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My Tivo is possessed...
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Posted by: Dutch_RBD

If I didn’t enjoy my Tivo so much I would have given up weeks ago. Here is my Tivo horror story:

Purchased Phillips 30 hour SA Tivo last December and it ran great for 2 months, so I decided I needed more room and added a 2nd hard drive to it (Maxtor 80) Worked great for another 3 months. Then I started getting call failure for a couple of days and so I turned to the trusty AVS forums for advice.

I tried everything ever suggested. Different phone number, different phone cable, unplugging all other devices, unplugging Tivo overnight, wireless modem, called from work, called from a friends house who’s Tivo works great, tried 800 number, re-ran guided setup, nothing worked. I started thinking I may need TivoNet.

Called customer service, they verified that the modem seem to be working, we could hear the modem dialing and start handshaking. They seem to think it was the DSL line, which is why I tried dialing from 3 other locations.

The unit always made the short test call, when changing the area code or phone number for all these tests. But for any extended download, the error was always ‘call interrupted’.

At one point after sitting on the shelf for a week, I tried again and it actually completed a call and got data, so I was good for another 2 weeks. But I could never get it to complete again.

So I decided to put the original image back on the drive, yes I did a backup. And with some added AVS forum help I was able to complete the restore.

So I ran the setup for just the antenna, I figured it would go faster than satellite & antenna and lo and behold… everything seemed to start working. It completed all calls for 2 days, even downloaded 2.0.1! I figured it was healed…

So the next day, I ran guided setup again, to change to satellite & antenna and I get a ‘Failure while indexing shows’ error. Argh!! So I do a couple more calls, and I start getting the original ‘Call interrupted’ errors again. Back to square one.

I re-ran the guided setup again, failure indexing again. I tried the ‘delete everything’ option from the System reset menu and ran guided setup, same result.

Now this is interesting, (wow, is anyone still reading this) I ran the guided setup again, only choosing Antenna, and yes, it made the calls and seems to be working fine again, antenna only. What the f???

So once more back to guided setup, to try to satellite & antenna again, what good is Tivo without DirectTV! It gets all the way to the end of the 2nd call, at 99% indexing, and sure enough it FAILED again. OK, so my Tivo doesn’t like DirectTV anymore. So I then forced a redial, and now that one went through, and I have 2 weeks of data for the first time in many many weeks.

So the next day the dialup fails, I try to force and again failure, ‘call interrupted’…. Tried cycling power, different phone numbers, etc… all ‘call interrupted’. Back to square one again.

So I got to know… What about satellite only… So once more back to guided setup (What’s the record for running guided setup on one unit?), this time Satellite only… You guessed it, it worked fine, and I’ve made 3 daily calls and it continues to work.

Can anyone explain why Tivo would work for Antenna only, or Satellite only, but not Satellite & Antenna both? This makes no sense to me, the unit is obviously possessed!

Thanks for letting me vent…

Posted by: ElectricLegs

Sounds like a software bug to me. I would think there's something being crossed between the same channels in the guide your getting or your exceeding a max setting somehow. I think this should be reported to Tivo a few times so others don't waste hours messing with this same problem. BE glad it's not the "fried Modem" that's so popular!

Posted by: sjf

There used to be a 'jumpstart' fix that CS could set you up for that would resolve the 'failed indexing days' problem. I thought this went away with 2.0, but you might call CS and ask for a jumpstart -- ask for level 2 support if the first guy doesn't know what it is.

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Everything I need to know, I learned from Moe.