TiVo Community Forums Archives - Upgraded series 1 crash during guided setup

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Upgraded series 1 crash during guided setup
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Posted by: mcr2582

I got an old refurbed Tivo series 1 20hr Phillips Tivo from a friend. I activated it and ran guided setup at home. All seemed fine so I backed the drive up and copied it to a Maxtor 120GB drive. During the upgrade I copied it over, installed it and tested that it worked. When I returned it to the PC it was locked. I read of all the problems associated with using qunlock so DID NOT use it. Instead I did what someone mentioned, and booted the tivo, waited till it got to the main menu, then unplugged the ATA cable from the Tivo and plugged it into the PC. Because the drive didn't lose power, it stayed unlocked and I completed the upgrade successfully. I booted it up and all seemed fine. I packed it in my old Series 1 box with original packing materials and carried it onto the plane for my trip home where I gave it to my parents.

Well, the problems began when I went to run guided setup. I selected cable and when it got to the part where it asks if I have a cable box, I select yes and am only able to get 1-3 steps further, the farthest I've gotten is the screen asking what brand the box is, but it has happened on the channel list and even right after selecting "yes, I have a cable box." What happens is the screen goes to a parallelogram shaped light blue screen for a second, then it goes to the black "Tivo is starting up" window. From there it goes to the normal gray screen and boots properly where it asks me to perform guided setup. Then the cycle repeats...

I was successful in setting it up for antenna, but not for cable or for "cable and satilite."

I brought the original 20gb drive with me and have access to a PC so I thought about putting the old drive back in and seeing if I can complete guided setup, then copy it back to the new drive and see if that works. I searched this forum at length and can't find any mention of this, has anyone else experienced this? What was the cause?

Michael

Posted by: mcr2582

Well.. without any other options, I performed the full guided setup using the old drive in the Tivo, did a few extra phone calls just to be sure, then put it in a PC, made a backup, then restored it to the 120GB Maxtor drive (using the hot-unplug trick to avoid the locking problem.) This went smoothly and the Tivo seems fine except that its search DB seems incomplete... I can search and find some shows, but not others even though I know the channels they are on are enabled. I can find them by searching by time or channel and add them to the list. But when I say "view upcoming episodes" it shows me none even though there are others in the list by channel. So... I'm forcing extra calls, and hoping that it updates the db soon. I don't really want to risk running guided setup on the new drive again because if it fails it's back to the PC again.

Is this DB behavior normal on a newly setup unit? Does it need time to get it optimized, etc? I was sure to let it finish the import and processing on the old drive before I pulled it for the transfer. Any thoughts?

Michael

Posted by: Nihilator

Anytime you're downloading a whole database full of information from scratch, all of the search functions are going to be a little hinky for up to about twelve hours at the outside. TiVo will fill in the guide data (which you see when you press the Live TV button) first, so you can surf and watch TV. But when it comes to Season Passes, searching for programs and whatnot, you've got to wait for it to finish indexing, which may take a long time, depending primarily on the size of the lineup.

Remember, these poor machines are only 50MHz PPCs! If they were actual computers, they would be outdated by as many as ten years.

By the way, forcing extra calls is only going to delay the indexing. Let it sit for the evening. Check back periodically, but don't ask it to make a phone call for a little while.

--Chris

Posted by: mcr2582

Yea, by this morning the shows had appeared as I hoped they would.

New question: This is an old series 1 that was sent out as a refurb unit but never activated. It was given to me by a friend. I actived it and the system info screen says "account in good standing (3)" however I keep getting messages saying that my grace period is going to expire and I will be unable to connect to the tivo service. Any thoughts on this? It appears fine, but the warning has me a bit concerned.

Michael

Posted by: Nihilator

Yeah, those are contradictory messages, aren't they?

By "activated", do you mean that you went to tivo.com, entered your credit card number, and signed up for monthly or lifetime service? Or do you just mean that you went through Guided Setup, downloaded data, etc.?

The service numbers of officially refurbished TiVos are essentially "reset" by TiVo so that they get the same three- or seven-day grace period that fresh-off-the-shelf units have. You can download data, try it out, and then after three or seven days (I forget which...I thought a week, but I'm not entirely sure), if you haven't bought the service through TiVo, the box goes dumb and you can't schedule recordings or even view the listings, IIRC. I thought that if you were still in the grace period, the account status would reflect that, but maybe it just says "in good standing" unless you're not.

If the messages continue to bother you, call TiVo customer service. They'll fix ya right up.

--Chris

Posted by: Robert S

It's a week (in the UK, anyway). If you unplug the phone line you can keep whatever data remains in the DB, so you actually get more like three weeks grace. If the TiVo dials in after the grace period has expired, it'll lock-down.

Posted by: mcr2582

No, it's activated. I registered it on my account with my other 2 tivo's. One is on product lifetime, the other is on monthly. The monthly one states "account in good standing" the same as the new one I just added. I forgot what it said on the Tivo itself when I first set it up, but it did definitely change to "account in good standing" a day after I registered it. But even after that I've gotten several warning msg's telling me to register. So I was a bit confused... if it'll go on working, that's fine. Maybe the nag msg script didn't get the msg that it was actived.

Michael

Posted by: Robert S

You'll need to talk to TiVo CS and check that everything is working at their end. The nags should definitely stop once the account is activated.