# Stuck on Powering Up, Drives or power supply?



## tivoboy (Jan 14, 2002)

So, sorry for the post. I KNOW this information must be in here, but now after 30 minutes of searching and reading I can't really find a specific answer.

H10-250: dual drive, relatively recent PS replacement, had the temperature issue.

Came home, device showed Powering up. It appears it was stuck. So, tried rebooting, but nothing, powering up only. Shut it down, check connections, plug in, nothing.

Is there a way to tell if this is the primary drive or the power supply? The drives SEEM to be spinning or at least getting power - last time when this failed and had the temperature issue, the drives were clearly not getting power.

I found SOME information about testing the drives (I assume the primary drive needs testing?), with maxtor/seagate/WD software, but there isn't really any summary of HOW to test? Does it have to be windows XP still or DOS only? boot into a linux distro and connect the drive/s with a USB to IDE connector?

What am I testing for, bad sectors? If there ARE bad sectors, do I let the drive manufacturer software repair (ex-out) the bad sectors or will the kill the special tivo/linux install?

Any way to get kickstart to work from a boot up? or is that only if the device is operating but not functioning? And if KS is possible, what is the process for an HDTIVO?

Thanks for any responses or direct links? Maybe my ability to build the best queries is lacking. 

:up:


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## stevel (Aug 23, 2000)

Both drives need testing. The utilities you list can do a light test to make sure that the drive is readable - follow the instructions. Some people swear by SpinRite but it is pricey.


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## tivoboy (Jan 14, 2002)

Can anyone describe the way to test these drives? I can get the software from western digital, but wonder if it can be run in an enclosure, under vista/win7 or does it need to be a linux install to test without messing with the tivo software?


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## bpratt (Nov 20, 2004)

You mentioned that you had recently replaced the power supply. Is it possible that one of the cables has come loose on one of your disk drives? The "Powering Up" message comes from the HR10-250 firmware and you will get that message even with the drive removed. The remaining messages are produced by booting the operating system from disk. If the disk can't be read, the system hangs with the "Powering Up" message.


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## tivoboy (Jan 14, 2002)

Yes, I replaced the PS a few months ago, it was clearly dead and putting in the new one, everything worked fine. As noted above, I came back last weekend and it was powering up only, and continues to power up only. It never gets past it. I have pulled the drive (after first making sure things were seated and connected properly and trying to boot it, but no luck) and would like to test at least the primary drive, but am not sure what the process is of connecting it and booting into what OS to allow the manufacturer drive test software to run.

It would seem, booting into vista or on a mac will NOT work. I can boot into a linux distro or win 7, but can only connect it with a USB enclosure or IDE to USB connector, don't really how a tower anymore to install it and test.

But, what is the process for testing? Can I launch a dos shell, connect the drive via USB and run the test program from a DOS prompt, or can I use ubuntu or something to run the program from there?


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

Make sure that the cable between the motherboard and the front panel is fully and properly seated at both ends.

You should be able to download the manufacturer's diagnostic utilities as an iso of a bootable cd, so you can burn your own.

After the drive(s) pass the manufacturer's diagnostics, assuming they do, we can try either kickstart procedures or using WinMFS to rewrite the bootpage to see if we can get it to boot from the alternate partition set.

Freeze the drive(s), run the diagnostics, report the results.


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## TyroneShoes (Sep 6, 2004)

If a DVR gets stuck on "powering up" the most likely problem is a corrupted OS partition. The HDD itself could be fine, and the PS could be fine. Or not. You could try reloading the OS.

If, on the other hand, a DVR continually reboots, the most likely problem is either the HDD or the PS. Check for domed or bulging filter caps in the PS. If they look OK, replace the HDD. Problem still there? Replace or fix the PS.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

TyroneShoes said:


> If a DVR gets stuck on "powering up" the most likely problem is a corrupted OS partition. The HDD itself could be fine, and the PS could be fine. Or not. You could try reloading the OS.
> 
> If, on the other hand, a DVR continually reboots, the most likely problem is either the HDD or the PS. Check for domed or bulging filter caps in the PS. If they look OK, replace the HDD. Problem still there? Replace or fix the PS.


Another possibility I tripped over by accident the other day is a corrupted bootpage (don't know how it got that way), where the part that tells it to either go to partitions 3 and 4 , or to go to partitions 6 and 7, was telling it something like 1 and 4, or 1 and 3, or 2 and 4.

WinMFS pulled my chestnuts out of the fire on that one.


