# tivo not starting up after system reset.



## mooch (Mar 4, 2007)

Came back from holiday yesterday to find our beloved Tivo showing the blue screen saying no signal.

This happens sometime and is usually solved by a reset of the sky box, but this time it had no effect, so I followed the Tivo instructions and did a system reset.

After hitting enter for the reset, the tv went black and didn't come back. The remote didn't respond, so after 10 mins, I pulled the plug.

Now when I plug the tivo back in, I get nothing. The green light comes on, I can hear the HD start up but nothing on the tv or through the amp and the remote does nothing.

I was told today that there was a power cut in our apartments yesterday, and suspect that might have something to do with it, as when I came back I checked the recordings and everything was okay 2 days ago, but yesterday's recording was supposed to be 1 1/2 hrs but showed 0 on the counter when I played it and didn't play.

Any suggestions as to what I should do next to figure out the problem? (it's a standard tivo apart from a HD upgrade I did many years ago. I have a tivo network card that someone gave me, but never installed it)

1 day not being able to do instant reply is driving me crazy 

Cheers.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

Have you checked the IDE connection to the drive? The symptoms you describe can be caused by a disconnected or dead drive.


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## Ian_m (Jan 9, 2001)

Dead modem ?


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## 6022tivo (Oct 29, 2002)

With a dead modem, the unit normally powers up with the messages, but in this case it isn't.

Maybe the HDD has given up the ghost during it being powered down??. Make sure you have no remotes stuck down and pointing at the tivo???. I can not remember what it says on screen during boot up, but I know it causes problems.


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## mooch (Mar 4, 2007)

Thanks for the replies.

I've opened the case to check for any loose cables. Everything looks fine. As before I can hear the hard drive spinning, but no output and no respose from remote (no remotes stuck).

Should I conclude that I have a HD problem? If so, what's my next step for recovering my data? Do I need to plug the HD into my PC or should I install the network card and try to access the drive remotely?

Any help appreciated.


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## PhilG (Jan 15, 2002)

There are two answers here - depending on how much time you have, how much confidence you have and how much money you are willing to spend!!

If the first two are low and the third is OK, then take a look at tivoheaven (our friend blindlemon) - he has all sorts of options for you. You will pay a premium, but you will end up with a guaranteed solution to your problem.

If the first two are high(er) and the third is low, then there are all sorts of DIY options availble to you - others will chip in shortly with suggestions

Personally, I am a coward with some money to spare, so I went for the safe route (and when my new drive failed within the warranty period I was glad I did!)


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

PhilG said:


> Personally, I am a coward with some money to spare, so I went for the safe route (and when my new drive failed within the warranty period I was glad I did!)


I thought blindlemon's quiet cool HA250JC Samsung drives almost never failed. Or perhaps you ordered a different drive from www.tivoheaven.co.uk  

Personally I still think the DIY route is also worth considering becuase it does save quite a lot of money and it also gives you a better idea of how the whole Tivo operating system works.

See www.steveconrad.co.uk/tivo and his large hard drive upgrade guide for information on how to upgrade yourself. All you need is a desktop PC which you can get for nothing using www.freecycle.org if you don't already have one.

It might also serve you well to look at other threads about drive failure in the last two months as there have been quite a few and all the various options are discussed in some detail in those.


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## PhilG (Jan 15, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> I thought blindlemon's quiet cool HA250JC Samsung drives almost never failed. Or perhaps you ordered a different drive from www.tivoheaven.co.uk   QUOTE]
> 
> Indeed - that was what I warranty exchanged TO from a failing non-SAMSUNG drive!!
> 
> ...


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

PhilG said:


> Pete77 said:
> 
> 
> > When I originally did the upgrade, I only wanted 200Gb (don't ask) and the SAMSUNGs were not in stock so I went with summat else
> ...


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

mooch said:


> I can hear the hard drive spinning, but no output and no respose from remote [...] Should I conclude that I have a HD problem?


It certainly sounds like it. If the drive spins when you apply power, do you hear a clunk after a few seconds? If it doesn't clunk, then it's never becoming "ready", so the TiVo BIOS doesn't start the boot sequence.



mooch said:


> what's my next step for recovering my data? Do I need to plug the HD into my PC or should I install the network card and try to access the drive remotely?


