Series 2 1400060 rebooting after 9.3.2b

[jnapoleone]

I was able to successfully bake a 120Gb Maxtor drive to the 9.3 release in the instantcake software. The TiVo appeared to be working fine for about a week and had been upgrading through the various releases, then started constantly rebooting after it received 9.3.2b.

The unit appears to be fine and the reboots complete to the point where I can do a few things like watch live tv and start recordings. After a while it will reboot and start over again.

Anything known problems with 9.3.2b and older series 2 units? Could it be rebooting to complete the install and failing?

How hard would it be to get the 9.3.2b software and make a new instantcake that installs 9.3.2b from the start? Is there a way to stop it from upgrading the software?

I have been searching through tivocommunity and dealdatabase for info without luck.

Thanks for any tips/info,

John

[Lou Jacob]

I was able to successfully bake a 120Gb Maxtor drive to the 9.3 release in the instantcake software. The TiVo appeared to be working fine for about a week and had been upgrading through the various releases, then started constantly rebooting after it received 9.3.2b.

The unit appears to be fine and the reboots complete to the point where I can do a few things like watch live tv and start recordings. After a while it will reboot and start over again.

Anything known problems with 9.3.2b and older series 2 units? Could it be rebooting to complete the install and failing?

How hard would it be to get the 9.3.2b software and make a new instantcake that installs 9.3.2b from the start? Is there a way to stop it from upgrading the software?

I have been searching through tivocommunity and dealdatabase for info without luck.

Thanks for any tips/info,

John

Have you run the manufacturer's diagnostics on the hard drive?

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[zx9re]

Was this a brand new HD ? If not - you know what the answer is... and can you tell us what model # DVR exactly that you've encountered this issue with ? I just did an upgrade to a Tivo Series 2 TCD69080 and the InstantCake brought my new drive back to 9.3.2a... I have no idea when the box will look for the next version of software but I'd like to know if you are dealing with the same box, I've read this issue before but understand its only occurred on older DVR's. Thanks!

[Lou Jacob]

Whether or not it's a brand new drive, it could still be a bad drive. ALWAYS run diags on a drive before using it in your TiVo, new or not.


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[zx9re]

Whether or not it's a brand new drive, it could still be a bad drive. ALWAYS run diags on a drive before using it in your TiVo, new or not.


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Hi Lou - I've been reading the forums for days now & I've noticed you preaching that advice quite alot, I respect your experience and engineering know-how with these units but is the suggestion more aimed toward users of InstantCake who may not be applying the image to a brand new drive ? The laws of averages would suggest that a new unit should be just fine. Are people having the same issues with your kits that some are complaining about ? (reboot loops for example?) Or have you found that most people with issues are not applying your image to brand new drives?

I am in the Security industry - we are heavy users of commercial CCTV DVR's. Most are equipped with 4-6 1.5tb Barracudas now (we have retrofitted over the last while) We installed approx 400 of them so far to increase our recording capacity and we didn't verify any of them through oem diagnostics software, the machines either boot up and recognize them and start using them for recording - or not. These DVR's are basically a Windows XP Pro box, configured similar to a standard PC with the manufacturers DVR software on it ( it has a primary C Drive, boots into XP from there then the software fires up )

So - I'm just curious whats up with people's results here - are they not using new drives or are they reporting back that these scans have found bad sectors or blocks ? And are you running into the same problems with the drives you guys ship out or not? If not - why don't you guys just preach "People - Use New Drives or else!" Just kidding...

Incidentally - while I was typing this I tried rebooting ours to see if my 'Suggestions' folder would start to appear... has not in the last few days. And "gulp", it came up with the "Applying Service Update" screen that people get stuck on.

I am happy to report that it took about 20 mins to apply the update and the box came back to life just fine with software version 9.3.2b ( Series 2 TCD69080 ).

Cheers...

[Lou Jacob]

Hi Lou - I've been reading the forums for days now & I've noticed you preaching that advice quite alot, I respect your experience and engineering know-how with these units but is the suggestion more aimed toward users of InstantCake who may not be applying the image to a brand new drive?

I don't preach, but I make this recommendation because it seems that many people do not run diagnostics on their drives, and often assume that problems are due to something other than a drive, when they are experiencing a problem with their TiVo units. The most common problems are caused by a defective hard drive, so I recommend that before looking elsewhere, one should eliminate that variable. Until one does, the most common cause of problems has not been eliminated.


The laws of averages would suggest that a new unit should be just fine. Are people having the same issues with your kits that some are complaining about ? (reboot loops for example?) Or have you found that most people with issues are not applying your image to brand new drives?


Actually, there is no law that would suggest that a new unit should be just fine. A percentage of hard drives fail, and if a drive is mishandled or shipped inappropriately, that likelihood increases. We've not had any kit customers complain of reboot loops, nor have we ever received a kit with a reported problem where the drive wasn't diagnosed as defective. So to answer your earlier question, my recommendation is not limited to users of InstantCake, but to anyone looking for the root cause of their problem.




I am in the Security industry - we are heavy users of commercial CCTV DVR's. Most are equipped with 4-6 1.5tb Barracudas now (we have retrofitted over the last while) We installed approx 400 of them so far to increase our recording capacity and we didn't verify any of them through oem diagnostics software, the machines either boot up and recognize them and start using them for recording - or not. These DVR's are basically a Windows XP Pro box, configured similar to a standard PC with the manufacturers DVR software on it ( it has a primary C Drive, boots into XP from there then the software fires up )

So - I'm just curious whats up with people's results here - are they not using new drives or are they reporting back that these scans have found bad sectors or blocks ? And are you running into the same problems with the drives you guys ship out or not? If not - why don't you guys just preach "People - Use New Drives or else!" Just kidding...


We don't preach that people use new drives. But we do recommend that you run diags on your drives. And if you have a problem like the OP has, then running diags should be the first order of business. If I were inclined to assume there was a problem, without any more information, I would assume its a bad hard drive. And without eliminating that variable, I would not speculate any further.


Incidentally - while I was typing this I tried rebooting ours to see if my 'Suggestions' folder would start to appear... has not in the last few days. And "gulp", it came up with the "Applying Service Update" screen that people get stuck on.

I am happy to report that it took about 20 mins to apply the update and the box came back to life just fine with software version 9.3.2b ( Series 2 TCD69080 ).

Cheers...

Sounds like your TiVo downloaded a software update prior to you rebooting it; had you looked in the system information screen, you would have seen a 'pending restart...' message (it will be gone now, of course).

My point here, and its one I've made over and over in other threads:

IF YOU ARE HAVING A PROBLEM, RUN DIAGS -- bad drives are the MOST common source of problems.

Glad all is well with your system!

Lou