no search, no season passes, but guide data up to date, HDR112

[precession7]

Summary: Tivo HDR112 has up to date guide data, but won't return any program search results; Season Passes inoperative, but a program guide selected recording works OK.

Background: This Philips Tivo was upgraded years ago from its original 13 gig HD to a used 80 gig HD pulled from another Tivo. All worked normally until about mid-summer 2014 when messages appeared that the guide data was running low. Daily calls completed normally, and guide data (guide button) was there and up to date, but the To Do List slowly ran dry as Season Pass recordings began to progressively show "none scheduled". The Season Passes cannot see the guide data, for some reason. Also, "Search By Title" turns up "no results", even when I can see the program in the guide. Selecting a program to record from the guide works as expected, normally.

I decided the problem might be due to some corruption in the drive data (indexing for instance) due to a very old hard drive (Seatools showed 72921 power-on-hours on that 80 GB!), so I upgraded the drive to a much younger 160 GB Seagate DB35 I had laying around, using the following MFSTOOLS command from the interactive upgrade instructions:

mfsbackup -Tao - /dev/hda | mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -xzpi - /dev/hdb

note: this saves the recorded programs to the new drive

The new drive powers up and seems to work normally. Unfortunately this has not solved the problem. I was hoping that the Tivo might straighten out whatever had been corrupted over several days of updates and re-indexing the data...but nope. So I deleted most of the Season Passes, plus some unneeded recordings, and turned off "Record Tivo suggestions" in preferences, just to simplify things a bit. All to no avail. The unit still behaves as before, and now is exhibiting some playback problems as well (jumping oddly backwards during Fast Forward, for instance).

My question is: what do you think my next step should be? System Reset? Redo the drive copy with a different command? Copy from the original 13 GB drive? Or something besides the hard drive?

[WK-Jeff]

I'd suggest starting from scratch with a known-good version of the TiVo software and NOT copying recordings.

[precession7]

Following your suggestion, I found a backup file I'd made in 2007 of the original HDR112 hard drive. The backup would contain a known-good version of the software. Using an old Dell desktop, an MFSTOOLS CD and the interactive Tivo upgrade instructions, the backup was restored to the new 160 GB drive:

mfsrestore -s 127 -r 4 -zxpi /mnt/tivodad.bak /dev/hda

..which seemed to run and complete properly; new estimated size 175 hours...reinstalled the drive in the Tivo, and it booted right up! Everything looked great, initially. Of course, the guide data was empty so I made the daily call, and after an hour or so it was "loading data". Let that run overnight, and in the morning System Information showed last status "succeeded". Software version is 3.0-01-1-000.

However the same Sys Info screen shows "Program Guide Data To: none available". Going to "Pick Programs To Record" from the main menu, and the message "No Program Guide Data Remains. Please make a daily call." resides at the bottom. Search By Title, and other selections are unresponsive...you can't find any programs this way! Yet punching the "Guide" button, and all the channels and programs are there! It obviously DOES have guide data.

As far as I can tell, restoring from the backup has not solved any portion of the problem I'm having. The guide data is up to date, but the portion of Tivo that runs the season passes and title search does not see this data. If I use the Guide button to schedule a recording, it works normally, it records the program.

Baffling. What now? I'll try anything you think might help to get this Tivo back into working order. Thanks so much for your help!

[WK-Michael]

First, if you are restoring to a 160 GB drive, you have to limit your drive size so that you don't exceed the 137 GB limit in the TiVo OS.

Next, it may just be that indexing is slow on this old unit. I'd give it 72 hours.

[precession7]

I naively assumed that the Series 1 Tivo OS would 'self-limit' to 137 GB, and simply ignore the remaining 23 GB of actual disk capacity (fine with me!), so I didn't do anything to limit the drive size. The interactive upgrade instructions for a restore from a backup file gave no guidance on capacity limit. I don't know how to limit the drive size. The Seagate DB35 drive I'm using lacks a jumper block option for that.

I really don't care about the wasted 23 GB of drive capacity, but it sounds like you're telling me the Tivo OS won't operate correctly unless the drive space is artificially limited somehow. I have 2 bootable CD's: the mfstools 2.0, and another labeled Tiger's Boot CD MFSLBA48, both made a few years ago. Do either one of these help me to adjust or limit the drive size?

As far as the indexing, I've only got about 20 hours of up-time since I booted Tivo with the new drive...72 hours is still a couple more days away.

[precession7]

The HDR112 has been in continuous operation for about 67 hours now in order to allow time for indexing and background tasks to complete after the hard drive change. There is no sign the season pass/guide problem has been cured. Status and operation is identical to that observed before the original post above, except the playback anomolies seem to have gone away, but the root problem of no season passes or program search persists.

Daily calls complete successfully everyday. Pressing "info" while watching live TV brings up the "Daily Call Required" message in place of the normal program information at the top of the screen. Season passes and all program search functions are inaccessible (trying to select it does nothing). However, pressing the "Guide" button displays the familiar onscreen table populated with all channels and programs, indicating that the guide information is in fact there and up-to-date! Why has the Tivo divorced the program search and season pass functions from the guide data, and how to get them remarried? That is the question.