You could try to test the drive in a PC with the manufacturer's utility, but if it won't become ready even in a PC then I'm afraid it's probably toast


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

blindlemon said:


> You could try to test the drive in a PC with the manufacturer's utility, but if it won't become ready even in a PC then I'm afraid it's probably toast


But you can get a Tivo hard drive image set by making a post in this thread to which Wonder_Lander should respond:-

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=4928587#post4928587


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## mooch (Mar 4, 2007)

blindlemon said:


> It certainly sounds like it. If the drive spins when you apply power, do you hear a clunk after a few seconds? If it doesn't clunk, then it's never becoming "ready", so the TiVo BIOS doesn't start the boot sequence.
> 
> You could try to test the drive in a PC with the manufacturer's utility, but if it won't become ready even in a PC then I'm afraid it's probably toast


Just tried it again and the drive DOES clunk after a couple of seconds. I'll take the drive out and test it in a PC to see what state it's in.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

mooch said:


> Just tried it again and the drive DOES clunk after a couple of seconds. I'll take the drive out and test it in a PC to see what state it's in.


Make sure you disconnect any hard drive with Windows attached to the PC though and boot it from the LBA 48 CD you can get from www.steveconrad.co.uk/tivo

If you boot the Tivo drive with a Windows 2000, XP or Vista hard drive attached you will scramble the Tivo hard drive's entire contents.


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## mooch (Mar 4, 2007)

Pete77 said:


> Make sure you disconnect any hard drive with Windows attached to the PC though and boot it from the LBA 48 CD you can get from ...
> 
> If you boot the Tivo drive with a Windows 2000, XP or Vista hard drive attached you will scramble the Tivo hard drive's entire contents.


Do you mean the one entitled "MFSTools2 Large Disk iso image. (11 Meg file size)"? I was going to use Maxtor's PowerMax or MaxBlast boot disks to test the drive.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

Yes, that's what you need to do to test it. 

You only need the LBA48 CD if you are doing an upgrade.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Just make sure you don't let the machine boot up into Windows though with your Tivo drive also attached. You need to boot it with only the Tivo drive attached and using the manufacturers tools CD or floppy disk to boot the machine. If you boot into Windows with the Tivo drive attached that will trash the data even if that hasn't already happened so far.


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## mooch (Mar 4, 2007)

Pete77 said:


> Just make sure you don't let the machine boot up into Windows though with your Tivo drive also attached. You need to boot it with only the Tivo drive attached and using the manufacturers tools CD or floppy disk to boot the machine. If you boot into Windows with the Tivo drive attached that will trash the data even if that hasn't already happened so far.


Thanks. I understand. I remember that part from when I did the upgrade many years ago.

I've run the PowerMax tests now. The hard part was trying to find a PC with a working floppy drive. In the end I couldn't but managed to search for and find the PowerMax CD ISO instead.

Anyway, I ran the basic test and advanced test and both passed. I didn't run the Installation Confirmation Test as I wasn't sure what this was and I haven't run any Burn In Tests.

Any suggestions as to what to do next? Could the data on the HD have got in a mess when I had the power cut? Would I be able to see the OS booting up if I installed the network card?


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

What make and size is the hard drive and how old is it?

I don't know much about this kind of hard drive salvage stuff but if the manufacturers hard drive tools can still read the drive then I would think an MFS utility called DD Rescue may be able to save the data on the disk.

blindlemon is the expert on this stuff.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

If the drive tests OK in a PC then it may have been rendered unbootable by corruption caused by the powercut.

dd_rescue won't do anything to make it boot - it just copies everything sector by sector to a new drive. I would try maketivobootable as a next step.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

blindlemon said:


> If the drive tests OK in a PC then it may have been rendered unbootable by corruption caused by the powercut.
> 
> dd_rescue won't do anything to make it boot - it just copies everything sector by sector to a new drive. I would try maketivobootable as a next step.


I bow to the Master's superior technical knowledge on these matters.

However if the drive had still been in the Tivo would using the emergency kickstart procedure to get it to boot from the other backup hard drive operating system partition have also been an option?

Some useful info on Tivo Diagnostics here:-

http://alt.org/wiki/index.php/TivoDiagnostics


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## mooch (Mar 4, 2007)

blindlemon said:


> If the drive tests OK in a PC then it may have been rendered unbootable by corruption caused by the powercut.
> 
> dd_rescue won't do anything to make it boot - it just copies everything sector by sector to a new drive. I would try maketivobootable as a next step.


The drive is a Maxtor D540X-4G 120GB. Mfg. Date: 15Jul2002. Sounds around the time I installed it.

I don't have the original drive. Not with the tivo software on anyway.

Before I run MakeTivoBootable, is it worth me backing up the drive? I have a lifetime sub. Is that information stored on the hard drive and if so what happens if I can't restore it? Would it be safer for me to upgrade the drive and keep this one as a backup?

