# R10 died, what would you do?



## schuro (Jul 1, 2002)

My R10 DirecTivo died Sunday. It appears that the hard drive is still working because I can see the record light come on during my scheduled recordings but the screen is blank. I called DirecTv for a replacement and told the CSR that wanted another R10 and he said he would see what he could do. He told me to just keep the bad R10. Tuesday I received shipment on a R15 non Tivo DVR. I figured I'd give it a try. I just don't like it and want my Tivo back. Is it worth my while to call them back to try get another R10? 

If I can't get another Tivo from DirecTV what are my options? I don't want to try to repair the R10 because it is a leased unit and I haven't a clue what is wrong with it. I still have my first DirecTivo HDVR2 with a bad hard drive. 

Would you...
1. Repair the HDVR2 with a new large hard drive and use that. 
2. Buy a HR10-250 off eBay or somewhere else. I wouldn't mind stepping up to High Definition.
3. Or, what other Tivo's are available that I could purchase?

I haven't kept up the the DirecTivo's for the past few years so I don't know what is the latest and greatest. If there is some other option that I don't know about I would appreaciate any input you could give me. 

Thanks in advance...


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## rbtravis (Aug 9, 2005)

schuro said:


> My R10 DirecTivo died Sunday. It appears that the hard drive is still working because I can see the record light come on during my scheduled recordings but the screen is blank. I called DirecTv for a replacement and told the CSR that wanted another R10 and he said he would see what he could do. He told me to just keep the bad R10. Tuesday I received shipment on a R15 non Tivo DVR. I figured I'd give it a try. I just don't like it and want my Tivo back. Is it worth my while to call them back to try get another R10?
> 
> If I can't get another Tivo from DirecTV what are my options? I don't want to try to repair the R10 because it is a leased unit and I haven't a clue what is wrong with it. I still have my first DirecTivo HDVR2 with a bad hard drive.
> 
> ...


Repair the HDVR2 and use that. Directv will be discontinuing all HR10-250 broadcasts in the near future. Beware of buying on ebay. If you are going to try that remember to get the RID and make sure the account was fully paid. Also make sure the account has been deactivated. Remember only the original purchaser can deactivate. If it hasn't been deactivated you can not reactivate it. If the disk is not bad you can get the R10 fixed at http://www.ccscorporation.net/ for a flat fee of $100.00 with a six month warranty. remember you can move the access card from the R10 to the HDVR2 if needed. tell the CSR you are taking the R10 out of service and have them remarry the card to your HDVR2. good luck.


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## elomon (Jan 8, 2005)

A lesson I learned from other posters when my Dtv-Tivo died. The equipment being sold on Ebay may be linked to an account that owes money & DTV will require you to pay that $$ before activating it. I ended up repairing my hard drive, was cheap and easy to do. Don't know if that will help you.

I also *hate* the R15 that I keep in the basement. Calling DTV for an R10 won't work, they only ship what they stock, which are those lousy R15s.

Good luck.


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## John T Smith (Jun 17, 2004)

>screen is blank

Also, switch your type of output from R10 to TV

About a year ago I had one of my RCA units hooked to a TV via coax... and from one day to the next the picture output died

I removed the RG6 coax and hooked up a 3-wire connection... still working


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## schuro (Jul 1, 2002)

I wasn't using the coax output from the Tivo. I did switch from s-video to the "yellow" connection and that did no good. Also, the power and record lights were flickering rapidly and I didn't get any Tivo sounds when I pressed any remote buttons. Since the R10 is a leased box I don't feel comfortable spending any money on it.

From the advice I've gotten so far it looks like I'm going to revive my old Tivo.
Thanks everybody for helping me make a decision.


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## TonyTheTiger (Dec 22, 2006)

elomon said:


> A lesson I learned from other posters when my Dtv-Tivo died. The equipment being sold on Ebay may be linked to an account that owes money & *DTV will require you to pay that $$ before activating it*. I ended up repairing my hard drive, was cheap and easy to do. Don't know if that will help you.
> 
> I also *hate* the R15 that I keep in the basement. Calling DTV for an R10 won't work, they only ship what they stock, which are those lousy R15s.
> 
> Good luck.


No, they will NOT let you do that! The previous owner must pay the outstanding balance, not you, making it even MORE difficult to activate it!