Some relevant lines from the System Information screen:

Program Guide Data To: None available
Phone Call:
Last Successful: Fri Aug 15 at 4:16am
Last Status: succeeded
Internal Temp: 40C (normal)

It still functions as a DVR, but without the automatic recording features. Any ideas on what else I might try for a fix?

[WK-Michael]

I really think this is a problem due to the formatting of the drive with the full 160 GB in use.

[precession7]

Thank you for your reply. I have removed the 160 GB drive, and replaced it with a Seagate 15.3 GB drive. The smaller drive was prepared using the exact same mfstools command, and in the same PC with the same cable connections as the 160 GB drive was previously, from the same backup file. The backup file came from the original OEM Quantum 13.6 GB drive, and is known good.

Hopefully this will confirm or eliminate the too-much-drive-space question that is hanging over us. Initial bootup and guide updates were normal with the new 15.3 GB setup. So far I have about 20 hours of up-time on it. I'll report the results later after the Series 1 has accumulated at least 72 hours of continuous operation with the smaller drive, to allow plenty of time for all background tasks to complete.

[WK-Michael]

OK - sounds good. Please report back!

[precession7]

Report - the result is: the smaller drive made no improvement of the season pass/program search dysfunction. No change.

Tivo operation appears as before: guide data appears via the "info" button while watching live TV, but remains inaccessible through any "pick programs to record" menus. The "Daily Call Required" warnings remain prominent, as does "No program guide data remains". Playback works normally, including FF/RW pause and skip functions.

Daily calls have generally completed (succeeded), although there have been a couple of "service not answering" during the last 96 hours. Also, the clock appears slow by more than 2 minutes, which seems a peculiar oddity when it should have been set correctly on each daily call.

The clock offset really bothers me - 2 min 44 secs slow. I wonder if this is indicating a motherboard failure that cannot be fixed? I've pondered a system reset, but am hesitant to try it because of reports of Series 1's sometimes getting stuck in the guided setup. Right now (at least) I have a working DVR.

With the too-much-drive-space variable eliminated as a cause for the season pass/program search malfunction, what else may I try for a remedy? Or (gulp!), is it time to face up to the hard facts, and conclude this Tivo is just not fixable?

[WK-Michael]

Can you post the complete software/OS version from your System Information screen, plus the complete model of your TiVo?

[precession7]

From the back panel: Philips model HDR112; and another model number PTV100 (Tivo model number). The unit has Product Lifetime Service.

From the Sys Info screen: Software Version 3.0-01-1-000

[WK-Michael]

That all matches.

Sounds like you just have a corrupt version of the OS.

We can format a drive for you here:

http://www.weaknees.com/misc.php

[precession7]

There's been an astonishing recovery of my HDR112. The Season Pass function and Title Search are back to normal. The clock has been re-synced to the correct time. These functions were restored only after an entire month had passed! I am not exaggerating...close as I can tell, it was over 1 month of operation, and I didn't really do anything (that I know of) to fix it.

Here's what happened: In early September, I replaced the smallish 15 GB test drive with the newer 160 GB drive, using the same drive image as before. This time I did a "System Reset", and wiped out everything possible with that option, the most aggressive choices. The reset didn't seem to have made any difference. All the Season Pass/Program Search and clock offset problems persisted, but I put the unit back in service anyway and used it only to pause live TV. Daily calls were successful, but nothing changed. Then last night I discovered that the Program Search was there, Season Passes were available, and the clock was dead nuts on time! All I can say is that, somehow, the Series 1 has repaired whatever corruption there was, not after 72 hours, or even a week, but only after an entire month of continuous operation. I thought other customers might want to know about this...a Series 1 can take one heck of a long time to recover itself from an error! I suspect most users wouldn't wait that long, making the Weaknees drive format service a better option. Thanks for pointing this out.

[WK-Jeff]

There's been an astonishing recovery of my HDR112. The Season Pass function and Title Search are back to normal. The clock has been re-synced to the correct time. These functions were restored only after an entire month had passed! I am not exaggerating...close as I can tell, it was over 1 month of operation, and I didn't really do anything (that I know of) to fix it.

Here's what happened: In early September, I replaced the smallish 15 GB test drive with the newer 160 GB drive, using the same drive image as before. This time I did a "System Reset", and wiped out everything possible with that option, the most aggressive choices. The reset didn't seem to have made any difference. All the Season Pass/Program Search and clock offset problems persisted, but I put the unit back in service anyway and used it only to pause live TV. Daily calls were successful, but nothing changed. Then last night I discovered that the Program Search was there, Season Passes were available, and the clock was dead nuts on time! All I can say is that, somehow, the Series 1 has repaired whatever corruption there was, not after 72 hours, or even a week, but only after an entire month of continuous operation. I thought other customers might want to know about this...a Series 1 can take one heck of a long time to recover itself from an error! I suspect most users wouldn't wait that long, making the Weaknees drive format service a better option. Thanks for pointing this out.

Glad to hear that you're back up and running!