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## Brandon C (Feb 16, 2011)

TyroneShoes said:


> If a DVR gets stuck on "powering up" the most likely problem is a corrupted OS partition. The HDD itself could be fine, and the PS could be fine. Or not. You could try reloading the OS.
> 
> If, on the other hand, a DVR continually reboots, the most likely problem is either the HDD or the PS. Check for domed or bulging filter caps in the PS. If they look OK, replace the HDD. Problem still there? Replace or fix the PS.


I just had a similar issue and replaced the capacitors in my S3 power supply. It didn't cost me anything since I used some capacitors from an older TiVo. Just unsoldered them and installed them on my S3.

Piece of cake if you know what you are doing.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

Brandon C said:


> I just had a similar issue and replaced the capacitors in my S3 power supply. It didn't cost me anything since I used some capacitors from an older TiVo. Just unsoldered them and installed them on my S3.
> 
> Piece of cake if you know what you are doing.


Did that solve the problems, and did you use capacitors of the same uFarad and Working Voltage ratings?


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## TyroneShoes (Sep 6, 2004)

Brandon C said:


> I just had a similar issue and replaced the capacitors in my S3 power supply. It didn't cost me anything since I used some capacitors from an older TiVo. Just unsoldered them and installed them on my S3.
> 
> Piece of cake if you know what you are doing.


 Honestly, if the caps are simply have decreased significantly in value and are not shorted, you can take a couple of caps of a similar size (it really does not matter) and wire them each in parallel to the existing caps, which will pool the values together. As long as the total value is the same or higher than the marked value on the originals, that should work to babysit an aging PS for a couple more years.

If that does not work, just yank them out and replace them, preferably with something of similar or higher value (does not have to be exact).


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## tivoboy (Jan 14, 2002)

unitron said:


> WinMFS pulled my chestnuts out of the fire on that one.


what is the process on this?


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

tivoboy said:


> what is the process on this?


Are you already familiar with WinMFS?

Have you actually used it before?


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## tivoboy (Jan 14, 2002)

unitron said:


> Are you already familiar with WinMFS?
> 
> Have you actually used it before?


well, I think the last things I used were the mfstools products, and some of the hinsdale products. Haven't had to do an upgrade in a few years, but had to do an instantcake setup on this H10-250 about 1.5 years ago.

What I am really looking to do is test the drive in some way with a windows vista laptop, or mac or linux distro, and ultimately fix possibly the tivo file system, header, whatnot on this drive. It just won't boot past powering up.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

tivoboy said:


> well, I think the last things I used were the mfstools products, and some of the hinsdale products. Haven't had to do an upgrade in a few years, but had to do an instantcake setup on this H10-250 about 1.5 years ago.
> 
> What I am really looking to do is test the drive in some way with a windows vista laptop, or mac or linux distro, and ultimately fix possibly the tivo file system, header, whatnot on this drive. It just won't boot past powering up.


Well, you go to mfslive.org and you download the iso for the MFS Live cd and burn yourself a copy.

This has nothing to do with WinMFS, but that cd is handy to have around.

While you're at mfslive.org you also download WinMFS

(while at that site you also read all of the documentation on how to use both the cd and WinMFS)

You install WinMFS on a something running Windows (XP sp2, or later).

You do not use any of the stuff built into Windows to look at the drive.

You open up WinMFS, click on select drive, and select the TiVo drive.

Then you click on mfsinfo

It should show you the drives partition map and whether it's set to boot from 2, 3, and 4, or 5, 6, and 7.

Although it just says either 3 and 4 or 6 and 7.

If it says 6 and 7, Fix Bootpage option 1 will change it to 3 and 4

If it says 3 and 4, option 2 will change it to 6 and 7

If it says something like 1 and 4, or 2 and 4, or 1 and 3, or any numbers that aren't 3 and 4, or 6 and 7, (which is what happened to me), then something's screwed up and you can use Fix Bootpage to re-write the bootpage and possibly get things working again, like I did.

You can also use Fix Bootpage to change from whatever your drive is set on to the other option, and maybe that will work.


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## tivoboy (Jan 14, 2002)

Sounds good, thanks for taking the time to put that together. Should be a sticky. My real concern was connecting the drives to a win computer (historically, that was a kill the tivo FS sort of thing) but it would appear things are better now with most likely a bootable CD?


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## tivoboy (Jan 14, 2002)

Quick Question. If one has a two drive system and is looking at the master drive only, are the partition maps similar to your description?


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

tivoboy said:


> Sounds good, thanks for taking the time to put that together. Should be a sticky. My real concern was connecting the drives to a win computer (historically, that was a kill the tivo FS sort of thing) but it would appear things are better now with most likely a bootable CD?


