I purchased a Series 3 HD TiVo around early October. This was my third TiVo for my house, the other two are Series 2. I have not had a single problem with the other two (both are Toshiba). My Series 3 has been nothing but problematic since I got it. I have scoured the internet for what's causing my problems and how to fix it, but nothing has worked so far. Here are the problems I have...

1. The unit will randomly reboot. It doesn't matter if the unit is on or in standby (I can always tell it occurred overnight if both tuners are set to the same channel the next morning). The unit could go a week before a random reboot or it could happen three times a day. It has nothing to do with watching HD channels, I went a week without watching or recording anything in HD and it still rebooted 4 times that week.

2. The unit will occasionally lock up / freeze after changing the channel, pulling up the guide, or hitting the TiVo button. Sometimes it will stay frozen for 2 minutes and then be fine, other times I have to physically unplug the system.

3. The unit will display a black screen for all channels. If I try to rewind the program, the black screen will stay there and the time bar will stay at the current (real life) time. If I skip back to the start of the program, it works normally until a random time, at which point the screen freezes. I can jump to the start of the program again or jump to the end of the program (where the black screen returns). When this occurs, any and every channel I tune to experiences this same problem, while previously recorded shows do not. This problem eventually works itself out, causes a reboot to occur (if I keep fiddling with it), or I force a reboot through the menu.

4. The unit will freeze while fast forwarding near the end of a program. For a 60 minute show, I can't use Fast Forward x2 or x3 after the 45 minute mark, or else the TiVo will freeze (either at the end of the show or after I hit play). Sometimes this will freeze the whole unit and I'll have to force a reboot, other times it forces a reboot on its own.

I have run KS57, 58, and 52 (in that order) to see if that would help. They showed no errors to the hard drive and they did not remedy the problem. I experienced no problems for the first few days, then the unit had back to back reboots within a 4 hour time frame.

Even out of the box, this unit suffered these problems, even before I installed any cable cards. But, I wanted to double check. I have two Scientific Atlanta cable cards (which are actually the 10th and 13th cards that were installed) through Time Warner. I read online these may be faulty, so I completely removed them and re-ran Guided Setup. Once again, the problem seemed better for a few days, but then the system started rebooting and freezing again. This, in my mind, ruled out that the cable cards were faulty, seeing as how problems persisted whether they were installed or not AND they showed no other cable card problems (loss of channels and such).

I called TiVo support after I ran all my "tests" and did my due diligence. TiVo passed the buck onto the cable cards, which I explained had no bearing on the problem. I suggested a hard drive problem, they suggested the Kickstarts, which I already ran a few times. Outside of shipping them the unit to fix/replace (which I refuse to do after a terrible TiVo / Humax experience with a faulty unit... I have ZERO faith in TiVo fixing anything, which usually just means shipping a refurbished unit back to me with seemingly no quality checks), they had no other suggestions.

My question to everyone on this forum... What is wrong with my TiVo? Could it be a power supply problem causing random reboots? Could it be an overheating problem (the unit is well ventilated but perhaps something inside is faulty) causing random lock ups? Could the hard drive be bad (perhaps the 2MB buffer is to blame)?

I'm personally leading to a hard drive problem (as that's what seems to be the most common suggestion to fix problems). But if I'm about to void my warranty (as crappy as it is to begin with) and spend a couple hundred dollars, I want to exhaust every other possibility first. Thanks in advance for the help =D.

Yes, CableCARD issues can cause video problems and can slow down the OS, as the TiVo/card is having trouble processing incoming data. Video issues are far more common with bad cards, though.

I have two ccards, no antenna. I'm finding that there's also serious menu lag whenever one of the tuners is on a HD channel in the background but I'm menuing around outside of Live TV. Question: If it's a ccard issue, would it slow down the TiVo OS, or just cause video issues? Or is it hard to separate the 2 once the signal gets into the TiVo box?

Many thanks - P

That sounds more like a drive issue, to me. HD shows are much more taxing on a drive, since they put about 8x as much data through to the drive (or read that much from the drive).

Do you have both cable and antenna HD? If so, are there any differences?

I have a Series 3 HD unit that is suffering from similar reboot problems. I have gone through the recommended fix of pulling the ccards and repeating setup with unfortunately no luck. Regular channels work OK, and the system is stable. But when I switch to a HD channel (or the unit does via "to do"), the video starts to lag, pause and pixelate. This goes on for about 7 mins, then the unit reboots. Again, this happens every time it goes to an HD channel, but its OK on regular channels and can play previously recorded HD programs just fine. I think the issue started on or around 1/15/09, because I have a few HD shows in "Now Playing" that are all partial :07 and are pixelated, etc. Do you think this is a cablecard issue or drive issue? Other? Thanks for your help!

