Hi- I posted a couple pages back when my Series3 started rebooting in July.

I was watching via Slingbox when it happened. Cable company came out to replace the cards in August, tried some of the fixes here, declared it a Tivo problem somehow powered down the S3- but it was still plugged in to the power strip. (?)

I went on vacation and when I came back in September and plugged it in, no problem.
http://www.wkforums.com/forums/showp...&postcount=192

Mid-October I was watching via Slingbox (and this is the old standalone Slingbox, not web-based) and again I got the rebooting.
I am living remotely in Pennsylvania, the Tivo is in NYC. I will be in NYC this weekend. What makes the rebooting happen but stops for a while after the unit has been unplugged? Or is it the Slingbox making this happen?
I'd like to order the parts and fix it while i am in NYC if at all possible, this is pretty annoying!
I'm ordering a power supply as recommended, does it still sound like the power supply?
Many thanks

Did you eventually replace the hard drive and did it resolve your problem?

There's really no way to know which drive it is without testing both.

If you get an internal 250, no, there's no way that'll rescue shows on the external. It'll reformat the external when you reattach it.

Do you think it's the internal drive and not the 1 TB external? I may just order a new 250 GB from you to get it going again. Would I possibly retain some of the shows on the external?

That's almost definitely a bad hard drive, and probably just coincidental that it happened around the cable outage.

Replacement hard drives are here, by model number:

http://www.weaknees.com/tivo-upgrade.php

Kickstart 54 not working

I have a Series 3 with a WeaKnees 1 TB expander. A day ago we had a cable outage (that I didn't know about) and my TiVo gave me an error code stating it couldn't receive all the channels. It wouldn't even let me watch recorded shows. I called Charter and they said there was an outage and that some of the stations worked and others didn't. They said it should be back up in an hour or so. I waited the time and went back. The TiVo still gave me the error code, but when I went to live TV and then back to Now Playing list, it worked. Today I just turned my TV on and found the Welcome, Powering Up screen. It will not go past this screen. I tried performing a Kickstart 54 and it continues with the Welcome Powering Up message. Any ideas on what I should do at this point. I'm suspecting a hard drive failure (I'm really tired of these) but can't test it. Power cycling does not help either. Suggestion?
Thanks, Bob

Having trouble with a stock HD -- it's just switching between the "Powering Up" and "Almost there." screens, cable card installed or no. It's been off for a while, but I reinstalled it last week and everything seemed OK. Perhaps a flaky power supply?

Kickstart 54 seems to reveal bad badness in the S.M.A.R.T. tests. Time to upgrade the HD, I guess.

Update: completed another set of SMART tests (the drive passed them). From there the box finished through the "just a few more minutes" and THX screens...and arrived at the Tivo Central menu screen. But this time, the menu came up, and it worked...I was actually able to navigate through it. (Didn't risk actually trying to play anything.)

The only thing that had changed was that the Series3 was no longer hooked up to the cable outlet. (I had moved a cable box in from another room.)

The only thing I can think of is that not having to buffer live TV is keeping the hard drive from stalling and rebooting the Series3. (I had already yanked the cable cards, but apparently the drive was too fragile to even buffer an analog channel?) That would seem to confirm that the hard drive is the problem.

It's been two hours, and the Series3 has still not reset. I am in the process of transferring the recordings I want to keep to the basement TivoHD - so far, so good. Looks like it's time to order a replacement drive for the Series3!

Thanks for these forums! They helped me wade through the problem and stumble onto a solution - and it looks like I will salvage my recordings, too!

Having the CableCARDs in shouldn't have any effect at all on a SMART test. So I'd guess your drive is just failing intermittently.

Try the SMART tests a few more times and see what you get.

My Series3 has also started the dreaded reboot cycle...trying to determine if it is the hard drive, power supply, or both. (It's a lifetime box, so would like to repair rather than replace it.)

First came the pixelization and freezing. By the next morning the box was into the reboot cycle. Ran the SMART tests, one test (conveyance?) failed, with an "07" code.

Removed the cable cards (2 old single stream). Have re-run SMART tests with no cable cards in - drive has passed all tests.

When the box reboots, it makes it through the "powering up", "just a few minutes more", and THX screens...all the way to the Tivo Central menu screen. Sometimes the menu text comes up eventually, sometimes it doesn't and only the background appears...either way, the box reboots again from that screen after a couple of minutes.

Any thoughts which component is causing this? I am leaning toward power supply (since the drive is passing the SMART tests without the cable cards), but am not at all certain.

Sure - a second CableCARD will draw more power. The difference is probably pretty slight, but there's always the straw that broke the camel's back.

Thanks for the suggestion Kicker3. That may just be the right idea.

My HD passed all the S.M.A.R.T. test and the Overnight test on Kickstart 54, so I am thinking my HD is OK.

My S3 consistently boots with zero or one cable cards inserted and functions as you would expect give the config. And it consistently reboots when two cable cards are inserted at the final stage of the boot sequence.

Would two cable cards put more strain on the power supply than one? Could my power supply be the problem? Keep in mind that with no cable cards it is able to record two HD shows at once without any problems from networks which TWC here does not encrypt. So the powers supply has no problem with recording off both tuners with no cable cards. Do the cable cards increase the power requirements? Maybe they draw more power to do the decryption of the signal and two at once pushes the limit of my power supply which could be partially damaged. Does that sound like a reasonable theory?

Is it normal for the Tivo to reboot when inserting a cable card? Even when I go from running with none to inserting just one cable card it instantly triggers a reboot. I don't recall that being the case, but it has been a while. Could that be another sign that it is indeed my power supply is faulty?

Thanks,
--mike

Mike & Johnny,

I had the exact same problems with my S3 the past week. First, it wouldn't boot past the initial screen. So, figured hard drive was bad. Ordered new drive and replaced it. After that, it would boot but NOT with cable cards in it. I could sometimes get it to boot with 1 cable card but not all the times. It would start to boot then go into a cycle of rebooting like you described. When I upgraded the drive, I also purchased a new slide remote. The slide remote had has a USB bluetooth dongle that plugs into the back. When I started the boot process, I would notice that the blue light would be flickering/fading, which isn't normal. So, I took a gamble and ordered a replacement power supply. I installed it last night and VOILA! The device booted up perfectly with both cable cards perfectly and with no problems.

So, I would suggest buying a new replacement power supply. It was a piece of cake to change out in the S3. I don't know if it was both the hard drive or power supply. But, that combo worked perfectly and its been running with no problems for 24 hours now.

I hope this helps.

Thanks for the suggestion Michael. I will give that a try.

By the way I should have mentioned that with no Cable Cards inserted it was able to boot and was buffering two shows at once.

But it is probably still worth a testing out the Kickstart 54.

My guess is that you have a bad drive. Having two cards in the unit means that the unit is buffering two shows at once, so that's a lot of work for the drive. It may be able to buffer one show, but just not two.

You can have the TiVo check the drive - see these kickstart tests:

http://www.weaknees.com/54