R10 Hangs at "Almost there..."

[cburke]

Greetings,

I have a DirecTV R10 unmodified Tivo. As of a few days ago, it no longer boots. It gets to the "Almost there..." stage and then hangs there.

I have some past experience with Tivo modifications, so I pulled the drive and had a look with mfstools, the partitions were there. I happened to have a spare 80gb drive lying around, so I did a backup from the original drive with mfstools and restored it to the "new" drive. This was successful, however upon booting - it still hangs at the "Almost there..." screen.

Next I tried re-imaging the "new" drive with Instantcake. This also appeared to be successful, but the system still hangs at "Almost there....".

Other notes:

The fan was out when I opened it, so this may have led to some heat damage.

A couple of times instead of hanging, it rebooted at the "Almost there..." screen (doubt this matters).

Anyhow - I'm thinking of sending it in to Weaknees for repair, but I want to make sure I'm not missing something that I can still check/fix myself. Any thoughts?

Thanks,

-C

[WK-Michael]

Sounds like it's potentially a motherboard issue. Have you tried disconnecting the SAT cables and pulling out the access card.

[jms]

Hi,
Longtime DIRECTV (over 10 years) and WK customer
Own four TIVO's in different parts of the house (2 upgraded WK drives)
I have R10 in Master Bedroom w/ WK 500GB drive (2 yrs old)
It stuck - toggles back and forth between "powering up" and "almost there"
Called and bought new 750GB from WK and installed - same problem
Called and bought new power supply from WK and installed - same problem
Called and bought new R10 from WK - tried both drives and power supplies - same problem
Tried new and old R10's in living room - same problem
Even tried to run extension cord to different outlet if it was weak outlet - didn't use power stick - same problem
Just to further troubleshoot - tried different working TIVO from living room in master bedroom - worked fine
So unless y'all sent a bad replacement HD (a 750GB) I've tried everything I can think of!!
What's up???? Can you please help???

[WK-Michael]

Sounds like we should check the HD.

With the new HD, was there a new IDE cable and adapter? Are you using those?

Is the living room TiVo an R10 also? If so, try the drive in there.

Have you tried pressing the red button inside the access card door?

[cburke]

Originally Posted by WK-Michael

Sounds like it's potentially a motherboard issue. Have you tried disconnecting the SAT cables and pulling out the access card.

I do have the SAT sables disconnected, but I haven't tried booting with the access card out (although I've removed and re-inserted it). I will give it a try with the access-card removed when I get home tonight.

Thanks,

-C

[WK-Michael]

OK - if that doesn't give a clue, email info@weaknees.com with your order number and we can see about testing out the drive.