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## JRAllas (Mar 26, 2006)

Fortunately, my HR10-250 woes aren't as bad as yours. The original hard drive in mine appears to have failed. The HR10-250 rebooted and stayed at the "Powering On" display forever. When I would unplug the unit and plug it back in I heard a knocking noise from inside for about ten seconds. I removed the hard drive and installed it in my PC to run Spinrite 6 on it, but all the drive does is knock. Although I can automatically detect the drive type no drive data is detected. I don't hear it spin up so I figure the three year old drive either seized up or the motor went bad. I ordered a new drive from www.weaknees.com and will have it this week. Unfortunately, I'll lose all the content we recently recorded that we didn't get a chance to watch, yet. Our SD DirecTivo will be getting a work-out until I get my HR10-250 back on it's feet. Has anyone ever saved a bad hard drive? It's a Western Digital 2500 (250GB?). Even if I could get it to spin up and work, what are my chances of transferring recorded shows from an old drive to a new, fully formatted DirecTV ready drive from Weaknees? I'm thinking my only chance is to somehow get the old drive accessible then make a complete bit-for-bit copy of the old drive onto a fresh, new, blank drive. Is that correct?


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## John T Smith (Jun 17, 2004)

You will need to run a CDE (Clear & Delete Everything) to then allow the DTivo motherboard mate to the new drive

After you do that, I suppose (don't know!) that you might be able to use some type of Linux routine to copy files from old to new drive... since the old files were mated to the motherboard when they were created

Or, if you want to buy a blank drive, try WinMFS http://mfslive.org/winmfs/ to copy the old drive to the new, blank drive... if that works, you don't need to do a CDE since the motherboard encoding is copied as part of the process

I just finished replacing all of my original 80Gig drives with 320Gig drives... WinMFS includes an option, after the copy, to expand everything into any new space (all drives are 4 years old, did this after one totally failed and I did the Weaknees plus CDE routine)


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## JRAllas (Mar 26, 2006)

Thanks for the info. I'll use it if I can get the old drive to come back to life. If not, I'll have to begin again with a blank Tivo with the new drive coming from Weaknees. That's probably a good thing, anyway. Our HR10-250 is almost three years old. The original hard drive has taken a beating!


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## JRAllas (Mar 26, 2006)

I received my new drive from Weaknees today. I installed it and fired up the unit. It went through the guided setup until it reached a screen that instructed me to call DirecTV customer service to activate my DirecTV service. I called them and was told by a tech that my HR10-250 is now an expensive paper weight because the old drive was married to the motherboard and the new drive can not work with it. How can this be true? Weaknees wouldn't stay in business if they sold us drives that can't be used with the DVR's. Besides, it says on the Weaknees web site that the DirecTV service is based on the unit's serial number which is in a chip on the motherboard, not on the hard drive. Did DirecTV lie to me to get me to swap to their HD DVR? They kept trying to push it on me and I kept refusing it. Did I make a mistake telling them that I installed the drive from Weaknees into my OWNED receiver? I'd appreciate any suggestions or help. Thanks!!!


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## bengalfreak (Oct 20, 2002)

According to the post below, you must do a Clear and Delete everything, once you install the new drive, in order to marry your new drive to the motherboard in your DTivo. If that doesn't work, try to remove your access card and reinsert a couple of times. I have also seen that work. Finally, if you still don't feel the love, email Weaknees. I'm betting they've seen this problem many times.

Possible solutuion


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## John T Smith (Jun 17, 2004)

Ditto on needing to do a CDE to allow the drive and motherboard to mate... I bought a drive from Weaknees a few months ago, and it wouldn't work until I ran the CDE process


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## JimSpence (Sep 19, 2001)

rbtravis said:


> ... Directv will be discontinuing all HR10-250 broadcasts in the near future. ...


That statement is misleading. DirecTV will not be discontinuing ALL HR10-250 broadcasts. What they will be doing is discontinuing the MPEG2 HD broadcasts. The unit will continue to record the SD channels as well as any OTA you may have. Just needed to clarify.


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## JRAllas (Mar 26, 2006)

OK, first a stupid question, then the good news...

How in the hell do you do a Clear and Delete everything if your HR10-250 is stopped at the screen that tells you to call DirecTV Customer Service??? Pressing the DirecTV button would give me a "BONG". If you can't get to the menu and your HR10-250, according to a DirecTV tech, is an expensive paperweight, you're screwed and have to get their DirecTV HDDVR.

So, there I was, I hung up with DirecTV, wondering what kind of HDDVR I'd end up with until the new Tivo based mpeg4 unit comes out in 2009. Pressing the DirecTV button on my remote did nothing, but just for giggles I pressed the Live TV button and the unit switched to Live TV on one of the DirecTV channels. So, I proceeded to finish the setup of the phone and satellite dish. The only thing I didn't have was my local satellite channels. Weaknees instructions say to call DirecTV and tell them you lost your local satellite channels on that receiver. I did, and now I have all my channels and the guide data is populating. Weaknees didn't let me down at all, but DirecTV almost did...


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