As I understand it, the problem was the first version of XP and one of its predecessors (ME?, 2K?) would automatically notice that you'd connected the TiVo drive since you last booted up Windows, but since the TiVo drive uses a variation of the Apple Partition Map, it looks like an unpartitioned, unformatted drive to Windows, so it doesn't know to not write to it, so it goes ahead and writes to it to assign some sort of volume label or something.

I think that was fixed with XP Service Pack 2. Anyway, up to date installations of XP, and later versions like Vista and 7, apparently don't do that without being told to, so as long as you boot up Windows but don't open the disk utilities built into Windows, you're safe, although WinMFS has something that'll fix the damage done by the earlier versions of Windows if you know that it needs fixing.

MFS Live is a bootable cd that installs a version of Linux in RAM, so it doesn't require that it already be on a hard drive.

If you use it, and set your computer to boot from the cd/dvd drive before looking for a hard drive from which to boot, then it'll load instead of Windows.

What it will give you is a Linux command line interface, which you should have already encountered in your previous use of MFS Tools and the Hinsdale stuff.

MFS Live is basically a newer version of MFS Tools, developed from Tiger's code by Spike. Spike also wrote WinMFS, which is a whole separate endevour.

The MFS Live cd has a lot of useful stuff on it, not all of which is limited to use on TiVo drives, and not all of which is replicated inside of WinMFS.

If my little bootpage fix via WinMFS doesn't solve your problem, then you'll probably need to be someone who understands the stuff on the MFS Live cd better than do I in order to be able to fix your problem.

What I've learned has been by either trial and error or reading and asking questions on this site and another which this site won't let me actually name here unless deal I database find a way dotcom to obfusticate it.

You probably don't know enough yet to get a lot of mileage out of the other site, but you can go there and read and maybe learn something.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

tivoboy said:


> Quick Question. If one has a two drive system and is looking at the master drive only, are the partition maps similar to your description?


Apparently we are posting past each other.

I'll be back later this afternoon or evening with more.


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## tivoboy (Jan 14, 2002)

:up::up::up:


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

tivoboy said:


> Quick Question. If one has a two drive system and is looking at the master drive only, are the partition maps similar to your description?


From the mfslive.org FAQ...

To answer this questions, we need to know how tivo drive is organized.
Tivo drive can have up to 16 partitions per drive.

"A" drive
Partition 1 - Modified Apple Partition Map
Partition 2 - Bootstrap 1
Partition 3 - Kernel 1
Partition 4 - Root 1
Partition 5 - Bootstrap 2
Partition 6 - Kernel 2
Partition 7 - Root 2
Partition 8 - Linux Swap
Partition 9 - /var
Partition 10 - mfs application region 1
Partition 11 - mfs media region 1
Partition 12 - mfs application region 2
Partition 13 - mfs media region 2
Partition 14 - mfs application region 3
Partition 15 - mfs media region 3
Partition 16 - Apple free

"B" drive
Partition 1 - Modified Apple Partition Map
Partition 2 - mfs application region 1
Partition 3 - mfs media region 1
etc...

If you boot with the MFS Live cd and enter

pdisk -l

(that's a lowercase L, not a numeral 1)

it'll show you something like that with the number of sectors in each partition and the starting point for each.

If it's a Series 1 TiVo, you'll see that the first partition on the first drive (which is the actual partition map itself--it's a different way of doing things from DOS/PC type partitioning) starts at 1 and is 63 sectors long and that the second partition starts at 64.

If it's a Series 2, you'll see that one of the MFS partitions (that's where the TiVo puts stuff it records) starts at 64

They did that so that the heads read the TiVo software from in the middle of the drive and only have to travel half way across to get to media partitions at the beginning and the end (tracks near the edge of the disk and tracks near the center).

If you're using the restore command to copy a backup image to a new drive, you'd use the -p option to get this kind of layout if it's for a Series 2 or newer, and not use that option for a Series 1. In WinMFS, there's a checkbox, and it calls it optimized layout or something like that.

So, the drive from which the TiVo boots, which should be the Master on a Series 1 or Series 2 PATA cable, will have those root and boot and kernel partitions, and the other one will be the slave and only have application and media partitions.


