# booting tivo without cable connection



## romain_eude (Mar 3, 2013)

Hi,

I've got a tivo which used to be connected to the cable. It's got stuff recorded on the HD.
When I start it (without connection to the tv cable), it hangs on 'starting up' screen forever.
At some point, I fiddled with buttons combinations to make it complete the boot sequence and get to the menu.
But I can't make it do it again.

Anyone has any idea?

Thanks!

R.


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## telemark (Nov 12, 2013)

What model of Tivo? You can look on the label on the back.


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## romain_eude (Mar 3, 2013)

yeah, indeed, that could help :-o

it's samsung 500Gb, SMT-C7100 (see attachment)


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## telemark (Nov 12, 2013)

Ya, none of us here know about the European units, because we don't have access to them. Which country are you in?

There is a UK/Virgin forum on here, you might ask there. They might know more.

In general a Tivo's boot sequence, there might be some LED's flashing. If you watch or video tape you might recognize the entry period. We call this Kickstart. A few codes could erase data so you want to make sure you're entering something sane instead of random.

May or may not be of use, in a US Tivo, it'll boot to menus without any connections. Being stuck at Welcome Screen would be a damaged boot media or corrupted software image on it.


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## romain_eude (Mar 3, 2013)

I'm in the UK.

Re leds, 
* when booting, for last 4 leds, I see: 4 leds red flash, then led 4 blue, then all 4 red, then led 3 red, 
* then it is stuck with 1: off, 2: off, 3: red blinking, 4: blue on

dunno if it helps.


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## telemark (Nov 12, 2013)

If you put the hard drive in a PC and view the partition map, it'll tell you if the OS is on the disk. Test the disk while on the PC. If it's on the disk, you might be able to restore the OS from a working Samsung unit.

There are a lot of if's in that.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

telemark said:


> If you put the hard drive in a PC and view the partition map, it'll tell you if the OS is on the disk. Test the disk while on the PC. If it's on the disk, you might be able to restore the OS from a working Samsung unit.
> 
> There are a lot of if's in that.


If it's like stateside TiVos, you need something that can at least see an Apple Partition Map, and preferably something like

pdisk

and

mfsinfo

from the MFS Live cd

to see anything TiVo-specific.

As for the OP's problem, if stateside TiVos are anything to go by, if it boots to the first screen and just sits there, that means that for some reason (there are more possibilities than one) the motherboard isn't getting what it needs from the hard drive.

I'd use something like

dd_rescue

or

ddrescue

off of a Linux-based boot cd to "Xerox" the hard drive to another of equal or greater size and see how that other one works out in the TiVo.

I would think that the unit should be able to boot up with or without the cablevision cable connected.


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## telemark (Nov 12, 2013)

I found on this page the Samsung units are like Roamio.
http://www.rosswalker.co.uk/tivo_upgrade/

It also mentions


> If you have a UK Virgin Media Tivo then you need to hold TV+Down+Record during boot. You should then be good to go.


which does something I have no clue. Maybe it erases the hard drive.

If you have a PC, what unitron explained in more detailed wouldn't hurt, might tell you something useful.


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

telemark said:


> I found on this page the Samsung units are like Roamio.
> http://www.rosswalker.co.uk/tivo_upgrade/
> 
> It also mentions
> ...


Just don't try to look at the drive with Windows, or let the PC boot into Windows with that drive attached, but boot with a Linux bootable cd instead.

But if that PC has a GigaByte brand motherboard, say so first, and let us tell you what precautions to take before ever hooking the drive to it.


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