I just upgraded 2 Series 2's - one because I never had upgraded it, and one because the old (upgraded) drives apparently went bad after 2 years. (I heard clicking noises every time it tried to access and got the Green screen that wouldn't go away, it would just restart the unit).

I got 2 identical Seagate 500 gb hard drives and everything went well with the unit that had never been upgraded, as I could use its current up-to-date version for the image. (No problems once I recognized I had to use the -r 4 line on mfsrestore for this size - thanks to your info on your site).

However, the unit that was upgraded a couple of years ago is still dead. Part of the problem may be that while I have a tivo.bak, it is at least 2 years old. I finally got the unit running and even got it to connect to Tivo wirelessly to download. I assume this brought back the most recent version of Tivo. It warned me that it needed to configure, and that it might take 3 hours or more. I left it on all night, but in the morning it was still on the same screen (at least 10 hours). I tried unplugging it and plugging it back in, and it still goes to "Preparing the Service Update", but never completes. it does not restart on its own, it just sits on this message.

Any suggestions?

I know the hard drive is ok, because I tried both drives in both units. I purchased both Tivo's very close to the same time, is there some way I can use the more current image on the malfunctioning unit, and if so what do I need to watch for?

Of course, the problem unit has to be the unit with Lifetime Tivo activation!

Thanks very much ahead of time for any help.