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 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.

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

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

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?

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.

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

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

A Slingbox is not going to cause a TiVo to reboot.

I would suggest you check the power supply for bad capacitors, see:

http://www.weaknees.com/bps

If the power supply looks good, you might want to disconnect the cable from the back of the TiVo to see if the rebooting stops.

You can also test for a bad drive using the kickstart 54 command, described here:

http://www.weaknees.com/tivo-kickstart-codes.php

OK, I replaced the power supply -a couple useful notes for your install page, you need a T8 torx as well for the plug on the power supply, there's six screws (not 2-4), the flat cable doesn't simply pull out, there's a plastic clip that must be unlocked first... other stuff that is easily figured out but the T8 is important and I was lucky it was in the set I had to buy because none of my other sets seemed to have a T10.

The capacitors looked fine, but I was already there and dont have much time, so I replaced it.

The Tivo seems to be fine but then it does go some long time before starting this rebooting nonsense again, I tried your good advice to test the hard drive, but I can not get to the point where I can enter "54". I get the yellow light but only for an instant, not the 10 seconds, and no matter how fast I try to get that 54 in, it just completes the boot

Still, you guys rock. Maybe it is the power supply. I leave tomorrow and will be watching via Slingbox, if it starts rebooting there's nothing I can do

Major thanks for telling me it isnt the Slingbox too.

I'm wondering if anyone has any input as to whether this sounds like a power supply issue (or at least is likely enough to be that it's worth spending the money on a new power supply instead of just buying a new box)...

Last night, I noticed that two of my recordings were "partial." I then went to live TV and saw that no channels were being tuned (it had the spinning screen saying it's waiting for channel information). I rebooted the tivo, and it came back up, but rebooted itself shortly thereafter, ran for a while, and rebooted again.

I popped out the top cable card, it booted up ok, and seemed to run fine for a while. The instant I re-inserted the top cable card, it rebooted. So I permanently removed that cable card, booted it up, and went to bed. It seemed to run ok overnight.

I'm thinking this might be a bad cable card, but I haven't found any reports of people having cable cards show this particular issue (especially rebooting before it even has a chance to recognize the card and start using it), nor have I seen many cases of cards going bad after working fine for months.

I'll still probably try swapping the cable card, but I'm curious if folks here have any other thoughts.

That sounds like a bad power supply to me. See if your power supply has capacitors that resemble the ones in these pictures:

http://www.weaknees.com/bps

Thanks. I haven't opened the box up yet, but I swapped out the cable card that I thought was bad, and it didn't help, so that's just more evidence...

I'd really just pop the lid and see what there, visually.

Yeah, some of the capacitors are bulging. I ordered a new power supply, hopefully that'll fix it. (If it does, it'll be the second time WeaKnees has saved this particular TiVo...)