Tivo Bolt - Not booting and blank screen

[ando1011]

I bought a used 500GB Tivo Bolt when plugged in the red lights comes on for 1 second then then goes off. After that nothing else happens. I can hear the fan spinning and the hard drive spin up. I also tried plugging in a network cable to see if the Tivo gets an IP address but it does not. My thinking is that the boot ROM may be corrupt.

• Is there a way to verify this?
• If the boot ROM is corrupt, can it be re-flashed?
• Could something else be wrong?

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Thank in advance
Andy

[WK-Michael]

I've never seen corrupt boot ROM on a TiVo. Ever. I really doubt it's that.

That sounds like a bad drive. We have replacements here:

https://www.weaknees.com/bolt.php

[ando1011]

Thanks WK-Michael...I have a drive that I can try. I will change it out and see if that works.

[WK-Michael]

What drive did you use?

[ando1011]

I had a WD 1TB drive laying around. I bought another used Bolt and put that same 1TB drive in it and it works fine so I know the drive is OK. The bad Bolt is acting like it isn't booting. Just a 1/2 second flash of red light and then nothing else. The fan runs and that is all I can tell. I would really like to get the bad Bolt back to a good state if possible.

Thanks for your help.

[WK-Michael]

OK - I can't really say that's the definitive test of a drive working, but in any event, if you have another Bolt, have you tried the power supply from that other Bolt on the bad one?

[ando1011]

OK - I can't really say that's the definitive test of a drive working, but in any event, if you have another Bolt, have you tried the power supply from that other Bolt on the bad one?

Yes I tried a PS from a good Bolt. Didn't help. I also tried the original 500GB drive from the working Bolt I have. It still did not help. So I think I can safely say it is not the drive in this bad one. I just don't know what else could cause this. Since you are able to put a blank drive in the bolt and boot it, I assumed the TiVo OS is on a ROM chip on the motherboard. My first hunch was that ROM is corrupt and needs to be re-flashed since this unit does not boot.

[WK-Michael]

Sounds like it must be a bad motherboard. We've only seen a couple of those on Bolts, but that sure is all that's left.