TiVo Community Forums Archives - reboot cycle misery!

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reboot cycle misery!
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Posted by: slim

Hello, I'm new here, a lifetime subscriber and a TiVo user for about a year now. I've just posted this in the general 'help' area - without noticing this UK-specific area, so am reposting here. Sorry about that.

On Monday, my (Thomson) TiVo froze and wouldn't respond to the remote at all. So I pulled the plug, waited a minute and powered it up again. Sadly, it won't boot - it just displays the "powering up" messages, displays a "severe error" (or similar) message for a brief instant (white text on a green background) - then restarts itself. It will loop round the reboot forever while powered up.

Now - I called customer support the same day, they said it was probably a hard drive failure (I must admit I was suspicious that it was the new software which had only been in place for two days or so) and said they would get a Thomson engineer to call and arrange a hard drive swap. I don't believe I am covered for this though, I didn't take out an extended warranty, bought the box just over a year ago and I don't believe it's covered under my lifetime subscription.
Can anyone tell me what a drive swap is likely to cost me? Is it remotely possible that I could buy a new drive myself and download the software somehow?

Thanks for any help or advice
Slim

Posted by: JonMace

Its unlikley that CS will swap the drive normally they swap out the entire machine for a refubished one then repair yours back at the office so that they can use it for the same purpose.

As regards to cost rightly or wrongly its normally free even out of warranty

Posted by: Spikey

The legal one year business is only a minimum, what it actually says is whatever it is must be ok for what is considered a reasonable life. I would think it's fair to expect it to last more than twelve months which is probably why TiVo tend to be generous enough to do it without provocation. Most companies would try and get out of it but should fold if you mention those magic words "Trading Standards".

Good word of mouth publicity for a chronically under publicised product as well.

I sure I read something a while ago that inferred from the beginning of this year the minimum was now two years, might be wrong tho.

Posted by: topbanana

quote:
Originally posted by slim
Now - I called customer support the same day, they said it was probably a hard drive failure (I must admit I was suspicious that it was the new software which had only been in place for two days or so) and said they would get a Thomson engineer to call and arrange a hard drive swap.

It's perhap not as suspicious as you might otherwise think. There are two areas set aside on your disc for the TiVo software itself. Upgrades are set up on the one not in use, and when complete it becomes the one the box boots from. If the old 'alternate' area (now your main TiVo software area) was on a faulty bit of disc it would explain both the failure you've seen and CS's response.

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