link to WD's Lifeguard:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showpost.php?p=5643823&postcount=2

You may also want to take a look at another post about issues with eSATA drives:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7553444#post7553444


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## Naugahide

Thanks, Rich.

I did look at the diagnostic screens on the TiVo itself and was disappointed that I did not find any counters showing me how often disk read/write errors were happening. It did have lots of counters for other things such as loss of signal, etc, so it was kind of surprising. Maybe they can add it to a future release? It'd also be nice to know if they log the reason why the device reboots.

I will follow the links you sent and see what I can learn.

Taking the drives out will void the warantee but I think I'm well past that warantee anyway.


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## richsadams

Naugahide said:


> Thanks, Rich.
> 
> I did look at the diagnostic screens on the TiVo itself and was disappointed that I did not find any counters showing me how often disk read/write errors were happening. It did have lots of counters for other things such as loss of signal, etc, so it was kind of surprising. Maybe they can add it to a future release? It'd also be nice to know if they log the reason why the device reboots.
> 
> I will follow the links you sent and see what I can learn.
> 
> Taking the drives out will void the warantee but I think I'm well past that warantee anyway.


Happy to help. A HDD diagnostic would be useful. TiVo does have logs showing what your TiVo is doing and they can refer to them if you get to a second-level CSR.

If your TiVo is rebooting and you have one of the 500GB My DVR Expanders I'd start there...ensuring the cable is snug, etc. and/or replacing the cable. (They were notoriously poor.) Based on numerous posts the Expanders seem to last about 12 to 18 months. As mentioned in my other post the enclosures seem to be failing for some reason.

Anyway, hope you're able to sort things out and save your recordings. If you have any you can't part with and you can keep TiVo running now might be a good time to transfer them to a computer.

Let us know how it goes.


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## madscientist

Argh. Tivo bad! I had an original S1 I bought in Dec 1999. That thing just ran and ran: I beefed up the storage capacity (originally just 14 hours! And that's SD!) and was happy with it... until we got HD. Now I was not happy. I bought an S3 a couple of years ago with an expander. Last May, it got totally flaky in ways described here: pixellated playback, menus choppy, etc. Horrible. After looking all around I bought a new, larger internal drive and reloaded the image. I've never hooked up the expander again as it just seemed really unreliable.

All was well, until tonight. I turned on my TV and saw a bright magenta screen, and TiVo would not respond to any buttons. Bummer.  So much for my recordings of Supernatural and 30 Rock: Tivo was frozen.

Unplugged/plugged. "Welcome" screen sat for about 10 minutes. Just as I was getting ready to pull the plug again, it switched to "almost there" for another 10 minutes. Finally booted up. Started recording, things look OK. No choppy video, no choppy menus. Good stuff, just a glitch.

Watching the news... BAM! Black screen for a few seconds, then immediately back to "Welcome". This time it boots pretty quickly. Finish the news, start poking around the season passes to see if there's another Supernatural showing I can schedule... BAM! Black screen, immediately to "Welcome", etc.

I turned off the TV and was very sad. My Tivo is whacked again and _if I'm lucky_ I'll only be out the cost of another harddisk... only 8 months after buying the last one.

I guess "they don't make them like they used to" is just as true of Tivo as everything else.


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## DougJohnson

madscientist said:


> I turned off the TV and was very sad. My Tivo is whacked again and _if I'm lucky_ I'll only be out the cost of another harddisk... only 8 months after buying the last one.
> 
> I guess "they don't make them like they used to" is just as true of Tivo as everything else.


It's hard to blame TiVo for the failure of a hard drive you installed. But it does sound like a hard drive failure. -- Doug


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## madscientist

Well, the first drive (and expansion) were both Tivo-provided and lasted just over a year. Nevertheless, I understand that drives fail a lot (where I work we deal with this constantly). Maybe it's just bad luck on my part, but it seems like there's something different about the S3's that is harder on the drives.

Plus with today's drives providing so much information about their failure rates, status, etc. (like I said, we deal with this constantly) it seems a shame the Tivo isn't better about managing the problem.


