TiVo Community Forums Archives - Green screen of death?

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Green screen of death?
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Posted by: osterber

OK - what does this green screen of death mean? My Tivo suddenly froze in the middle of playback, and then rebooted itself a couple of times... it seemed sort of in a loop, so I unplugged it, and plugged it back in. Then I get this:

A severe error has occurred.
Please leave the Receiver pluggedin and connected to the phone line for the next 24 hours while the Receiver attempts to repair itself.

DO NOT UNPLUG OR RESTART THE RECEIVER.

If, after 24 hours, the recorder does not restart itself, call Customer Support.

Am I screwed? (Obviously, I'll let it try to repair itself.) My Tivo is upgraded with a pre-configured Hinsdale B drive (I have a Sony SVR2000), but that's it.

-Rick

Posted by: bsoft

"Am I screwed? (Obviously, I'll let it try to repair itself.) My Tivo is upgraded with a pre-configured Hinsdale B drive (I have a Sony SVR2000), but that's it."

Not entirely screwed. I think this has something to do with a HDD losing clusters or the like, or sometimes a database failure. I don't really know. What it does mean is that your TiVo is seriouslly screwed up inside and is attempting to fix itself by rebuilding/downloading whatever it needs. With any luck it will work.

Posted by: osterber

Update: It seems to have fixed itself. It sat at the green screen of death for about 20 minutes, and then rebooted. When it came up... it looks like all of my old stuff is still there, and it started recording what it's supposed to be recording now. So, <phew>, that scared the bejeesus out of me. (I'm going on vacation real soon and had a panic attack of Tivo being broken while I was gone.)

-Rick

Posted by: Johnisthecoolest

Wow! I'm just amazed by that. On any other computer/gadget/machine, if I would have gotten "Fatal Errors" that wouldn't let the device load, then it would have to be:
a) Sent Back.
b) Repaired by me.
c) Smashed in the driveway.

TiVo rules.

Posted by: osterber

yeah... I gotta say, my faith was restored. I really thought I was hosed. But someone put in enough recovery code there to, well, have it recover.

-Rick, happily _not_ calling customer service

Posted by: jeffw_00

microsoft could learn something from these guys

Posted by: gravity255

I've actually had this happen to me during a period when we had several power outages in a short time. (And it was being upgraded to 2.5.1)

After 24 hours my TiVo still hadden come back up, so thinking about it I gave it all weekend to work out its issues. Surely enough it was ok when I came in and checked on it on Monday, and has been running fine ever since.

Moral of the story is . . . put a UPS on your TiVo.

Posted by: SJJ

I came home last night and found the green screen of 'death' on my tivo. This is on my 30 hour upgraded to 246 hour. It's been running fine since I upgraded it in, I think it was last September. Monday night when I came home the screen was frozen. I unplugged it, waited a few minutes and it came back on. The last time this happened was when the machine was updated to 2.5.??. Is it trying to load version 3? Do I dare hope it will be fixed when I get home tonight? If it's dead, is there any way to recover the recordings?

Thanks.

Posted by: gravity255

When you upgraded to the 200+ MB, what did you use as your main drive?

Posted by: SJJ

I used 2 Maxtor 100 (5400) drives. Would it make a difference?