Just thinking out loud before I dive in.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

mooch said:


> Before I run MakeTivoBootable, is it worth me backing up the drive? I have a lifetime sub. Is that information stored on the hard drive and if so what happens if I can't restore it? Would it be safer for me to upgrade the drive and keep this one as a backup?
> 
> Just thinking out loud before I dive in.


All the Tivo Lifetime subscription information is tied to the Motherboard's id and not to the hard drive. You can request a link to a clean Tivoweb image to download by posting a request in this thread.

www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=4928587#post4928587

So if your drive has had it completely then you can still get going again, although you would lose your recordings, thumbs, SPs and Wishlists.

With a drive that old it must be time for a newer and much quieter Samsung one anyway like their 400GB HD LD T series model with a 3 year warranty.

Cheapest price currently around £78 from:-

www.cclonline.com/product-info-pc.asp?id=7168&pc=pricerunner

It was down to low 70s a week or two back but prices seem to have risen in the last few days.

Information on how to fit it at www.steveconrad.co.uk/tivo and the Large Hard Drive Upgrade section. Or you can buy a fully pre prepared one from www.tivoheaven.co.uk


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

mooch said:


> Before I run MakeTivoBootable, is it worth me backing up the drive?


MTB should be non-destructive so, theoretically, there's no need to back up the drive. However, it's always a good idea.

Something like

mount /dev/hdYn /mnt/dos
mfsbackup -l32 -so /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdX

(where hdYn is the FAT32 partition for your backup, and hdX is your TiVo drive) should do the trick. You will need around 1.3GB on the FAT32 drive for the uncompressed backup.


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## mooch (Mar 4, 2007)

Okay, finally found the time to give this a go.

Bought a new Samsung HD400LD and last night used mfsbackup/mfsrestore to copy my existing HD to the new one (same as I did when I did the original upgrade many years ago). Took forever, but worked fine.

Tried out the new HD and unsuprisingly TIVO still didn't boot.

Just tried MaveTivoBootable as blindlemon suggested, but still no boot.

Not sure I got the syntax right as there was no message returned when I did it.

For some reason (it might have something to do with SATA on my motherboard), my MTB disk mounts as hde, the new TIVO Samsung as hdg and CDRom as hdh.

MTB instructions say to type:

MakeTiVoBootable -d /dev/hdX --pk 3 --ak 6 --bp root=/dev/hda4

so I modified it to

MakeTiVoBootable -d /dev/hd*g* --pk 3 --ak 6 --bp root=/dev/hd*e*4

I'm pretty sure the first option is correct, but not sure about the root= bit.

Any advice on my next move?

Cheers.


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## Wonder_lander (Jan 13, 2003)

mooch said:


> Okay, finally found the time to give this a go.
> 
> Bought a new Samsung HD400LD and last night used mfsbackup/mfsrestore to copy my existing HD to the new one (same as I did when I did the original upgrade many years ago). Took forever, but worked fine.
> 
> ...


I've PM'd you the image details, maybe try and download that and see if thats better?


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## mooch (Mar 4, 2007)

Thanks Wonder_lander.

I'd like to test the backup you gave me on a small HD I have spare to check that the rest of my TIVO hardware is still working okay.

Can I use this command to restore? (bearing in mind, its only a 15GB hard disk)

mfsrestore -r 4 -s 127 -bzpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdb 

Hinsdales instructions say:

Note: Remove the "-s 127" from the following command line if restoring image to the original TiVo A drive (otherwise the image will not fit)

Should I remove? Will this even work with a reduced capacity HD?


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## mooch (Mar 4, 2007)

Back again to ask for more help.

Never did get round to fixing my tivo and on the basis that I never will find time to do it, I bought a new preconfigured HD from tivocentral this week.

Just installed it and annoyingly, my tv still shows nothing.

New HD (set to master by default) boots up, makes it clunk noise, psu fan spins, green light comes on, but nothing beyond that.

So, I figure I've got a hardware problem. Swapped out IDE cable, but no affect. Checked all other connections.

Read about the dead modem problems, so got my old tivo hd out and renamed the modemtest file, but no difference. Hesistant to mess with the new drive from tivocentral until I sought out advice.

Any ideas appeciated.


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## mesaka (Sep 27, 2002)

time for some more basic suggestions (and sorry if I am teaching my Grandmother to suck eggs ...

1/. Have you tried playing around with your connections to the TV? swap the scart leads perhaps?

2/. Try taking the normal video output to the TV rather than the normal TV output (checks if the scart connector is damaged). 

3/. tried a different TV (I guess the scart connection on the TV could be faulty)?


