# Tivo HD freezes



## moldymac (Mar 27, 2006)

I think my Tivo bit the dust the other day, it was having problems constantly freezing up on me during watching, had to unplug it to restart it. Now it took a turn for the worse, all I get is the "almost there, just a few minutes more". I had upgraded the hard drive to a 500gb when I bought it last year, and I saved the original drive. I installed that, and get the same thing, you can leave it there for hours and thats all it does. I made an image of the original drive and tried imaging another hard drive, same thing. I dont have anything hooked up to the unit at this point except power and a composite video cable (no cable cards either).


----------



## moldymac (Mar 27, 2006)

Any Ideas? Or is it time for a new tivo?


----------



## uglie (Sep 23, 2008)

I'm having the same issue, just started last night. I'm not sure if it has to do with the new downloading of the netflix stuff.


----------



## Bing3000 (Apr 23, 2003)

Mine has started freezing up in the last third of a program playback (both SD and HD). Locks up tight. Hitting the Tivo button a couple times causes a reboot. Going to call Tivo this morning- this has only been happening since V11 came down the pipe...


----------



## jmh96 (Jan 30, 2007)

Same issue with Series 3 (freezing up and rebooting in last portion of recorded program).


----------



## moldymac (Mar 27, 2006)

At this point mine just wont boot, not even with the original hard drive with the original software release. This problem started before v11 came out.


----------



## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

moldymac said:


> At this point mine just wont boot, not even with the original hard drive with the original software release. This problem started before v11 came out.


About 1% of the TiVo-HD units have this problem (this is my opinion from my observation), the only solution i know of is to replace the TiVo, that works every time I have come across this problem. Its not hard drive related (it could be but if you change out the hard drive it does not fix the problem). I never tried to change out the power supply but i don't think that the problem. If anyone has a better solution than sending the TiVo back i like the know it.


----------



## saz25 (Mar 3, 2002)

Hi all,
Would they replace or swap out the TivoHD if its 14+ months old? Mine has been working fine till the last few weeks; picture freezing.
Steve


----------



## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

saz25 said:


> Hi all,
> Would they replace or swap out the TivoHD if its 14+ months old? Mine has been working fine till the last few weeks; picture freezing.
> Steve


Yes..for $159 or is it $149 I don't remember.


----------



## saz25 (Mar 3, 2002)

You mean they want me to pay $149/$159 to replace a unit that they "broke" after it worked great till V11.? I would sooner throw it away and get a comcast dvr.

This is ridiculous.
Steve


----------



## ignipotentis (May 10, 2005)

My Series 2 was rock solid for 5 years. I just upgraded to a TivoHD, and I've had nothing but trouble. First I was on version 8.x and getting the Grey Screen. Now, I've finally managed to upgrade to 11.x and it either breaks up like hell (pixelation) or freezes. It has yet to go 24 hours without an issue. I don't even have the cable cards installed yet to blame it on Comcast.


----------



## saz25 (Mar 3, 2002)

I, too, had a series 2 since 2002. I bought a TivoHD about a year ago and LOVED (past tense) it. Now for the past few weeks I can't even use it. Its basically a boat anchor. I can watch SD channels, but why would I on my 50 inch plasma. When I watch HD channels it would freeze within minutes.

I don't know what to do. If I can't get Tivo to fess up to this problem and replace it, I'll go to Comcast DVR. Tivo would have lost a customer.

Steve


----------



## madneon (Jun 17, 2007)

Hey Moldy do you remember the brand of the HD you replaced your stock HD with.....


----------



## Iceback (Oct 12, 2006)

I've had the same problem with my series 3 since V11 rolled out. Our other Tivo HD works fine, but the Series 3, that has been rock solid, has gone to hell. When recording HD channels, it seems to pixelate horribly about 50&#37; of the time, and has recently started freezing in mid recording, losing the signal on the HD channel (grey screen) and leaving me with a partial recording. If I stop it recording , change channels, then change back again the channel comes back up again fine. I am running the original drive with the DVR Expander and have run the SMART hard drive tests through kickstart, all passing with flying colors. I have strong signals from all channels as well. I have been contemplating changing out the internal drive, but the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that it is a software driven buffering problem, and not related to the drive(s) itself. I have had little problem with this Series 3 (early adopter) or any of the 3 other Tivos of varying capability since 2001. It is not inconsequential that this problem started the day after V11 rolled out. I do not want to call tech support, because I have a tendency to get very angry when I get the run around from someone who usually insists that I am the problem, not the device.