These all really sound very clearly like a dying hard drive, with the possible exception of the pinkish hue, but that may be also related.

A "replace" kit should fix your problems - see our TiVo Series3 hard drives.

Series 3 freezing/rebooting

I have not used my series 3 tivo for over year until reconnecting it a week ago. I removed and returned the comcast cablecards because I do not have HD or extra digital cable channels now - just have regular cable. Now I am having constant problems with: menus transitioning slowly, menus freezing, live tv freezing & stuttering, tivo not responding to remote, frequent/random reboots, pinkish hue on menus after reboot and while menu is frozen, programs not recording or freezing, reboots occuring during recording, etc...HELP!!!

What's wrong???? What can I do???? I am not super tech savvy so I did not understand much of the discussion here so give me the "Kindergarten" version please! Thanks!

Glad to hear the drive is working well!

As for the lights, they are a bit bright. But, as you discovered, they're very focused, so turning the case a slight bit lessens the impact significantly. They're like little lasers in a dark room.

There's no 'space remaining' indicator on a TiVo. The only thing you can do is to turn automatic recording of TiVo Suggestions on, and then keep an eye on the Suggestions folder. It uses all available 'free' space, so the length of the list is an indicator of how much free space is really on the drive. This is pretty much the only way to gauge free space on a TiVo.

The new 1TB expander arrived from WeaKnees Friday, right on schedule. It was expertly and very safely packaged, had excellent instructions and was very easy to hook up. Sadly, I had the flu for 4 days and didn't get to hook it up until 2 days ago, but the drive is working great! The only complaint I have (if you could call it that) is that the two blue LEDs on the front are excessively bright. While watching a movie in the dark on my 65", they were a little annoying. All I did was carefully turn the unit sideways in my cabinet and it took care of the problem. I now have a total of 179HD hours and 1565SD hours of capacity. That should be enough for now. Having the extra space of the larger drive is allowing me to record a lot more shows in HD than I could before without worrying about other shows getting deleted due to available space.
I do have one more question. Is there a way to determine how much available space I have left on the drive for recording shows? This would be similar to clicking on "properties" for the "C" drive on a PC to get a pie graph of used/available space. I realize the buffer is always going to be taking up a variable amount of space, but it'd be nice if I could see approximately how much space I have left.
Again, thanks WeaKnees for the expert advice and great product. I'll be coming to you for all of my future Tivo needs!

Bob

I agree and thanks for your expert advise. I ordered a new 1TB external drive from WeaKnees today. It should arrive this Friday. (Next day was $40. It's too soon after Christmas to splurge!) I didn't want to lose the few programs that were spared when I divorced the defective WD Expander drive. I'd rather had a new internal right now, but didn't want to have to send the entire Tivo in to you down the road when I could afford another expander. This seemed to be the easiest fix for me at this time. Maybe in the future I'll send it to you to have a new 5TB hard drive installed. I'll update everyone on how my new external drive works out. Thanks again for all of your help.
Bob

Already checked the new SATA cable for my former expander. Didn't solve the problem. Will keep it for the new one. Thanks!

Just make sure to get a new eSATA cable for the unit also. Those can be the source of problems, too.

Appears to be bad Expander

An update... I removed my expander Sunday night and haven't had an issue with the Tivo restarting or freezing since. At least not that I'm aware. I RMA'd the WD Expander drive and the replacement drive has been shipped. Hopefully this new expander will last longer. If not I'll ditch the sucker and just get a larger internal drive from weaknees. Thanks for the input Michael! Highly recommend divorcing your Tivo from the expander if you have issues similar to mine. Seems to have solved the problem. WD warranty return program is also very easy, so would highly recommend doing a warranty return if you are having problems like mine and your expander is still within the 1 year warranty.

Bochco -

It really does sound like a bad external, given all of the test results.

Another update: I tried a chemical called Stabilant 22 on the eSata cables and it now recognizes the external drive, however it still freezes when watching programs and fast forwarding them. The chemical is a substance I use as a biomedical technician for enhancing low voltage computer connections on dialysis machines. It works wonders!
I went ahead and divorced the drive last night and I was able to watch a full hours worth of shows. I had hoped I hadn't lost the episode of Heroes that I had been watching because it froze every time I tried to watch it around the 31-34 minute mark in the program. This would have been a good test. Sadly most of my shows are gone, but so far it seems like Tivo is working again. I'm going to check into a new external drive today and continue updating on my progress.
Bob