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## JimWall

Western Digital 1 TB green drives have worked very well for me.
I have two a Series 3 that have lasted over 2 years.
I also have a TIVO HD with 2 1 TB Hitachi which has failed twice. After about a year each time. They run a lot hotter than the WD green drive.
I put the Hitachi drives in a PC and reformat under windows and then restore from a backup and put them back in the HD and they work fine again.
Which seems to support my theory that being hotter and constantly recoding two HD streams 24X7 results in more errors and after a certain error threshold is hit the SATA interface drops down to a lower speed which is too slow for video. I think the reformat under windows resets the SATA interface back to top speed.


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## madscientist

I'll give it a try. To be honest I can't remember what I bought when I replaced the drive, but I do remember I looked around and this one was recommended (whatever that means).

It could be temperature related, or maybe power related. The behavior I'm getting now is just a reboot, with absolutely no warning. Everything is working just fine with no glitches or pixelation (this time is not like the last time, when I was getting all kinds of artifacts etc.), then the screen goes black and I get the "welcome" screen and it reboots. I was out of town yesterday and today so I left it unplugged until tonight. When I got back I plugged it back in and was able to watch about 2 hours with no problems, then it rebooted.

I'm going to dig the drive out of there and hook it up to my desktop and see if I can run an error check on it, etc. but the behavior is strange for disk failure. Of course, any behavior can happen when disks fail.


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## DeWitt

The suprise reboot can be data related. I get these fairly regularly but only on certain channels. 

I have had a drive go bad and replaced it with the recommended 1 terabyte very successfully, but this behavior is the same for the old and new drives.


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## madscientist

I've never had it reboot before (or at least not so much that I remember it). Now, it will work for a few hours, then it starts reboots every 20 seconds or so... it never even finishes booting before it reboots. This isn't just a normal behavior.


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## madscientist

Opened it up; I have a WD Green 1TB drive (WD10EVCS)


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## richsadams

madscientist said:


> Opened it up; I have a WD Green 1TB drive (WD10EVCS)


Manufacture date?


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## madscientist

19 Jan 2009.

So, I used Kickstart 54 and that reported no errors. Then I was going to use something like Kickstart 57, but TiVo started rebooting so fast it didn't even get to the point where it recognized the PAUSE key and allowed me to enter the 5, 7 (or anything else). It seems that the longer I leave it on, the worse it gets until it's rebooting almost before it shows the welcome screen. Then if I leave it unplugged for a while it seems to get better. This seems less and less like a disk problem to me. Which is a bummer.

I unplugged the USB wireless network and my optical audio, and the cable coax (but left the cablecard in, and the HDMI video link) then plugged back in the power and this time I was able to boot and start the 5, 7 test; it's running now. This makes me wonder a bit if the problem is related to either the sound or network. Or, I suppose, the coax connection (but I am able to use the incoming connection with a simple cable box I keep so I can get VOD--I don't use this hardly at all now that I have amazon/netflix through Tivo though).

Anyway, it says it'll take 3 hours so I'm off to bed. More info tomorrow.


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## richsadams

madscientist said:


> 19 Jan 2009.
> 
> So, I used Kickstart 54 and that reported no errors. Then I was going to use something like Kickstart 57, but TiVo started rebooting so fast it didn't even get to the point where it recognized the PAUSE key and allowed me to enter the 5, 7 (or anything else). It seems that the longer I leave it on, the worse it gets until it's rebooting almost before it shows the welcome screen. Then if I leave it unplugged for a while it seems to get better. This seems less and less like a disk problem to me. Which is a bummer.
> 
> I unplugged the USB wireless network and my optical audio, and the cable coax (but left the cablecard in, and the HDMI video link) then plugged back in the power and this time I was able to boot and start the 5, 7 test; it's running now. This makes me wonder a bit if the problem is related to either the sound or network. Or, I suppose, the coax connection (but I am able to use the incoming connection with a simple cable box I keep so I can get VOD--I don't use this hardly at all now that I have amazon/netflix through Tivo though).
> 
> Anyway, it says it'll take 3 hours so I'm off to bed. More info tomorrow.