If Tivo Pony is watching this thread, I wish you could give me some advice. Is this a known problem, and will it be addressed? I can put up with a short wait until a software update rolls out. I have an $800 brick sitting in the living room and since I work for the airlines, I rely on it to keep me up to date. It is very annoying to come home and find most of the weeks recordings are either unwatchable or partial. I don't want to pour any money out to fix something that was working fine just a few weeks ago. ?????


----------



## 11865 (Dec 11, 2001)

jmh96 said:


> Same issue with Series 3 (freezing up and rebooting in last portion of recorded program).


Yes, just started to have this problem on my Series 3 after two years with no problems. It only occurs in the last 1/4 of the recording. The video freezes, about 5-10 seconds pass and the Tivo reboots. It is happening on both SD and HD recordings. So far, it does not happen during live TV or while viewing a recording that has not yet completed.


----------



## thewebgal (Aug 10, 2007)

We have a TIVOHD 
Everything we've recorded in the last 2 weeks or so all plays back with some freezing, often followed by a reboot ... Its pretty much useless. FWIW, everything we TIVO is HD.
Getting ready to swap out the hard drive as a matter of course, if that doesn't cut it, I'll drop the service. 
Between the SDV channels and now this, its just not usefull if I have to spend this much time to finess it. Yes, I have the SDV adapter - no, its not reliable with our system yet.


----------



## bkdtv (Jan 9, 2003)

thewebgal,

Do you have any problems with liveTV? If you tune to a channel from which you made a problematic recording...and then go to the System Information -> Diagnostics...What is your signal level on that channel? And do you see a significant number of RS Uncorrected errors? That's the name TiVo uses to refer to cable signal errors that the box cannot fix.

Freezes in recordings can be the result of a failing hard drive. But they can just as easily be the result of a signal problem. And TiVo has long had problems playing recordings with lots of breaks / errors.


----------



## moblex (Dec 15, 2008)

ugh. I have this same problem too. 

TIVO HD, stock drive, no expansion, no cable card or boxes. Grey screen freeze ups (SD channels). I could go the TIVO menu and do a restart and everything was fine. A few days ago I started watching netflix (HD) on TIVO HD it locked up again. This time I could NOT get to the TIVO menu. I had to kill the power. Reboot hangs at the Almost There... screen. I did a kickstart 57 and it took less than 15 minutes on the green screen, then rebooted itself and hung at the Almost there screen.

TIVO tech support was a disaster. They were focused on the status of my home network which works great. I can stream netflix to my computer and my xbox360.

My Tivo HD is a brick. Tech support wanted to charge me 150 to repair, plus I pay two ways of shipping. Is there any other option?

Tivo folks, if this independent forum can't help me, you can say farewell to moblex!! High upfront cost, monthly fees, and bad service? Ugh. UGH!! It is just a frackin' linux box. why not open this system up so I could just buy another drive and download a drive image from tivo?


----------



## bkdtv (Jan 9, 2003)

moblex said:


> ugh. I have this same problem too.
> 
> TIVO HD, stock drive, no expansion, no cable card or boxes. Grey screen freeze ups (SD channels). I could go the TIVO menu and do a restart and everything was fine. A few days ago I started watching netflix (HD) on TIVO HD it locked up again. This time I could NOT get to the TIVO menu. I had to kill the power. Reboot hangs at the Almost There... screen. I did a kickstart 57 and it took less than 15 minutes on the green screen, then rebooted itself and hung at the Almost there screen.
> 
> TIVO tech support was a disaster. They were focused on the status of my home network which works great. I can stream netflix to my computer and my xbox360.


