Next Step

I went back in again and pulled / reseated all of the cables one more time - now I do get to the "powering up" screen with the green light on steady but it stays there for 10-20 minutes and just goes blank.

I never hear the hard drive spin that I can tell.

That's really most likely a cabling issue, but some other possibilities are:

-your factory drive died during the process (moving a drive while it's still spinning can cause this, as can age)

-your TiVo OS is an older version and needs to be updated. If so, try just booting with only the factory drive, and if it boots, report back with your OS version.

Confused

Thank you for your reply.

I am confused by part of your response: "-your factory drive died during the process (moving a drive while it's still spinning can cause this, as can age)". I replaced the factory drive with a new Weaknees single hard drive upgrade (Seagate 250 Gbytes).

I have probably unplugged the unit when it shuts off and tried to reboot it 15-20 times today. I have actually reached the "getting setup info" screen, and twice made it to the "getting program info" screen, but it always quits at some point. Sometimes it blacks out and returns to the "powering up screen", but usually it just flickers and blacks out, with the green and amber lights on the left of the case flickering / blinking.

I tried an IDE cable from my other desktop computer with the same results.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thank you!

software version

I tried several combinations: a) old power supply and new hard drive; b) new power supply and old hard drive; c) new power supply and new hard drive.

The new hard drive never did get past the 'getting info' screen (it was lucky to get that far most of the time) without blacking out. It was the same with both the old and the new power supplies.

The old hard drive acted like it has been for the last couple of weeks. On the new power supply it would either: a) have the green light on but a blacked out screen; or b) it would boot up and work fine until the screen would freeze, becoming unresponsive to the remote control.

The software version on the old hard drive shows 8.1-01-2-140.

I did try an IDE cable out of a desktop computer with the new hard drive, but with no different results whatsoever. The contacts on the cable from the power supply to the motherboard look nice and shiny.

Since the old HD boots up and works at times before the screen freezes, but the new HD never does get close to that point, I have to feel skeptical of the health of the new Seagate upgrade drive.

Any suggestions?

I think we sent an email about getting both parts back here for testing. If that wasn't you, please post back or email us.