# TiVo Modem Repairs - Stuck at Almost There Screen?



## healeydave (Jun 4, 2003)

With the stormy season approaching, if you haven't already got one, please buy a surge / lightening protector for your phone line!

The most likely cause of electronics failure outside of normal wear & tear is storm damage through the phone lines, that goes for anything connected, be it your beloved TiVo, your router, fax or phone's for that matter!

If its too late and you already have a TiVo that can no longer call home, I have reduced our Series 1 Modem Repair costs to a fixed price of £69 + return shipping.

Symptoms include:

a). TiVo getting stuck at the "Almost There" screen during boot.

b). Tivo reporting "Failed Number not available" during connection process.

c). Tivo reporting "Failed Phone Busy" during connection process.

The modem is part of the main board and repair costs were previously well in excess of £100.

This is a fixed price repair and your subscription will remain intact.

Details available here:

http://www.tivoland.com/Tivoland/Repairs.html

P.S.
In the case of (b) above, please make sure your Service Provider isn't causing the problem!
If you allow companies like Tiscali, Pipex, Talk Talk and others take over your phone line, they often use their own exchanges with compression etc that causes problems with modems!


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## a_tivo_noob (Jan 2, 2004)

i can make no sense of this, but I had a problem that appeared to be related to the modem failing, but it occured as soon as i turned tivo on (ie. nothing would happen at all - not even a 'Welcome' screen)...

This fixed it:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=7355655#post7355655

However having read that the Modem diagnostics don't occur till later, i have no idea why!


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## healeydave (Jun 4, 2003)

a_tivo_noob said:


> i can make no sense of this


Nor me, could be a bit of a red herring though.

I had to read every post to try and understand what you meant by "this fixed it" 
I assume you meant the renaming the modem diagnostic file.

This will only stop the tivo from hanging at the "Almost There" screen. It won't miraculously fix the modem (un-fortunately) and it also won't have anything to do with the Tivo passing or getting to the "Powering Up" screen as this comes from the bios before the hard disk is even accessed.


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

healeydave said:


> and it also won't have anything to do with the Tivo passing or getting to the "Powering Up" screen as this comes from the bios *before *the hard disk is even accessed.


Not quite before *any *access, it's just after first access/detection, but before loading any OS from the drive.

The "powering up" screen won't come up if there is NO hard drive connected, 
it comes up as soon as the bios detects ANY hard drive attached.

a_tivo_noob's problem was probably just a loose IDE cable - taking the drive out and putting back in fixed it,
any alterations to the drive was a red herring


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

mikerr said:


> The "powering up" screen won't come up if there is NO hard drive connected,
> it comes up as soon as the bios detects ANY hard drive attached.


Apart from certain WD drives....


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## a_tivo_noob (Jan 2, 2004)

something must have been loose as i'd done about 5 different images but still nothing was happening (though the drive was spinning up)...

one of lifes great mystery's!

(incidently, the fix above didn't seem to fix anything - just allowed the thing to boot up  )


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## dvdfever (Jun 2, 2002)

healeydave said:


> With the stormy season approaching, if you haven't already got one, please buy a surge / lightening protector for your phone line!
> 
> The most likely cause of electronics failure outside of normal wear & tear is storm damage through the phone lines, that goes for anything connected, be it your beloved TiVo, your router, fax or phone's for that matter!
> 
> ...


I've just had this happen on my older TiVo, from Sept 2001 and with the hard drive replaced along the way with a 120Gb one. I haven't had it connected to the phone line in 3 years so it won't have had a spike or anything like that - I just use it for selected manual recordings throughout the week and as a backup for other stuff - but how can I determine whether it's a hard drive issue or a modem issue (which, ironically, I'm not using any more)?

Thanks.

PS. I forgot to add that for a few weeks the picture has been freezing, although that seemed to be while the humidity outside went mental. I unplugged it again and used it after the humidity went away for a while, and it worked fine for about a week or so until the humidity came back.


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## dvdfever (Jun 2, 2002)

Anyone know, please?


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Tivi that freeze at "Almost there" will often boot properly if there's a cachecard/turbonet in and its set to daily call over the network.
Note they still freeze if daily call is set to phone when cachecard is present (though why you would do that is anyones guess).


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## dvdfever (Jun 2, 2002)

mikerr said:


> Tivi that freeze at "Almost there" will often boot properly if there's a cachecard/turbonet in and its set to daily call over the network.
> Note they still freeze if daily call is set to phone when cachecard is present (though why you would do that is anyones guess).


Thanks, but this particular TiVo is as nature intended (well, not a great phrase as I prefer the one that *does* have one  but you get the idea) , so it can only try to connect via its modem, although I don't even want it to do that as I just use it for a few manual recordings.


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## dvdfever (Jun 2, 2002)

Can anyone tell me whether this is the modem or hard drive, please?


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Try booting with the hdd from your other TiVo ?


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## dvdfever (Jun 2, 2002)

mikerr said:


> Try booting with the hdd from your other TiVo ?


Call me paranoid, but since that TiVo (my main one) is working 100% fine, I don't want to take the hard drive out of that 

There must be a sure-fire way of determining whether it's a HDD or modem issue?


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## DX30 (May 22, 2005)

From what you say it sounds like the hard disk to me.

If you have a spare disk you could prep that using the AltEPG image and try that.

Or you could put the suspect disk in a PC and run the disk manufacturers diagnostics software to check for errors.

If the drive passes the manufacturers tests try following the link in post#2 of this thread which tells you to rename the /tvbin/modemtest file. As I understand it this will bypass the modem checks so allowing the TiVo to boot with a faulty modem. I cannot vouch for this myself, never having had a faulty modem, but it is worth a try and can be reversed if required.


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