There is a reason why they focused on your home network.

Did you see this post from a TiVo employee?

Netflix issues: Issues regarding freezes and reboots


----------



## laroele (Apr 25, 2006)

One of my HD Tivos is having the same problems as described above. It appears to freeze only on the tuner that is currently being displayed, and changing channels unfreezes it, if only temporarily. Also when this is happening and I go to the menus there will be long pauses before responding to the remote. My 2nd Tivo is having no problems.


----------



## ignipotentis (May 10, 2005)

Mine continues to give me problems. The unit is brand new with no cable cards yet. This morning I awoke to find it gray screened. It happened sometime between 2:00AM and 6:00AM based on the resulting recordings. This time, the Tivo lasted its longest yet... 32 hours before choking. 

Seriously, I was a TiVo fan boy. But if I can't get this fixed, its going back.


----------



## moblex (Dec 15, 2008)

bkdtv said:


> There is a reason why they focused on your home network.
> 
> Did you see this post from a TiVo employee?
> 
> Netflix issues: Issues regarding freezes and reboots


Sure I saw this post. As I said, my network is fine. I'm posting this article from it. I'm streaming netflix on my xbox360 without incident. The TIVO HD is not getting past "almost there".

I did a kickstart 52 followed by a 57, still hangs. What the heck?


----------



## ignipotentis (May 10, 2005)

Well, TiVo support was helpful for me. After going through the everything and verifying, they are shipping me a new unit. Since mine is only a coupe of days old, they said I'm getting a new one in place of a refurbished one. Fingers crossed!


----------



## saz25 (Mar 3, 2002)

I am totally stuck. I can no longer watch any HD channels. If I try it freezes within minutes.

I can only watch SD till they resolve this.

This disappoints me to no end since I've been a happy Tivo customers since 2002.

Steve


----------



## Mindflux (Jan 16, 2008)

My tiVo has been freezing on the NPL now and then. It wouldn't be a huge deal if it didn't take 5 minutes to reboot.


----------



## orbops (Mar 18, 2007)

First I bought a refurb unit, and it started freezing and rebooting. After a week, it would reboot every 5 minutes. Got that returned, and tech support was a real pain! They kept me on for over 30 minutes, and I had to threaten them that I wanted my money back and cancel my entire Tivo account before they would take action.

Now I've got a replacement unit (a new one instead of refurbished), and I had to haggle quite a bit. It has frozen twice in the last week, so I'm starting to get worried. I'm going to call tech support today to see what they say.


----------



## orbops (Mar 18, 2007)

orbops said:


> Now I've got a replacement unit (a new one instead of refurbished), and I had to haggle quite a bit. It has frozen twice in the last week, so I'm starting to get worried. I'm going to call tech support today to see what they say.


Well, I spoke to tech support and they gave me the following answer: "Your signal strength is at 100%, which is too high. Please ask your cable company if they can reduce the signal and in the mean time, rescan your channels. The HD unit will work better if the signal strength is at 80-90%"

This sounds like a totally bogus answer. Come on, now I'm supposed to reduce the signal strength??? My 30 day window ends in about 10 days. If this unit freezes up again, I'll just return it and go back to my Series 2.


----------



## bkdtv (Jan 9, 2003)

orbops said:


> Well, I spoke to tech support and they gave me the following answer: "Your signal strength is at 100%, which is too high. Please ask your cable company if they can reduce the signal and in the mean time, rescan your channels. The HD unit will work better if the signal strength is at 80-90%"
> 
> This sounds like a totally bogus answer. Come on, now I'm supposed to reduce the signal strength??? My 30 day window ends in about 10 days. If this unit freezes up again, I'll just return it and go back to my Series 2.


The rep was right.

For the TiVo, "too strong" (also known as "too hot") signals are just as bad as "too weak" signals. Often, people or cable installers will add amplifiers when then they split the signal for redistribution throughout the home, but this amplification can make the signal too strong for a TiVo.

