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Please excuse the lengthy narrative -- I want to document in detail the symptoms I'm seeing and and everything I've tried so far.
I purchased a used TiVo HD TCD652160 last week and was able to initially boot the unit, connect to the TiVo service and get all the way through Guided Setup. Everything looked good except I noticed that the cooling fan was not spinning (the System Information screen showed the internal temperature as "high, still ok"). I proceeded to do a "Clear and delete everything" to restore the box to its initial state, figuring I would troubleshoot the fan problem later. After the clear/delete process completed, I was back at the Guided Setup screen (as expected). I then powered off the unit to see why the fan wasn't working.
I removed the cover and discovered why -- the fan wasn't even connected to the connector on the motherboard(!) So I went ahead and connected it, powered on the unit momentarily to confirm that the fan was now working (it was), then powered the unit off again, replaced the cover, reconnected all my cables and powered the unit back on. That's when things went south.
The unit displayed the usual "Welcome Powering up..." screen, but then, approx 15 seconds later, it rebooted (the TV screen blanked, then the welcome message reappeared. This reboot-every-15 secs pattern continued, and after 30 minutes I unplugged the unit.
To "keep it simple" I unplugged the network cable and eSATA cable connecting the My DVR expander drive. I plugged the unit back in again but the same reboot pattern continued. I gave up and again powered off the unit. I unplugged the cooling fan, thinking that it might have someone been the cause of the reboot problem, but the rebooting persisted.
I went off to research ways to break into the boot sequence to run diagnostics (kickstart codes). I tried entering a kickstart code, but the unit kept rebooting long before the point where it would accept a kickstart code. Again I gave up and powered off the unit until the next day.
When I powered on the unit the next day the initial boot sequence was visibly different than before -- the green LED remained off for almost a minute, then started blinking in a non-regular pattern (similar to a PC's drive activity LED). Eventually the Welcome screen appeared, followed by several 15-sec reboots. But then the green light stayed on and the "Almost there" screen eventually appeared. A couple of minutes later, the "You are about to begin Guided Setup" screen appeared, but the unit then immediately rebooted. At that point the 15-sec reboots persisted until I
again gave up and powered off the unit overnight.
The next day the unit again got further in its boot sequence, to the point where I was able to enter the 54 kickstart code and bring up the hard drive test menu. I ran the SMART tests and the drive passed all of them. I then started the next test on the menu (a random read test I think), and the test started, but after about 30 secs. the unit rebooted. This time the unit never got beyond the repeated 15-sec reboots so I left the unit powered off for the rest of the day.
That evening I managed to get back to the 54 hard drive test menu. I repeated the same test that had caused a reboot earlier. This time the test completed and showed that the drive passed. I then ran the "short automated test" and again each of the tests completed and reported "pass."
Thinking that the problem was the hard drive (in spite of the passed tests), I decided to use the 56 'Software Install' kickstart option to donwload/install a new copy of the software. I powered the unit off, plugged in the network cable, powered back on -- this time the green light stayed on with no reboots -- and entered the 56 kickstart code. The Almost There screen appeared a few minutes later, but a text message at the top of the screen said "Connection failed." I repeated the same kickstart code, this time with a telephone cable connected, and got the same result. I tried various other kickstart codes that required connecting to the server. Some of them displayed the same Connection failed message while others triggered a reboot.
Several times now I've managed to get the unit to boot all the way to the Guided Setup screen, but in every instance the unit immediately reboots and then continues rebooting.
End of story
My questions:
1. Does this sound like a hard drive problem? I don't want to spend te money to replace the drive only to learn that the problem is elsewhere.
2. Could this be caused by a bad memory chip? A TiVo tech support guy I spoke with claimed the unit doesn't even start accessing the drive until "a minute or so" into the boot sequence. The reboots occur well before then.
3. Could simply reconnecting the cooling fan cause the problems I'm seeing? Seems unlikely, although it was immediately after connecting the fan that the reboot problems first appeared.
