That's almost definitely a hard drive problem. A "replace" kit for your model should fix the problem:

http://www.weaknees.com/s325.php

Same thing started happening to my Series 3 as well. I bought it right when they were released.

Rebooting maybe once an hour. When it comes back up, menus are slow, remote is slow to respond, but video plays ok.

It has lifetime so I want to find the cheapest way to fix it to possibly sell it and buy a new Premiere.

What is likely the cause? Hard drive?

-smak-

It reboots and passed the overnight tests? Then I'd try a new power supply:

http://www.weaknees.com/tivo-power-supply.php

but it may be a motherboard issue.

Continuous Reboot

I have a Series 3 that just started to continuously reboot. It will boot all the way up, but I only have about 10-20 seconds before it reboots.

I've run Kickstart 54 and it passes all the tests. Is there something else I can try?

Sounds great! Yup - I think once they re-hit the CableCARDs, you'll be all set.

OK, I think we have a winner here. I brought the Series 3 back to its owner and connected it up to cable. Started it up, went through Guided Setup and inserted the cable cards when prompted. I got a warning that the cards would need to be authorized, but I just continued through the setup -- when it was finished, it was working! Cables channels were received on both tuners; no reboots; all seemed normal.

The only thing out of the ordinary is that her premium channels don't come in -- you get the gray cable card info screen on those channels. I'm guessing the cards just need a reauthorization hit or something like that -- she's going to give Comcast a call later.

Anyway, bottom-line ... I think the new drive and fresh image did the trick! Thanks for your help!

Will do. Works great with just the antenna -- as good as the day it came out of the box.

OK - tell us how it goes.

Well, I hooked it up to cable this afternoon and while it ran longer between reboots (about 20 minutes, vs 2 with no signal), it's still hosed. Just purchased and loaded a fresh image -- running it through Guided Setup right now for antenna only (as that's all I have). Assuming it works, I'll take it over to my friend's house this weekend, hook it back up to cable, run Guided Setup again and hope for the best. If that doesn't fix it, I'm out of ideas. It would almost certainly have to be cable card related at that point, as it works fine with antenna only.

These days, most CableCARDs just work after a reinstall with a fresh image.

If not, you can generally just call the cable company, provide them with the new Host ID, and they'll re-authorize the cards immediately.

Wow, I appreciate your quick response! I guess this is just indicative of the great service WeaKnees provides. I've bought a number of things from you guys and the experience has always been top-notch!

One other question if I may: If I have to reinstall a fresh OS, what happens with the cable cards? Will Comcast have to come back out to do anything, or should they just work? Wondering what kind of a monster this will unleash.

It could be that some of the libraries that deal with CableCARDs are corrupted and that the rest of the OS is just fine.

Thanks Michael! That's kind of what I thought too, but I figured I would try the drive-copy method first as it would save a few bucks. The only thing that is not setting right with my brain right now is why the OS works fine once I set it to "antenna only?" I would think if the OS was corrupted, everything would be hosed.

Well, I'm going to take it back to its home later this afternoon, connect it back to the cable and see what happens. If that doesn't work, I'll re-do Guided Setup while connected to cable. And if THAT doesn't work, then I'll wipe the drive and install the OS from scratch.

My guess is that you have some software corruption in the OS, and that a drive formatted with a fresh OS would fix the problem. Hard to know until you try, but that's the first thing I'd try.

Hi everybody! I'm new here, though I've got many years logged over in the TiVo Community Forum, AVS Forum, etc.

Anyway, I'm here because I am troubleshooting a S3 for a friend. I'm kind of on-the-hook for it since I sold it to them about 6 months ago. I had it connected to an antenna only, but they are using cable cards. Not that long ago, it developed a problem with pixellated recordings and/or Live TV, and then the entire menu structure became unresponsive.

This sounded like a bad hard drive to me, so I dropped a new one in there, using WinMFS to copy the old drive. That fixed the menu problem, but then I found the machine was rebooting itself exactly 2 minutes and 20 seconds after it started up and the main menu appeared!

In troubleshooting this, I decided to re-do Guided Setup since I do NOT have cable here, so there's no way for me to feed it the signal it is looking for. Once I re-did setup using antenna only, it works fine ... good as new.

So my question is, do you think that once the cable signal is connected again, it will stop the reboot cycle? Or maybe I need to redo Guided Setup with the cable connected?

Any tips or tricks appreciated!