Good info and my take is that it probably is in fact the hard drive. The coax connection is where the data comes from. It's also possible that it's the wireless adapter (it is a TiVo wireless adapter correct?). It sounds like one or the other is producing data that is overwhelming the hard drive causing an I/O error correction failure. If it's getting worse but works sometimes the temporary reprieve could be caused by the drive writing to working sectors then hitting bad sectors. Even though it may have passed KS54 my money is still on hard drive failure as that simple test has been proven wrong more than a few times. The only way to truly find out if it's the hard drive is to pull it, connect it to a computer and run a dependable diagnostic test like WD's Lifeguard.

Try connecting the coax and wireless adapter separately and see if one has more impact than the other. I'm guessing reconnecting the coax will cause the problem to return. KS57 may or may not be able to isolate bad sectors and make life good again, but if it's been getting worse, odds are that will continue.

The (sort of) good news is that your drive has a three-year warranty.


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## madscientist

This morning the system was rebooting quickly again, just like last night. I guess I don't know for sure if it finished the 57 test and rebooted, then started having problems, or if it started rebooting before it finished the 57 test. However, it doesn't seem, after all, that unplugging the coax or the wireless adapter (yes, it's the TiVo USB adapter) helped; maybe that was just a coincidence.

I burned a copy of WD Lifeguard last night so the next thing is to check the drive; that will have to wait until after work though.


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## madscientist

Well, now I can't run Lifeguard. After downloading and burning it to an ISO, and hooking my TiVo up to my normal system and booting off the CD (it definitely is booting off the CD; I know how to make a bootable CD and configure my BIOS correctly), it gives me a blank screen for about 2 minutes, then says:



Code:


Unable to locate the License Agreement file, DLGLICE.TXT.
Make sure that the License and Agreement is in the same path as DLGDIAG5.EXE

and I got an A: prompt. Doing "dir" I can see that that file is right there. Running DLGDIAG5 from the prompt gives me the same behavior. Re-burning the ISO gives me the same behavior. Using Google I can found tons of other people reporting the same problem over the last 3-4 years but none of them have any solution.

Has anyone actually ever used this tool successfully? What's the magic?

Why can't anything ever just work


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## madscientist

OK, I figured out the WD Lifeguard thing. I guess. I noticed that my CD/DVD drive is a SATA drive and I figured maybe the CD image didn't support SATA (although, when I dropped to the A: prompt it was able to see and run all the content just fine so it's not a driver issue... probably stupid programming. Whatever). I plugged in a USB CDROM drive and booted the CD off of that, and it popped right up no problem.

The short test took 4 minutes and showed no errors. The extended test is running now; looks like it will take about 3 hours on my system.

Oddly enough I'm hoping I get some errors, because if I don't then I have no idea what I'm going to do...


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## madscientist

Oh I also found this on some website or another: it contains a ton of HD tools including various diags tools, including the WD diags and Lifeguard tool. I didn't try it because I figured out a workaround first, but it may help someone else: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/


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## madscientist

OK, so it actually took about 3 hours 45 minutes. However, the end result was "No errors found", exit/status code is 0000.

So... anyone have any ideas for what I should do next? I've had this system for just over 2 years now, and I transferred my lifetime service from my old S1 system to this one. I feel like this is probably not a really expensive problem: maybe something bad with the power supply or some connection somewhere. It's pretty hard to swallow spending another $600 or so after just two years, to end up with an inferior system to what I have now (less disk space).


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## richsadams

madscientist said:


> OK, so it actually took about 3 hours 45 minutes. However, the end result was "No errors found", exit/status code is 0000.


Guess I should have asked before...but do you have the original hard drive? If so, can you slip it in and see what happens?


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## madscientist

Well, I replaced that one because it went bad (that was definitely a bad drive: jerky menus, pixellation on playback, etc.) so I'm not sure it will help much. However, I do believe I still have it in the basement somewhere.


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## richsadams

madscientist said:


> Well, I replaced that one because it went bad (that was definitely a bad drive: jerky menus, pixellation on playback, etc.) so I'm not sure it will help much. However, I do believe I still have it in the basement somewhere.


