You may want to inspect your power supply, see:

http://www.weaknees.com/bps

Also see:

www.weaknees.com/tivops.php

Series 3 was freezing and or rebooting randomly on live or recordings.
Sometime when it freezes, it will continue after a few minutes followed by a reboot a few seconds later.
This is what I have done so far...
Replaced drive (weaknees drive upgrade) , freezes and reboots still occur
Replaced power supply (weaknees replacement) , freezes and reboots still occur
There are no cable cards, using off air antenna.
Where do I go from here?
How do we determine why the box is rebooting?

I have a similar issue, it has froze 4 times this evening and rebooted 3 times in about 4 hours of use. But both the hard drive and power supply have been replaced, and still rebooting. Most of the time it reboots 2 to 3 times a day, but this evening it seems to have reached a new level!

Have you tried a different power source in your house? Sometimes an old power strip or UPS doesn't supply enough voltage. Try it plugged into the wall directly.

Are you using a network? Try unplugging that.

It is plugged directly into the wall, bypassing the ups. It does not use Ethernet but rather the USB wireless adapter.

Try a Kickstart 54 overnight test on the hard drive:

http://www.weaknees.com/54

Remember, we have replaced the original drive, the first new drive never booted, the second new drive worked, but the reboots continued. I have run the kick start 54 code a couple of times without issue. We also replaced the power supply on your suggestion, the reboots continued.we ran a kickstart code 52 which seemed to solve the reboot issue, but it is back again so I do not know where to go from here.

How do we pull the logs from the series 3 to see if we can find out why it is rebooting?

My Series 3 has never had a problem until it started rebooting continuously about a week ago. I had bought a drive upgrade last year from WK and immediately installed it thinking it was a drive problem. Not so. Continues to reboot continuously. Never gets beyond initial "Please Wait..." screen. I've tried all suggestions listed. Nothing changes. Can't get it to do a "kickstart" either.
Should I send it in for repair? Or do I give up and build a computer DVR?
I have Verizon Fios and also have digital antennas that I don't use. I've tried every configuration I can imagine. Unhooking this and that and then replacing them. Nothing stops or even affects the continuous rebooting.
I LOVE TiVo and have had one since they were first introduced. Upgraded every time there was a new model until Series 3. I consider it perfect, but I won't ever buy another TiVo because although I've transferred my lifetime several times I consider current transfer rates totally unreasonable.

I'd suggest you start by taking a look at the power supply. For more information, see:

TiVo Power Supply Problems--What to look for

I have an HD (series 3?) that was new in Jan. 2011, has been used with a WD "My DVR Extender" (500Gb) since new. No CableCards, always OTA. Last night it rebooted by it self twice, once while watching live TV and the second during the first reboot, after the second screen (Almost there...). When it finally came back to life, i pressed the "Live TV" button and saw a "blue screen with a swirly circle" saying something like "Acquiring channel data" so i went to bed hoping it might finish. I woke up a few hours later and it never went away, so I rebooted again. When it came back up everything was fine.
I saw the "blue screen with a swirly circle" once before this summer and rebooting fixed the problem. Also earlier this summer i have noticed that a couple of the programs that were recorded did not have any audio, however others from that same day did and Live TV did. I'm wondering what this could be.

Sounds like one or both of the drives are failing. I'd do a kickstart 54 to check them:

http://www.weaknees.com/54

Thanks for the help so far, I tried the kickstart 54 last night, the S.M.A.R.T. tests all seem to pass tivo kickstart 54 test results.jpg
after a power cycle, my unit froze at tivo central, but it was blank...tivo after kickstart reboot.jpg
I cycled power again and it came back up but later this morning my wife said that "live tv" was a blank gray screen with no audio.
i asked her to cycle power again but i haven't heard the results, so i'm not sure where to go now.

Try the "overnight" tests.

I need some help desperately as my TiVo recently started encountering these problems as generally described in this thread.

I have a Tivo Series 3 HD unit with an upgraded WD green 1TB HD, two cable cards one single and the other multi-stream.
Connected via HDMI out to TV, coax in for signal, cable tuner via usb, and ethernet cable.

I woke up to find my TiVo in a reboot cycle.

After some trial and error, I found that the TiVo would start fine when the cable cards are removed. I followed the instructions on this thread and repeated guided setup, then was able to use the TiVo and access my recorded shows no problem. This makes me think it is not a failing HD.

I found that every time the multi-stream card was inserted regardless of which slot, the TiVo would shut down and go into the reboot cycle. But the single stream did not seem to cause it to reboot, it would say a cable card is now inserted...

After repeating guided set-up I inserted and got the single stream cable card set up and working 100%. It worked fine and was receiving shows after getting the cable company to ping the card.

Next step, I got a new card from the cable company in case the old multi-stream card went bad. I inserted the new cable card, a multi-stream, into card slot 2 and TiVo automatically shuts itself down and goes into the reboot cycle again.

So I pulled that card and went back to using just the single-stream in slot 1 on the TiVo.

The TiVo NOW goes into the reboot cycle with the single-stream which previously worked. I'm currently repeating guided set-up to see if the original single stream card will work again.

In all this, I can continuously get TiVo to start fine and view my recorded programs as long as no cable card is inserted.

Based upon some other things I've read I thought it could be a bad power supply. I opened up the unit and do not see any obvious signs of bad capacitors but know it still could be bad.


Does anyone have any suggestions for getting things back up and running normally and what sounds like the cause?