There is an easy way to tell whether your signal is the problem. Tune to a channel where you see a lot of pixelization / blocking. Then go to System Information -> DVR Diagnostics. Do you see mass incrementing RS Uncorrected errors for that channel? RS Uncorrected errors is how the TiVo measures signal problems -- from a too strong or too weak signal -- that cause pixelization, blocking, loss frames, and audio dropouts.

You can reduce the signal on your own by removing an amplifier if you have one, or by adding an attenuator if you don't.


----------



## JD3 (Mar 18, 2005)

just installed my tivo HD on saturday. it has been freezing or rebooting itself every hour or two. first call to tech support they told me to unplug it from the surge suppresser and plug it directly into the wall because, as tech support told me ' the unit needs to get 110V and it gets tempermental if the voltage changes' well that sounds like bunk to me. but i tried it and still had the problem last night and this morning 2nd call to TS today and they said it looks like my unit is running ver. 8 and I should force a call so it will update to ver. 11. I hadn't thought to check the ver. it was running because after I ran through the setup I saw a notice about netflix and I thought that was part of Ver, 11. 

can anyone tell me if updateing the OS has fixed the freezing/rebooting problem?


----------



## orbops (Mar 18, 2007)

JD3 said:


> can anyone tell me if updateing the OS has fixed the freezing/rebooting problem?


My OS is 11.0-01-2-652 and I'm still getting reboots on my Tivo HD.


----------



## Ladd Morse (Feb 21, 2002)

orbops said:


> This sounds like a totally bogus answer.


In any case, it is easy to test. Simply install a splitter in the line running to the TiVo. Two way, three way, four way, whatever you have (start with the two way if you have a selection).

If dropping the signal strength to the TiVo via this method works, you'll know the tech was correct. If it doesn't, you know that signal strength isn't the problem and you can focus your research elsewhere.


----------



## orbops (Mar 18, 2007)

Ladd Morse said:


> In any case, it is easy to test. Simply install a splitter in the line running to the TiVo. Two way, three way, four way, whatever you have (start with the two way if you have a selection).
> 
> If dropping the signal strength to the TiVo via this method works, you'll know the tech was correct. If it doesn't, you know that signal strength isn't the problem and you can focus your research elsewhere.


Actually, it's always been on a splitter and I'm still at full signal strength. Seems crazy that I would have to put inline multiple attenuators?


----------



## bkdtv (Jan 9, 2003)

orbops said:


> Actually, it's always been on a splitter and I'm still at full signal strength. Seems crazy that I would have to put inline multiple attenuators?


If your signal is at 99-100, then it is not crazy at all.

Think of it this way. TiVo's diagnostics screen can only show 0-100. But if you go over 100, you get pixelization, dropouts, and worst yet, freezes.


----------



## orbops (Mar 18, 2007)

bkdtv said:


> There is an easy way to tell whether your signal is the problem. Tune to a channel where you see a lot of pixelization / blocking. Then go to System Information -> DVR Diagnostics. Do you see mass incrementing RS Uncorrected errors for that channel? RS Uncorrected errors is how the TiVo measures signal problems -- from a too strong or too weak signal -- that cause pixelization, blocking, loss frames, and audio dropouts.


I looked at the DVR diagnostics and the RS uncorrected errors shows N/A. I don't have any channels with pixelization/blocking.


----------



## 11865 (Dec 11, 2001)

I had no reboots until AFTER it upgraded to ver 11. Now I can't watch 1/2 hour recording without freezing followed by reboot on my Series 3. Still no problems with my 8 year old Series 1 Tivos and my two 4 year old Series 2 Tivos.


----------



## 11865 (Dec 11, 2001)

Final update on this situation for anyone that may be interested. My S3 just kept rebooting on a shorter and shorter time basis until finally, it just rebooted after only 2-3 seconds of air time (recordings, live TV, Netflix, or anything at all). System would freeze and reboot in less than 5 seconds of usage. I finally just realized that I would lose all of my recordings and not be able to save them and disconnected my external DVR expander drive. Now the Tivo works like new again. Apparently the My DVR Expander drive had gone bad. Does anyone know of any program that can repair the external drive? I hate to just throw it away. It is a 500GB My DVR Expander drive that is less than one year old. Obviously I can't reconnect it to my Tivo unless it can be repaired.