Ah...okay then...just curious as to what might happen. If the very same thing happened I'd be more inclined to think it was something else. There are posts here and there that said that drives passed full diagnostic tests but would no longer work in TiVo. However they ended up working just fine as normal computer drives. No idea why. If you can get the old drive to work, I'd let it run for a bit and see what happens. It sounds like it was working, just causing PQ problems, etc.? If it wasn't causing constant reboots it might be a good indicator one way or the other. If the reboots continue, then I'd look at it being something else. But if not, then I'd still think it was the drive.


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## JimWall

madscientist said:


> Well, I replaced that one because it went bad (that was definitely a bad drive: jerky menus, pixellation on playback, etc.) so I'm not sure it will help much. However, I do believe I still have it in the basement somewhere.


I suggest you do a truncated backup of the original drive if it is in good enough shape to do that. Then restore the backup to a new drive. If new drive is updated to current by Tivo then do another truncated backup.
You could try reformating current drive under windows like I suggested earlier to reset the SATA speed setting and then restore truncated backup to it and see if it works fine. If it does then that supports my theory that SATA drops SATA speed down due to I/O errors and TIVO needs a utility built in the reset it or do so on reboot automatically and give user a message that drive has issues. With 1 TB a lot of MB can have problems yet only be a very small percentage of drive be bad and a reformat may exclude the bad spots.

A disk drive recording two HD video streams 24X7 in a cabinet in a living room just begs for trouble. Especially since manufacturers do not do the quality they used to do. Instead today's hudge drives leave many MB of sectors unused and swap them for sectors that go bad behind the scenes until free list runs out.


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## madscientist

I'll look for that drive. When I switched to the new one I used an InstantCake image to set it up, and I think I still have a copy.

Latest news: last night after posting here I put the drive back in and hooked the TiVo back up (to everything). It did 3 or 4 quick reboots, but then it booted up and so far it's been running OK; no reboots. I'm by no means convinced it's "fixed" but I'd like to let it keep running and see what happens.

It seems surprising to me that there would be something like SATA speed drops due to I/O errors and nothing, not even the manufacturer diags, would report any errors. But maybe I shouldn't be surprised.


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## madscientist

Got home from work today--tivo is hung during the welcome screen. Looks like it's off the basement to try to find my original drive.


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## JimWall

I was talking to our Linux administrator a work yesterday. He says the disk controller maintains a "Magic Number" on the linux partition that tracks the error rate. Only reformatting the drive will reset the number to allow disk controller to run at highest speed. Tivo ought to be able to detect this and put a message under Messages & Settings indicating this. I have had the situation where reformatting under windows solved the problem even though disagnostic utilities say everything OK. But then diag utilities maybe are not writing the equivalent of two HD video streams either.


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## richsadams

JimWall said:


> I was talking to our Linux administrator a work yesterday. He says the disk controller maintains a "Magic Number" on the linux partition that tracks the error rate. Only reformatting the drive will reset the number to allow disk controller to run at highest speed. Tivo ought to be able to detect this and put a message under Messages & Settings indicating this. I have had the situation where reformatting under windows solved the problem even though disagnostic utilities say everything OK. But then diag utilities maybe are not writing the equivalent of two HD video streams either.


That would certainly explain why some drives that were previously working in a TiVo and then begin to fail can pass a diagnostic and work perfectly fine in a computer...but still not work in a TiVo.

So what you're saying is that if you reformat the drive that the disk controller is reset to the highest rate? The forever rule is to never format a drive intended for TiVo to FAT32 or NTFS (Windows) but IIRC that was to avoid deleting the Bootpage. Since this isn't an OEM drive, I don't think that would matter because the drive would be reformatted by winMFS (or MFSLive or Instant Cake) but I could be wrong about that. Or if that is an issue perhaps it could be reformatted as a Linux drive and then re-imaged (with an OEM drive or Instant Cake) and things should be good again?


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## madscientist

I don't see any way that the disk controller could maintain anything in any Linux partition; the disk controller has no way of knowing what parts of the disk contain partition information. It's not even the case that you have to partition a drive using a normal DOS MBR, so even storing it in the MBR wouldn't be possible. If this info is really maintained by the disk controller then it's certainly kept in some portion of the platter that is walled off from normal use, or else on flash or something like that.

