Bschneider
11-11-2007, 09:56 AM
I had a really strange problem with my TiVO Series 3 yesterday and I just wanted to let everyone what the symptoms were and what I did to fix them.
Last week the Series 3 received an update to its software. The verison went from 9.1 to 9.2j. That version last 5 days and on Friday 11/09 the verison went to 9.2a.
On Friday, my wife and I were watching a recording while the Tivo was recording two shows and transfering another from a computer. Everything as far as we know was working just fine.
The next morning, I got up and saw that the Tivo rebooted but it was hung at the screen " powering up.." I unplugged and plugged the Tivo back in and all was well for about 5 minutes. It crashed again, it always hangs at the "powering up" screen. This went on for about 2 hours, until I decided to call Tivo Support. Actually, I had to wait until they were open.
I was on hold with support for about 45 minutes until I finally got someone. I explained the problem and we then started to troubleshoot. The call lasted two hours. Ugh! We popped out the CCs and it seemd to have fixed the problem. So we re-ran the guide to remove the CC guide. After about 15 minutes of it not crashing, we re-ran the setup to again incude the CCs. What was really weird was as soon as I inserted the first card, the Tivo crashed. So we thought that the CC was bad.
So I removed both cards and everything was fine for about an half hour except that the picture was pixalating, freezing, etc. Support told me that either the cards went bad or the Tivo went bad. So he asked me if I wanted to swap out the Tivo. I told him that I will think about it and get back to them. (He stated that an advanced replacement unit would cost $799 plus shipping until they received my unit)
So I hung up with support and starting thinking about the problem. There was no cards in Tivo and it was still having problems crashing. So I took out my original hard drive and put it back in. Wouldn't you know it, all the problems went away.
Now what is the real problem, the hard drive or the new software version that was installed, 9.2a? So I went to CompUSA, and purchased a 500gb drive ($109), the same size drive I have in there. I copied the suspected drive over to the new drive, that took 5 hours to complete. I placed the new drive into the Tivo and turned it on.
So far, not one crash and I didn't loose any of my recordings.. All is well in the life of the Tivo Series 3.
Just a word of caution, if your Tivo starts rebooting randomly, it just may be that the drive is starting to fail.
Last week the Series 3 received an update to its software. The verison went from 9.1 to 9.2j. That version last 5 days and on Friday 11/09 the verison went to 9.2a.
On Friday, my wife and I were watching a recording while the Tivo was recording two shows and transfering another from a computer. Everything as far as we know was working just fine.
The next morning, I got up and saw that the Tivo rebooted but it was hung at the screen " powering up.." I unplugged and plugged the Tivo back in and all was well for about 5 minutes. It crashed again, it always hangs at the "powering up" screen. This went on for about 2 hours, until I decided to call Tivo Support. Actually, I had to wait until they were open.
I was on hold with support for about 45 minutes until I finally got someone. I explained the problem and we then started to troubleshoot. The call lasted two hours. Ugh! We popped out the CCs and it seemd to have fixed the problem. So we re-ran the guide to remove the CC guide. After about 15 minutes of it not crashing, we re-ran the setup to again incude the CCs. What was really weird was as soon as I inserted the first card, the Tivo crashed. So we thought that the CC was bad.
So I removed both cards and everything was fine for about an half hour except that the picture was pixalating, freezing, etc. Support told me that either the cards went bad or the Tivo went bad. So he asked me if I wanted to swap out the Tivo. I told him that I will think about it and get back to them. (He stated that an advanced replacement unit would cost $799 plus shipping until they received my unit)
So I hung up with support and starting thinking about the problem. There was no cards in Tivo and it was still having problems crashing. So I took out my original hard drive and put it back in. Wouldn't you know it, all the problems went away.
Now what is the real problem, the hard drive or the new software version that was installed, 9.2a? So I went to CompUSA, and purchased a 500gb drive ($109), the same size drive I have in there. I copied the suspected drive over to the new drive, that took 5 hours to complete. I placed the new drive into the Tivo and turned it on.
So far, not one crash and I didn't loose any of my recordings.. All is well in the life of the Tivo Series 3.
Just a word of caution, if your Tivo starts rebooting randomly, it just may be that the drive is starting to fail.