Hard to say on the truck roll. Fewer and fewer cable companies need to do this to re-auth a CableCARD, but some still do unfortunately.

But that does sound like a bad drive.

So regardless of what Time Warners policy may be, replaceing the hard drive will require the cable card to be re- paired to the unit ?..

In most cases, no...no call to TW will be necessary. In rare cases, changing a drive requires the cards to be re-hit or re-programmed...and technologically, that can be done without a truck roll.

Just wanted to update, after walking away from the unit for some time the unit seemed to return to normal. However it continues to freeze within 30 mins of playing recorded content and then reboots. There seems to be no problems with it recording or new programming or transferring to or from this unit nor with watching live programs, the problem only seems to occur while playing back recorded content. I'm wondering if this might be indicative of a power supply issue ?.

As always thank you for your helpful input..

We've really only very rarely seen power supply failures on Premiere units, but it's certainly possible.

But these problems really sound like drive problems. I'd try the kickstart 54:

http://www.weaknees.com/54

Ok latest update, I tried the KS54 and ran the overnight test which reported no issues. Since I had been considering upgrading the capacity anyway I upgraded to a 1TB drive copying all the prior content from the stock 320 GB drive to the new larger one. The upgrade went without incident. However within an hour of again watching recorded programming on the unit the problem would re-occur, that is the playback would freeze followed by a system re-boot. Unit does not seem to have any problems with continuing to record multiple streams or watch live tv the issue only occurs whilst playing back previously recorded content.

It's now my amatuer opinion that a hard disk mechanical issue is not at fault, any thoughts as to where I should look, what to attempt next... Things that occur to me although I'm not sure how to troubleshoot would be..

1. Corruption or bug in the installed TIVO software on the unit, force Emergency Reinstall ?

2. Power Supply or motherboard component failure ?

Thanks as always..

I highly doubt it's #1. You might try pulling the cable signal from the back and/or pulling the cablecard and seeing if the unit will run without both...just to see if either of those is causing a problem.

Ok will try these over the weekend. Txs

Also posted in another thread on this forum...

I'm having a similar problem w/ my XL. On turning the TV on for the first time in 10 days, I noted that the TiVo was in the process of rebooting, and was stuck on the "few minutes more" screen. After about 30 minutes, I pulled the plug to restart. Things seemed to go well, but the box would freeze briefly, then self re-boot every 3 minutes or so. I emailed TiVo and got this reply:
"Thank you for contacting TiVo Customer Support. I would be glad to help you with your box rebooting,

I see that with your last successful connection, the TiVo box installed our most recent software update. We have been experiencing some unforeseen side effects of this update on some Premiere boxes. Let's first try disconnecting the CableCARD and see if your box still reboots on the connection.

If the box remains stable without the CableCARD and only reboots when inserted, this is an issue under investigation. You may try exchanging the CableCARD for another with your Cable Provider, but at this time, it is not known if that will resolve the issue.

If the box reboots again with the CableCARD disconnected or after replacing the CableCARD, let us know so that we can troubleshoot further and forward the updated information to our researchers. "

I pulled the card and disconnected the tuning adapter and rebooted. Things were stable until I put the card back in and reconnected the adapter. The incessant self rebooting started again. I tried one more time leaving the card in but disconnecting the tuning adapter. Now the box is stable, but I'm stuck w/o HD or the ability to receive most of the channels I used to.

I asked if it was possible to roll back to the old software, which seemed to be working fine, but was told there is no way to do that. I'm going to try a new cable card, but am not holding out much hope for this. I believe it will take a software fix to resolve the problem.

Thanks - saw the post in the other thread also.