4. Any other theories or suggestions for troubleshooting next steps?
Thanks,
I purchased a used TiVo HD TCD652160 last week and was able to initially boot the unit, connect to the TiVo service and get all the way through Guided Setup. Everything looked good except I noticed that the cooling fan was not spinning (the System Information screen showed the internal temperature as "high, still ok"). I proceeded to do a "Clear and delete everything" to restore the box to its initial state, figuring I would troubleshoot the fan problem later. After the clear/delete process completed, I was back at the Guided Setup screen (as expected). I then powered off the unit to see why the fan wasn't working.
I removed the cover and discovered why -- the fan wasn't even connected to the connector on the motherboard(!) So I went ahead and connected it, powered on the unit momentarily to confirm that the fan was now working (it was), then powered the unit off again, replaced the cover, reconnected all my cables and powered the unit back on. That's when things went south.
The unit displayed the usual "Welcome Powering up..." screen, but then, approx 15 seconds later, it rebooted (the TV screen blanked, then the welcome message reappeared. This reboot-every-15 secs pattern continued, and after 30 minutes I unplugged the unit.
To "keep it simple" I unplugged the network cable and eSATA cable connecting the My DVR expander drive. I plugged the unit back in again but the same reboot pattern continued. I gave up and again powered off the unit. I unplugged the cooling fan, thinking that it might have someone been the cause of the reboot problem, but the rebooting persisted.
I went off to research ways to break into the boot sequence to run diagnostics (kickstart codes). I tried entering a kickstart code, but the unit kept rebooting long before the point where it would accept a kickstart code. Again I gave up and powered off the unit until the next day.
When I powered on the unit the next day the initial boot sequence was visibly different than before -- the green LED remained off for almost a minute, then started blinking in a non-regular pattern (similar to a PC's drive activity LED). Eventually the Welcome screen appeared, followed by several 15-sec reboots. But then the green light stayed on and the "Almost there" screen eventually appeared. A couple of minutes later, the "You are about to begin Guided Setup" screen appeared, but the unit then immediately rebooted. At that point the 15-sec reboots persisted until I
again gave up and powered off the unit overnight.
The next day the unit again got further in its boot sequence, to the point where I was able to enter the 54 kickstart code and bring up the hard drive test menu. I ran the SMART tests and the drive passed all of them. I then started the next test on the menu (a random read test I think), and the test started, but after about 30 secs. the unit rebooted. This time the unit never got beyond the repeated 15-sec reboots so I left the unit powered off for the rest of the day.
That evening I managed to get back to the 54 hard drive test menu. I repeated the same test that had caused a reboot earlier. This time the test completed and showed that the drive passed. I then ran the "short automated test" and again each of the tests completed and reported "pass."
Thinking that the problem was the hard drive (in spite of the passed tests), I decided to use the 56 'Software Install' kickstart option to donwload/install a new copy of the software. I powered the unit off, plugged in the network cable, powered back on -- this time the green light stayed on with no reboots -- and entered the 56 kickstart code. The Almost There screen appeared a few minutes later, but a text message at the top of the screen said "Connection failed." I repeated the same kickstart code, this time with a telephone cable connected, and got the same result. I tried various other kickstart codes that required connecting to the server. Some of them displayed the same Connection failed message while others triggered a reboot.
Several times now I've managed to get the unit to boot all the way to the Guided Setup screen, but in every instance the unit immediately reboots and then continues rebooting.
End of story
My questions:
1. Does this sound like a hard drive problem? I don't want to spend te money to replace the drive only to learn that the problem is elsewhere.
2. Could this be caused by a bad memory chip? A TiVo tech support guy I spoke with claimed the unit doesn't even start accessing the drive until "a minute or so" into the boot sequence. The reboots occur well before then.
3. Could simply reconnecting the cooling fan cause the problems I'm seeing? Seems unlikely, although it was immediately after connecting the fan that the reboot problems first appeared.
4. Any other theories or suggestions for troubleshooting next steps?
Thanks,
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