I tried this and it worked until it decided it didn't.
Took out the cards, rebooted and repeated Guide setup, okay done.
put in one card, and it worked okay. Channels were all there except for premium channels.

Tried putting in the second card, and when testing channels, there weren't any available, yet when I went to Live TV it worked okay. (Except again, no premium channels)

Then, thought wow, cool! I only have to replace the cards. Talked again to Cable company and they tried resending the signal but still no HBO.

Everything was fine, and then it rebooted itself. Bummer!

Then when it came on again, there was no response to the remote. But when I remove both cablecards, the response to the remote works just fine. Everything works fine, except there's only basic cable left, and hardly any channels are visible. Also the reception is very poor.

So with both Cablecards removed it works just fine. So is it a harddrive problem? A Cablecard slot problem?

The Cable company says the problem is with the Tivo, and Tivo says it needs to replace the Tivo too. What do you think?

It's been quite frustrating dealing with this. I've had six calls to Tivo, and will have had four visits by the Cable company. They're coming tomorrow to put a Cablecard into the TV while I wait to send back the Tivo S3HD and get the new one. So at least we can watch TV while things are in transit.

Oh, and before all this trouble, my Tivo S3HD worked fine for the past two years? Almost three!

I'm guessing you might have a bad hard drive. The symptoms do sound a bit like hard drive problems, but the issue is that when the CableCARDs are in the unit, then the unit can receive, record, and buffer HD. HD puts a lot more stress on a hard drive because it's 8 to 10 times the data rate. So it may be that where the drive can handle standard definition streams, it just falls apart under the load of the HD streams.

Thanks wkMichael. I just have to ship this baby off now. I'm glad I found this forum!

Upgrade and Rebooting

Michael - I recently purchased a 1TB upgrade from you for my Series3HD. The unit had previously an external WD500GB. At that time, it was frequently rebooting and freezing. Tivo replaced the box, and while I was waiting for it to arrive, I got the 1TB from you. Upon arrival, I installed the 1TB HD, powered it up for the first time, went through all of the setup. Performance seemed ok. BTW, the box has a Comcast M-series cable card. After calling Comcast to re-authorize the box, I was up and running. And then, the random reboots started again. And, scheduled recordings would be several partials. I called Tivo, and they are again replacing the box; it has just shipped, and I expect it next week. Question - is it likely I had a faulty replacement box last time? Is the 1TB drive faulty? How to further T/S once the replacement box #2 arrives? I did notice that the cable card is rather old, mfg date of 2007 - would that possibly be a factor?

Thanks -

The most likely source of rebooting really is drive failure. So it may make sense for us to test the drive.

Other possibilities are a bad power supply, a bad motherboard, problematic CableCARDs (rare) and a bad cable signal (also very rare).

Try the drive in the replacement unit - that'll at least eliminate the power supply and motherboard possibilities.

You'll need this info when you move the drive to the new unit:

http://www.tivopedia.com/error-51-hardware-error.php

I just replaced the hard drive in my tivo series 3 with two cable cards and the rebooting continues. Usually when I try to access something from the hard drive, but also at random times when I was not actively using the unit. What next? I really want to salvage this tivo since it has the three hundred dollar lifetime activation.

Have you tried running it without the CableCARDs?

Do you have a Wifi adapter plugged into it? If so, try unplugging that.

Next, you should try a replacement power supply:

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

I understand that trouble-shooting can be difficult, that is why I opted for replacing the drive, which is the solution "99% of the time." Of the remaining 1%, how often is it the WiFi connection? How long will the TiVo function without updates from the WiFi connection, as I no longer have a phone line?

I can pay 99 dollars to replace the power supply. If I pay 149 dollars and ship the unit to you, does that guarantee me a working unit regardless of WiFi and cablecard issues? Can you transfer my lifetime subscription to a new unit which will be free of all these bugs and issues?

Thanks for your time and attention in answering, my goal is to have TiVo work for me again and not vice versa. Whatever is fastest and foolproof is my priority.

It's rarely the WiFi, but it's easy to check. It'll work fine for a few days without a connection.

No - paying $149 for a Series3 does not guarantee the return of a working unit. We do offer that service for many models, but at this point, not for the HD models.

For reference, that's here:

http://www.weaknees.com/tff-repair.php

For the TiVoHD and TiVo Series3, there are just some problems we still can't fix. I don't think yours is one of them, but we can guarantee a repair, nevertheless.

I'm having an intermittent booting problem on our refurbished S3 HD unit (single Comcast CableCARD). Some nights it happens four times, then we're ok for a day or so, then maybe once or twice, and soon back to several times per evening--so persistent, but with no clear pattern. Happens when watching both live TV & recorded shows. Accessing Netflix or Amazon also often triggers it. No pixellation or other distortions to speak of.

Thanks for any thoughts about what we're dealing with here. Does this pattern fit anyone else's experience or one of the standard likely causes?

Have you tried running the Kickstart 54 drive test?

See:

TiVo Kickstart Codes

Thanks, Jeff. Despite repeated attempts, I just can't get the machine (a TCD652160 running 11.0d-01-2-652) into kickstart mode. Is there a trick to getting this particular model or OS to kick start?

As long as you see the note in Step 3, that's really the only trick.

A test to see if it is the hard drive causing the reboots

I have been having the spontaneous reboot problem as well. After having read all of the above messages, I tried the following things to see what behaviour resulted:

1. Set both cable cards to HD channels, causing them to buffer the HD signal, then play back a previously record HD show. Result: reboot within 30 seconds. In fact, the only way I could stop it from continuously rebooting after that is to unplug the coaxial cable. This causes buffering to either stop or at least slow significantly, and then upon rebooting back to the tivo menu, I was able to set at least one of the cards to an SD channel and plug the coax back in.

2. Set both cable cards to HD channels, then play back a previously recorded SD show. Result: reboot after 5 minutes or so.

3. Set both cable cards to SD, and play back the same previously recorded HD show that I used in trial #1. Result: no reboot. It was a 2.5 hour movie, and I could watch the whole thing with no problems.

4. Set one cable card to SD, one to HD, and play back an HD show. Result: rebooted after 10-15 minutes or so.

5. Set one cable card to SD, one to HD, then watch the [buffered] live HD show. Result: no reboot.

6. Pick two HD shows that air at the same time, and record them both, but don't watch the TV. (I turned it off.) Result: rebooted about half way in, and I only got pieces of each show.

I tried a number of the above steps multiple times, with similar results each time, with reboots at random lengths of time. But still, the reboot time for scenario #1 was always much shorter than for scenario #2 for example.

So, it seems for me that the reboot time is very much related to how much the hard disk is being used at the time. As in, more data being read and written to disk = quicker time until a reboot.

Based on this, I am guessing it is my drive that is bad, despite all the kickstart tests saying that absolutely nothing is wrong. I'm going to try a single new drive to replace the old one. But, if that does work and if I have to get a new tivo, then hopefully I can use that new drive as a 2nd drive in the new tivo? (Would that work, or does the 2nd drive have a different file structure on it than a primary drive?)