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Reading back though this thread you have tried most common things (including replcing the IDE cable)..hmm

Watch the green light carefuly for the first 30 seconds .. 
does it briefly change to orange 10-15 seconds after switch on ?

I'd also try mesaka's suggestion of using the RF out connection (Channel 60) as I've seen a few tivos with dead scart sockets (and scart leads themselves can go faulty).

Could still possibly be PSU, and they are cheap to replace.
Check if you have 12V accross yellow/black and 5V accross red/black on the hard drive plug.


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## 6022tivo (Oct 29, 2002)

No starting up message, could be the HDD is not being seen.

Silly I know, but IDE cable on the wrong way, I think it is keyed on the drive, but not on the system board??


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

6022tivo said:


> Silly I know, but IDE cable on the wrong way, I think it is keyed on the drive, but not on the system board??


Correct. I nearly had heart failure after my hard drive upgrade when things stuck at the Powering Up screen. However it was simply that I had refitted the cable on the system board the wrong way round.


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## 6022tivo (Oct 29, 2002)

Pete77 said:


> Correct. I nearly had heart failure after my hard drive upgrade when things stuck at the Powering Up screen. However it was simply that I had refitted the cable on the system board the wrong way round.


Not picking, but if the cable was on the wrong way round you would of got the blank screen, and not a POWERING UP screen. You get the powering up screen after the tivo HDD has been detected, if it sticks on this, your HDD is missing the boot and operating system (or corrupt). If you get to, nearly there, a few more seconds please, then it is booting the OS.

No HDD, or incorrectly wired HDD will give you a blank screen only.

EDIT: Can't you tell I am in a bad mood.. Right I am off to get my lifetime £200 refunded as I am not getting x-league tv guide data, hence breach of contract..

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=382388


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

6022tivo said:


> EDIT: Can't you tell I am in a bad mood.. Right I am off to get my lifetime £200 refunded as I am not getting x-league tv guide data, hence breach of contract.


You expect to get your £200 back after 7 years use.

Well good luck is all I can say.


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## mooch (Mar 4, 2007)

thanks for all the replies.

I've :

- checked scart cable
- used different scart cables
- tried tv output and video output
- tried rf output
- tv scart socket works - use it with sky all the time

nothing coming up on tv.

left green light comes on and stays (no orange).

don't have the equipment to check the voltages, but could it still be a PSU problem if the HD powers up, the fan spins and the light comes on?

old maxtor HD makes clunk noise on startup, new samsung HD makes more of a bzzzt noise instead.

open to any other suggestions.

one other thing. when i'm testing I just plug in the power cable and the scart, no scart input, or telephone line. I assume that's enough to get the screen up?


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## 6022tivo (Oct 29, 2002)

Power cable and scart are fine like this to get up and running.

Reading back it appeared you had a power cut/surge.. With this info and the checks and changes you have done, maybe a PSU change is on the cards.

Are you local??


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## ColinYounger (Aug 9, 2006)

ISTR no scart INPUT can cause TiVo to act strange - Automan, are you listening? Wasn't it you that discovered the problem?


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## Cainam (May 25, 2004)

ColinYounger said:


> ISTR no scart INPUT can cause TiVo to act strange - Automan, are you listening? Wasn't it you that discovered the problem?


I seem to remember it was IanKB...something to do with booting up without the freeview box attached to the scart socked when that was configured to be input source...

Could be wrong though!


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## mooch (Mar 4, 2007)

6022tivo said:


> Power cable and scart are fine like this to get up and running.
> 
> Reading back it appeared you had a power cut/surge.. With this info and the checks and changes you have done, maybe a PSU change is on the cards.
> 
> Are you local??


London. So, it may be the PSU even though everything powers up? If I was able to test the voltages would that give me a definitive answer? (to save myself ordering another PSU in case that's not the problem)



ColinYounger said:


> ISTR no scart INPUT can cause TiVo to act strange - Automan, are you listening? Wasn't it you that discovered the problem?


Just tried it with the SKY scart in AUX input and no change.


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## mooch (Mar 4, 2007)

Any suggestions for what my next move should be? should i order a new PSU? if that doesn't work, what options does that leave me?


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

Even Samsung drives make a slight "clunk" a few seconds after you apply power. If you're not hearing that then the drive may be dead or the IDE cable may be faulty/disconnected/reversed.

Have you tested the drive in a PC to make sure it's OK? NB. DON'T boot into Windows with it connected - boot from the Samsung HUTIL diagnostics CD instead and use that to test the drive. The test is non-destructive (unless you choose the "erase HDD" option!) so testing it will not affect the configuration.


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