----------



## stony8868 (Jun 3, 2008)

i have the same experience. disconnect the expander, works fine. i find it impossible to believe that everyone's expander is dying at the same point in time. i suspect the new software update has some incompatibility with the expander. wonder how to bottom this out with tivo.


----------



## adamfb (Jan 22, 2007)

This has happened before (mass expander die off). Search for it. Same exact symptoms. Seemed to happen 2-3 months after 9.4 was released. The good news is that the Western Digital exchange policy is easy. Go to their website, put in the SN and it will tell you if it is eligible for replacement. The bad news is you lose your recordings. This happened to me in Sept this year. Got the new expander and everything was fine....until this past Sunday night during the Chargers-Broncos game. My symptoms have started again. So far, not too bad though.


----------



## dmbpj (Dec 30, 2008)

This thread has me worried about my Tivo HD


----------



## prices10 (Feb 9, 2008)

I'm still suffering from the same problem, trying to get everyone to watch our recorded shows so I can disconnect the external drive. If that fixes it I need a new drive.
See my post on Weaknees (I've also posted in these forums):

http://www.********.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2695
(need to type 'wk forums', without the space, in place of the asterisks... wtf is that all about???)


----------



## Mindflux (Jan 16, 2008)

prices10 said:


> I'm still suffering from the same problem, trying to get everyone to watch our recorded shows so I can disconnect the external drive. If that fixes it I need a new drive.
> See my post on Weaknees (I've also posted in these forums):
> 
> http://www.********.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2695
> (need to type '********' in place of the asterisks...)


Nope, need to type ********.


----------



## orbops (Mar 18, 2007)

Well, I added a 4 way attenuator on Sunday, and it rebooted again on Wednesday. This new Tivo unit has never gone more than 2-3 days without needing a reboot. 

I spent another hour on the phone with tech support and finally got them to agree to a refund of my purchase. Get this - they refuse to provide a pre-paid shipper saying that "it's against their policy". I was planning on reactivating my Series 2 unit since the HD unit isn't working properly, but after this latest experience - I am done with Tivo. I told them that I've decided not to reactivate my other unit, and they didn't care. So it is better for them to lose a customer who's been with Tivo for 3 1/2 years, as opposed to simply providing a pre-paid RMA shipper. 

If your HD keeps freezing up, customer support is going to give you the run-around time and time again. They'll just offer for you to exchange a unit, but how many times do you want to go through returns and stay on the phone for an hour each time? For me, it turned out to be 7 case numbers over a 2 month period.

It's a shame because I raved about Tivo to all my friends and colleagues - and now they've turned me against a wonderful product (when it works).:down::down::down:


----------



## dstephan (Aug 17, 2006)

I don't have an expander but I'm having the exact same problems as everyone here and it just started a couple of days ago. The Series3 has been working fine for over a year. 

From what everyone is saying, it sounds like it might be a software issue - anyone heard if Tivo is releasing a patch or something?


----------



## palonts (Apr 10, 2007)

Just to chime in... I have the same reboot issue as described by others in this thread. I also have a 500G My DVR Expander connected. I'm hoping TiVo updates their firmware soon. With every reboot my blood pressure goes up 10 points!


----------



## dsol (May 19, 2005)

I don't think this has anything to do with the external drives as I'm having the exact same problem, just started around the same time, isolated to HD channels, and I do not have an external drive.

I really don't want to go through the hassle of calling support, troubleshooting something they won't have an answer for, going through the time and expense of getting a new box, etc. when it appears this may be a widespread software issue. Is this something we just have to bear until someone at Tivo decides that it's important enough to address?


----------



## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

dsol said:


> I don't think this has anything to do with the external drives as I'm having the exact same problem, just started around the same time, isolated to HD channels, and I do not have an external drive.
> 
> I really don't want to go through the hassle of calling support, troubleshooting something they won't have an answer for, going through the time and expense of getting a new box, etc. when it appears this may be a widespread software issue. Is this something we just have to bear until someone at Tivo decides that it's important enough to address?