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## Silly Robot (Nov 30, 2012)

Here is my situation. My Tivo died after exhibiting the lockup and reboot symptoms. I hoped that replacing the power supply was the answer. One of the caps did exhibit bulging. It starts now, but gets stuck at "Welcome, Powering up". It seems from discussions like those above, that my HD may have some problems. I've seen that I can scan the HD to determine if there is a problem.
My question is, can I FiX an HD and recover the recordings, or if it's bad do I just have to replace it? I ordered a TiVo Premiere XL on Black Friday, I plan on getting an HDTV soon (I still have a CRT).
I tried kickstarting but no joy.
If I can't fix the boot HD, I don't see the point in downloading the diagnostic software and trying to boot it on my MPB with BootCamp.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

Silly Robot said:


> Here is my situation. My Tivo died after exhibiting the lockup and reboot symptoms. I hoped that replacing the power supply was the answer. One of the caps did exhibit bulging. It starts now, but gets stuck at "Welcome, Powering up". It seems from discussions like those above, that my HD may have some problems. I've seen that I can scan the HD to determine if there is a problem.
> My question is, can I FiX an HD and recover the recordings, or if it's bad do I just have to replace it? I ordered a TiVo Premiere XL on Black Friday, I plan on getting an HDTV soon (I still have a CRT).
> I tried kickstarting but no joy.
> If I can't fix the boot HD, I don't see the point in downloading the diagnostic software and trying to boot it on my MPB with BootCamp.


Too tired now, don't do anything 'til after I post here again tomorrow.


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## Silly Robot (Nov 30, 2012)

unitron said:


> Too tired now, don't do anything 'til after I post here again tomorrow.


Thanks, No rush. Have to work tomorrow anyway. Premier XL should arrive tomorrow. Will start from scratch if I have to. Will miss BBT and WD.


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## Silly Robot (Nov 30, 2012)

So my Premiere XL arrived, and after some cabling and wifi password issues it's up and running. Follow up to previous. I have a Weaknees second HD in my Series2. Can I attach it through the eSATA and expect it to work if it wasn't the boot drive in my Series2?


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

Silly Robot said:


> So my Premiere XL arrived, and after some cabling and wifi password issues it's up and running. Follow up to previous. I have a Weaknees second HD in my Series2. Can I attach it through the eSATA and expect it to work if it wasn't the boot drive in my Series2?


The way the Series 1 and Series 2 TiVos used a second drive differs from the way they started doing it in the S3s and S4s.

Also, the later S3s, the HD and HD XL, and all of the S4s will only accept the two (500GB and 1TB) Western Digital TiVo-specific external drives, the ones with the TiVo logo on the box, etc., because all of those TiVos have a very short list of model numbers of actual drives that they check against whatever's at the other end of the eSATA cord, and if the actual bare drive inside the eSATA enclosure is not one of those models, the TiVo will refuse to work with it.

The Premiere XL comes with a 1TB drive.

You can add the 1TB WD external if you can find one, and it'll probably cost you $100 or more.

Or you could grab a WD20EURS 2TB bare drive from Amazon or newegg while they're price-matching each other at $100, and use jmfs to copy the 1TB internal drive to the 2T and expand, and have 2TB of space on one drive neatly tucked inside the TiVo, with the original drive sitting safely on the shelf somewhere "just in case", already set up on that TiVo, but not "married" to an external.

Once you connect an external, everything recorded after that gets spread across both drives for some stupid reason, so a problem with either drive costs you all your recordings.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

Silly Robot said:


> Here is my situation. My Tivo died after exhibiting the lockup and reboot symptoms. I hoped that replacing the power supply was the answer. One of the caps did exhibit bulging. It starts now, but gets stuck at "Welcome, Powering up". It seems from discussions like those above, that my HD may have some problems. I've seen that I can scan the HD to determine if there is a problem.
> My question is, can I FiX an HD and recover the recordings, or if it's bad do I just have to replace it? I ordered a TiVo Premiere XL on Black Friday, I plan on getting an HDTV soon (I still have a CRT).
> I tried kickstarting but no joy.
> If I can't fix the boot HD, I don't see the point in downloading the diagnostic software and trying to boot it on my MPB with BootCamp.


If you mean hard drive, don't say HD, it gets confused with high definition and with TiVo's use of HD for a model designation (the second S3 model, the TCD652160) which promptly got confused with a model description (the first S3, the TCD648250).

Just say drive.

Also you should have told us up front that you had a second drive in that S2.

If you tell the doctor about the fever but not the stomach pains and dizzy spells, you might get misdiagnosed.

This is the first time I've heard of a dual tuner S2 having power supply problems.

Did you actually replace the power supply?

What do you have in the way of computers to hook these drives to for testing purposes?


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## Silly Robot (Nov 30, 2012)

Sorry about the second drive.
I did replace the PS. One of the caps had a bulge.
Okay Tools
MacBook Pro (Intel) configured for Bootcamp
iMac (Intel)
MacPro tower (PPC)
Macally External Harddrive case, incl eSATA


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

Silly Robot said:


> Sorry about the second drive.
> I did replace the PS. One of the caps had a bulge.
> Okay Tools
> MacBook Pro (Intel) configured for Bootcamp
> ...


Play with your new XL and I'll try to put together a long reply tonight.


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