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Series 3 restarting/green screening/black screening

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  • Series 3 restarting/green screening/black screening

    Hello, our series 3 has periodically green screened (no text, just bright green and loud screeching) and rebooted just about since we got it in mid-2008. Based on most of our searches, it seemed like replacing the hard drive was the way to go. We purchased a 1TB drive from WK last December or thereabouts. The problems seemed to slow down somewhat, but in the last few months have, become just as bad as ever.

    After calling tivo with my suspicion that it might be a cable card problem, they checked several settings and numbers within the DVD diagnostics and cable card menus before declaring that the cards appear to be operating just fine The tech told me to remove the hdmi cable and also the network cable. I did this a week ago, and hadn't noticed any trouble until tonight, when it "black screened"- same as green screen, but black and loud screeching. It did this during a recorded show. So, after rebooting, I went back to the show and watched it from beginning to end with no repeat of the problem. I guess this means that show was likely not the culprit.

    About an hour later, while watching live tv, it just rebooted out of nowhere. I took the opportunity to run a kickstart 54 automated overnight test. I'm not sure if it will show me any results in the morning, or what. But right now all that's connected to TiVo are power and component cables. So it can't be wireless or wired networking, or an hdmi issue.

    I sure could use some advice on what else to do to get this diagnosed and fixed. Thanks a lot for anyone patient enough to have made it through this.
    Last edited by Ddrummer68; 08-14-2010, 08:30 PM. Reason: Punctuation

  • #2
    Update - Test results

    When I work up this morning, the TV screen was showing a pattern of green dots, and the text

    Seek Time vs. Distance on /dev/hda
    Test Passed

    The Tivo is not responding to any button presses, though. leaving me no choice but to reboot.

    Is this typical Kickstart behavior? I'm not even sure if the results shown are from the final test in the series, or if it froze up in the middle of testing.

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    • #3
      Yup - that's the way a kickstart test works. You need to reboot now.

      You might try swapping the power supply, but otherwise that sounds like a bad motherboard.
      Been here a long time . . .

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      • #4
        Thanks, Michael. I just got off the phone with Tivo support. They are working on identifying the root cause, but suspect signal issues, which is what I originally thought, after the hard drive replacement wasn't 100% successful in resolving the problem. He had me install an attenuator, and we'll see how it goes for a few days. If no luck, we'll get Charter out to check the signal and/or replace the cable cards. My corrected errors on tuner 0 climb by about 150 every second. uncorrected errors remain at zero, which sounds like the cable card is doing its job, but is having to work very hard to do it.
        Last edited by Ddrummer68; 08-15-2010, 12:19 PM. Reason: My original question was irrelevant

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        • #5
          OK - sounds good. Attenuators can help.
          Been here a long time . . .

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