It is obviously not effecting many people on this form or the form would be full of posts about this (I have 4 Series 3s, never had a freeze), exactly why a few people get this freezing after an update could be a hard drive problem as the update uses another partition of the hard drive (the next software update will go back to the original partition), or a small number of mother boards are more sensitive than others and V11 brings out this problem. I am sure V11 was beta tested with a good number of testers and if they all froze, TiVo would have fixed the problem long ago. Replacing your hardware (or hard drive) may be your only solution.


----------



## chrisph (Dec 10, 2008)

I bought my very first Tivo (Tivo HD) about 3 weeks ago and after going through all of the setup, the first thing I was greeted with (after the little TiVo movie) was about 60 seconds of local programming before my TiVo completely froze up. Recycling the power didn't help, nor did re-doing the setup, etc. I ended up taking it back to Best Buy and swapping it out. So far, my new Tivo HD has been working great -- up until 2 days ago when it started to intermittently not see my PC in the Now Playing list, so I am unable to pull video from my computer and watch it through TiVo. This was a pretty big deciding factor as to why I bought a TiVo rather than just set up a PC running Media Center or something...

I really love TiVo so far, but if these are the sorts of things I can look forward to, then I don't know if I am so eager to keep going with it... These are issues I have encountered within my first month of owning a TiVo, not sure I wanna spend years dealing with stuff like this...


----------



## prices10 (Feb 9, 2008)

update:

Disconnected the external drive
Ran kickstart 54 which told me I had a bad internal drive (fail 7)
Replaced the internal with a 750gb from weak knees
Received the v11 upgrade last night
No problems now
Will now use the old 500gb external to back up my home computers


----------



## Iceback (Oct 12, 2006)

Iceback said:


> I've had the same problem with my series 3 since V11 rolled out. Our other Tivo HD works fine, but the Series 3, that has been rock solid, has gone to hell. When recording HD channels, it seems to pixelate horribly about 50% of the time, and has recently started freezing in mid recording, losing the signal on the HD channel (grey screen) and leaving me with a partial recording. If I stop it recording , change channels, then change back again the channel comes back up again fine. I am running the original drive with the DVR Expander and have run the SMART hard drive tests through kickstart, all passing with flying colors. I have strong signals from all channels as well. I have been contemplating changing out the internal drive, but the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that it is a software driven buffering problem, and not related to the drive(s) itself. I have had little problem with this Series 3 (early adopter) or any of the 3 other Tivos of varying capability since 2001. It is not inconsequential that this problem started the day after V11 rolled out. I do not want to call tech support, because I have a tendency to get very angry when I get the run around from someone who usually insists that I am the problem, not the device.
> 
> If Tivo Pony is watching this thread, I wish you could give me some advice. Is this a known problem, and will it be addressed? I can put up with a short wait until a software update rolls out. I have an $800 brick sitting in the living room and since I work for the airlines, I rely on it to keep me up to date. It is very annoying to come home and find most of the weeks recordings are either unwatchable or partial. I don't want to pour any money out to fix something that was working fine just a few weeks ago. ?????


Just as a follow up for anyone still having problems... I removed the Expander, and the problem still existed, so I bit the bullet and sprung $180 on a 1TB Hitachi 7200 rpm drive with a 32mb buffer. Used the drive replacement instructions here on the forum, and it worked like a charm. Problem solved. Since all of the kickstart tests passed on the original drive, and due to the fact that the problem popped up the day V11 appeared, I suspect that some of the stock drives are having problem with the way in which V11 uses the hardware to write and buffer HD channels to the drive. We have a secondary Tivo HD, that has not been affected by V11. Hate to have had to spend the money on a new drive, and I have a 1 month out of warranty expander gathering dust, but I had little choice but to give it a try as the Series 3 was utterly useless on any HD channel. Now I am just waiting on the tuning adapters to show up in Charlotte.


----------



## HowBoutNowLA (Aug 7, 2008)

This is RIDICULOUS! I'm now really disgusted with Tivo because of this issue. 