If such a thing exists and is managed by the disk controller then there HAS to be some utility that will modify it, without requiring the drive to be reformatted. Actually I don't even know how a reformat would help, since that basically just overwrites the filesystem bits and the disk controller can't know the difference between that and any other writes to the disk. Unless there's some special SCSI command or something that is sent alongside during a reformat?


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## JimWall

Here is a link I found some time ago on this subject.
http://www.hitachigst.com/hddt/know...6d67e65726fb486786256b65005b43eb?OpenDocument
Here is link in above document for Microsoft. If this is the issue I wish TIVO would also "Fix it" like MS did. 
It would explain why people who have a drive that seems bad but works fine after reformatting in windows and the restoring from TIVO truncated backup. Which reformats for tivo.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;817472
I have done this twice with Hitachi 1 TB drives. About a year apart. Next time I will replaced them with cooler running WD 1 TB and put Hitachi in my PC I use to dump backups.


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## madscientist

Thanks for those links Jim. I did notice that they both discussed IDE ATA, while TiVo HD (at least) is using SATA. It's not clear you'd have those same issues with SATA. Also, the pages make clear that it's Windows that is doing this, not the drive itself: Windows is noticing the error counts and dropping back from DMA/UDMA to PIO (which is _really_ slow, no doubt about that!!) Windows doesn't provide any utility that will change this back again. The way to fix it (according to the pages) is to remove the device from the Windows device manager and let it be rediscovered as a fresh device, whereupon all the previous information about error rates etc. will be reset. It could be that Linux has a similar behavior but we'd need to check with some of the Linux folks about this.

Nevertheless, it certainly won't hurt to reformat the drive at this point: the system is no use to me as it is now. Last night I found my instantcake boot CD from last May so I'll try to do that this weekend.


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## madscientist

Hi, me again. So, my TiVo started working fine again. It spontaneously rebooted a few times after I put the drive back in again after running the extended WD diagnostics, but then settled down and has been solid ever since; I never reformatted it. I guess I'll leave it as-is, at least until I have more problems with it. No doubt that will come at the most inopportune time, like the Lost series finale or something. *Sigh*.


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## richsadams

Odd that. Glad to hear it's behaving itself now anyway. :up:


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## TPalmer

Has anyone actually figured out how to solve the re-powering up problem with the TIVO-HD S3 units? Just started having problems with one I connected in January (new unit, no expansion). Last time I used it, it rebooted 3 times in less than an hour. There was nothing in common about the resets - once watching HD TV, once going through the guide, and the last time watching a recorded HD TV program.

After the second reset, the guide was really sluggish, but after the third reset, the guide was fine and I was able to watch the recorded program. 

I've read threads going back as far as 2007 dealing with this issue but I'm not sure I see anyone actually figuring out what the issue is. It acts just like my computer does when it bogs down with a software issue and the CPU gets overwhelmed.


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## pl1

TPalmer said:


> Has anyone actually figured out how to solve the re-powering up problem with the TIVO-HD S3 units? Just started having problems with one I connected in January (new unit, no expansion). Last time I used it, it rebooted 3 times in less than an hour. There was nothing in common about the resets - once watching HD TV, once going through the guide, and the last time watching a recorded HD TV program.
> 
> After the second reset, the guide was really sluggish, but after the third reset, the guide was fine and I was able to watch the recorded program.
> 
> I've read threads going back as far as 2007 dealing with this issue but I'm not sure I see anyone actually figuring out what the issue is. It acts just like my computer does when it bogs down with a software issue and the CPU gets overwhelmed.


It is the most common sign of a bad hard drive. 


> http://www.weaknees.com/repair.php
> 
> TiVo restarts at random times while watching live TV or recorded programs
> 
> Hard drive failure NOTE: It is possible that the cause of these problems is something other than a defective hard drive, but in our experience, a drive problem is by far the most common cause. TiVo drive stuttering is a bad drive 99% of the time and can be easily fixed with a replacement drive.
> 
> TiVo REBOOTS / RESTARTS FREQUENTLY
> 
> Bad hard drive (most likely)
> Bad power supply
> Bad power
> CableCARD issues (Series3 only)
> And
> 
> http://w w w . w k f o r u m s.com/forums/showthread.php?t=390


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