This really does sound like a bad power supply. See the info here:

http://www.weaknees.com/bps

Thank you very much for the quick response, I really appreciate it.

I'll try a different power supply and keep my fingers crossed that it fixes the issues!

thank you very much for your quick response. I'm going to try and replace the power supply and keep my fingers crossed that does the trick.

Your tips at the beginning of this thread have been critical in me getting the unit to at least work with one cable card. I really appreciate it.

I will add that as a Time Warner Cable in NYC customer, I have to use a tuning adapter. In order to get to the point where my S3 would work at all I had to follow you instructions including guided setup with nothing attached/plugged in, then next attaching the tuning adapter and redoing guided setup a second time before putting in the cable card.

Looping back to confirm that you were correct and that it was a bad power supply.
I replaced it today and the unit is back to working normally.

Excellent! Glad to hear it and thanks for the feedback.

GREAT thread, I have the same issue

I came home to find my TiVo Rebooting consistently. Having replaced Hard Drives in my TiVo's before I ordered a new hard drive from Weeknees only to find the same repeating boot problem. So I pulled both multistream Cable Cards and was able to do guided set up with the new drive. Then I put in the old drive and could get to my recordings (even though the TiVo didn't like that I had pulled the Cable Cards and wanted to repeat guided set-up). However, every time I just inserted either of the two cards the TiVo immediately rebooted. I tried one last effort and that was to unplug the fan and see if the fan was drawing too much current and I got the same results. I see no physical damage to the power supply (or anything else in the box), so I was reluctant to order a Power Supply, but after reading this thread, I am going to order the Power Supply replacement from Weeknees and see if it fixes my issue as well.

Again, thank you both for this thread.... extremely helpful...
Dave

PS, I will post a result in a week or so when I can get the new power supply in the unit.

I have gone past the steps noted in this thread - replaced the hard drive and removed the cable cards. When I plugin the unit to power only, I get only a blinking Blue light (and flashing on the TV screen). Help - what does this mean?

What exact model is your TiVo?

I have a series3 TCD648250B TiVo Box.

That's probably a power supply, but it could be a motherboard problem.

Can you describe the flashing on the TV a bit more? Do you see a TiVo screen when it flashes on? Have you tried a different HDMI cable?

The flashing on the screen is just multicolored light, no defined pattern. Originally, I was getting the normal TiVo screen saying I was powering up, and almost there with continued recycling. So I ordered and installed a new drive (this is the second time - the first was 2+ years ago. Worked fine until now). With the new drive in, I get the flashing blue light. Then I switched back to the "just replaced" drive and now get the flashing blue light with it. Sounds like I need to send the box in for repair by WeaKnees.

Yup - I'd say sending it in to us at this point is a good plan.

See this repair service for the TiVo Series3 models:

http://www.weaknees.com/s3s4

My TiVo HD (TCD652160) started randomly rebooting a few days ago. I'd be watching live or recorded TV and it would restart, sometimes successfully going to the menu and other times the screen would turn completely grey. Things I've tried:

- Unplugged everything from the back of the box and rebooted. Didn't fix the problem.
- Ran the Kickstart 54 regular SMART test and everything passed. I tried running the overnight version but the machine kept restarting within the first 1-2 hours of the test.
- Found this thread and went through the steps. Took out the 1 cablecard and started going through the "no cablecard" Guided Setup. Got to the part where program info starts slowly loading and then the box rebooted by itself again. Screen would get past the Powering up screen and go to the "Almost there...." screen and then turn completely grey. Went through this process 3 times already with the same result each time.

I got the box from TiVo a long time ago so it's out of warranty. Any ideas on what could be the problem? Hard drive? motherboard? I'm hoping it's an easy fix and I don't have to buy a new TiVo

That sounds pretty clearly like a bad hard drive. If it reboots during the overnight test, then that pretty much has to be a bad hard drive.

You could *also* have a bad power supply. See this page for info about bursting capacitors on TiVo power supplies:

http://www.weaknees.com/bps

Thanks for the quick response! The power supply seems fine so I guess I'll be getting one of your replacement drive kits.