I too have had the S3 for two years and an external eSATA hooked up to it for 18 months without a single glitch. As soon as I got hit with v11, I started having these annoying freeze/reboot issues.

Not only am I extremely pissed that Tivo CS refuses to acknowledge (obviously by policy) that this is a MASSIVE WIDESPREAD PROBLEM, but in order for them to continue a "cover our own asses" strategy, they actually want me to go ahead and toss a perfectly good 750GB external just so I can have the same issue with another drive like so many other people already found out. Or they want me to divorce the drive and lose 100 hours of saved content, just so I can have the same problem after I lose everything! (again, like someone above already found out.)

So what is this?!? In order to avoid fixing the issues caused by their bogus upgrade, they're suggesting I spend hundreds of dollars for no reason? How despicable!

I can't believe everyone says they are "avoiding calling customer service"! That p.o.'s me even more! I suggest that at the FIRST SIGN OF A FREEZE everyone should call CS REPEATEDLY and give them hell until they realize they have to do something about it instead of playing dumb and giving LIP SERVICE. I already researched all of this and everything the customer service rep told me yesterday has already been rendered useless by trial and error from people on this forum! This is obviously a BAD UPGRADE and NOT external drive failures (unless the software upgrade was SPECIFICALLY designed to fry externals on purpose that is)!

By the way this is the original S3 that I spent $900 on, plus no lifetime available, plus a few hundred for the external -so TIVO CS, why would I want lip service and denial from you after you've already jacked me for $1500 and then fried my unit with your upgrade?!!


----------



## HowBoutNowLA (Aug 7, 2008)

Tried Kickstart 57 (twice) and 54. Did absolutely nothing to help the situation.

Does anyone know if there's a way to swap out just this totally bogus internal drive and keep all of my content (on both the internal AND external)? Can MFS tools do this somehow?

Now this has become the most expensive lemon I've ever had. And YEAH, I'm still seriously p.o.'d that this was obviously caused in some way by the v11 upgrade (meaning it was unneccessary and Tivo should pay for it!)


----------



## jasperk99 (Mar 25, 2005)

I figured I would throw my hat into the ring; I don't know if there is another thread now on this as the last post was on 1/15, however 1 week ago my dvr expander made some weird noises and crashed on me; I had to replace the drive; I got the new drive and it worked fine for a week; today it has been freezing then rebooting. I am trying the KS 54; I don't know what the next step is; I have never had a problem with any tivo since 2000 and now all of a sudden all of these issues!! Is anyone reporting these problems on the newer hd tivos, btw I am using a series 3 with expander


----------



## visionary (May 31, 2006)

I never had a Tivo issue with my S3 till this horrible V11. I am Over the Air only, no cable, no cable cards, and I am NOT networked in any way, it dials in for guide data. Never had it reboot in 2 years till V11 was installed. Now it is in the last part of the program and will freeze, reboot.

If you push the 30 sec skip fast enough at the beginning of the freeze you CAN often skip over it, but there are often 2 or 3 such bad spots close together I find. It has to be some video error the software left out how to handle so program freezes. Why is it hard to fix since their old version handled it fine, I don't get that part?

Now for my question, there are Unix box experts on here, is the old software available somewhere on the machine to do a "restore" to an earlier time? I mean there is your fix, we know that would work, are there restore points in the machine like a PC has?


----------



## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

visionary said:


> Now for my question, there are Unix box experts on here, is the old software available somewhere on the machine to do a "restore" to an earlier time? I mean there is your fix, we know that would work, are there restore points in the machine like a PC has?


Getting v9.4b software on your TiVo would be no big problem (take some time and the loss of all your recordings) BUT on the first call home your TiVo would update back to V11, no way i know of stopping that, so getting your TiVo back to any other software but V11 would do you no good.


----------



## HowBoutNowLA (Aug 7, 2008)

visionary said:


> I never had a Tivo issue with my S3 till this horrible V11. I am Over the Air only, no cable, no cable cards, and I am NOT networked in any way, it dials in for guide data. Never had it reboot in 2 years till V11 was installed. Now it is in the last part of the program and will freeze, reboot.
> 
> If you push the 30 sec skip fast enough at the beginning of the freeze you CAN often skip over it, but there are often 2 or 3 such bad spots close together I find. It has to be some video error the software left out how to handle so program freezes. Why is it hard to fix since their old version handled it fine, I don't get that part?
> 
> Now for my question, there are Unix box experts on here, is the old software available somewhere on the machine to do a "restore" to an earlier time? I mean there is your fix, we know that would work, are there restore points in the machine like a PC has?


This is interesting that you are strictly over the air - obviously it's the v11 upgrade. The last time I talked to CS they insisted it was the internal HD gone bad, said they would pay the shipping if I sent it back and paid for a new internal hard drive. When I complained about losing my content, they suggested I back it all up using Tivo desktop.

They just need to fix the upgrade or roll the next one out without these bugs. Different people were having these problems with the last upgrade - they keep doing this and it's really annoying.


----------



## visionary (May 31, 2006)

Lessd, yes I realize it would want to update again on dialing in, but, that sure ought to be fixable on a Unix machine--permissions!! Set the good software files as read only or something, or controlled by another password you would put on, so V.11 just wouldn't get written to disk after a call, because 9 won't delete, but the guide data and all would update normally. This really ought to be do-able.

It would just end up an error in a log on every new call, guide update successful, V11 update failure, and would repeat, but meanwhile you got a great working Tivo again! 

But yes everyone, its not your disk, network or anything else. It's all V11. I do think if you have more going on it may be worse, I noticed it did it less after I turned off the clock, maybe the network overhead and all that makes it happen more, but it is not cause.


----------



## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

visionary said:


> Lessd, yes I realize it would want to update again on dialing in, but, that sure ought to be fixable on a Unix machine--permissions!! Set the good software files as read only or something, or controlled by another password you would put on, so V.11 just wouldn't get written to disk after a call, because 9 won't delete, but the guide data and all would update normally. This really ought to be do-able.
> 
> It would just end up an error in a log on every new call, guide update successful, V11 update failure, and would repeat, but meanwhile you got a great working Tivo again!
> 
> But yes everyone, its not your disk, network or anything else. It's all V11. I do think if you have more going on it may be worse, I noticed it did it less after I turned off the clock, maybe the network overhead and all that makes it happen more, but it is not cause.


I guess you don't understand how the update works, with V9.4b on your TiVo the TiVo call home would just download the newest software (now V11) and never download the guide data if you did figure out how to stop the software from updating on your TiVo. You would than also have to fool the TiVo servers into thinking that your TiVo did have V11 on it to get the guide data. I think only TiVo itself can control the software that is on your TiVo, and by the time you figured out how to control it yourself a new version will be out that may fix everything.


----------



## HowBoutNowLA (Aug 7, 2008)

Simple question:

If I try Kickstart 52 (emergency reinstall of the software on the other partition), will this cause me to lose any of my recordings? 

If it wipes the recent corrupted recordings that are freezing up, I don't care. But everything that I have saved from before I got the v11 upgrade is fine and doesn't freeze. Will I lose everything if I try an emergency reinstall? I don't see this mentioned anywhere in the forums and I've been looking for hours. Tivo CS "doesn't recommend it" of course.


----------



## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

HowBoutNowLA said:


> Simple question:
> 
> If I try Kickstart 52 (emergency reinstall of the software on the other partition), will this cause me to lose any of my recordings?
> 
> If it wipes the recent corrupted recordings that are freezing up, I don't care. But everything that I have saved from before I got the v11 upgrade is fine and doesn't freeze. Will I lose everything if I try an emergency reinstall? I don't see this mentioned anywhere in the forums and I've been looking for hours. Tivo CS "doesn't recommend it" of course.


I know this was a month old post, but it was never answered.

Running KS 52 doesn't cause you to loose your recordings.

I am also not convinced that the emergency reinstall goes to the other partition. *richsadams* and I have been discussing this just today. Does anybody know a definite answer to that?


----------

