TiVo Community Forums Archives - DSR6000 - hangs on "Almost There."

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DSR6000 - hangs on "Almost There." - next?
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Posted by: JCF

Howdy folks - I've been searching all day and can't seem to find an answer to my problem. If it's there, forgive me, just point me that way.....

I have a DSR6000 that had been acting flaky (don't remember the symptom anymore...been too long). I rebooted it (system reset) and it never recovered. It has hung on 'Almost There' since that day.

I pulled the drives (30GB & 15GB Quantum) and ran Powermax on them. Ran long tests and both checked out OK (no errors), though I realize that doesn't necessarily mean they aren't at fault.....

Put them back in the DSR, still hangs at same spot. I have downloaded the 2.5.2 Xtreme image (though I believe I was already at 3.0 on the DSR).

My question is this: How do the experts here suggest I proceed? I could care less about saving anything, I just want my TiVo back! I went out and bought a <gasp> UltimateTV (price was right), but I hate it.

So, whaddya think? Please let me know if you'd like more info.

BTW, here's what happens during a boot:

• Screen says 'Powering Up', green led is on
• After 60-90 seconds, led flashes amber for maybe 1 second, then back to green
• Shortly afterwards the screen switches to 'Almost There'...
• End of story.....

Thanks for any suggestions, I'm a self-acknowledged newbie with regards to TiVo work, though I am a Unix administrator, so hopefully I can grasp some of the concepts....:^)

JCF

Posted by: Robert S

It ain't a disk problem - 'Almost there' is displayed by the kernel, so the disk is working well enough for that to load. Contact TiVo, Philips or an independent TiVo repair shop.

Posted by: basil

Hi. I am a newbie as well. I have the exact same problem with my DSR6000. I have installed a 80 gig along with the original 30 gig HD. Yesterday, completely out of the blue, it started the same boot up sequence you described with the "almst there etc". I am at a loss as well.

I thought of taking the HDs out and reformatting them and starting from scratch, but one response seems to indicate the HDs are not the problem but a "kernel" problem?? If you or anyone has some further insight in to what we can do, pleae let me know. Or if you can direct this newbie to who is technically qualified to repair this unit, please let me know.

regards
Basil (basiladair@yahoo.com)

PS - Is there any possibility of buying any more of these units for $100??

Posted by: Robert S

quote:
Originally posted by basil
one response seems to indicate the HDs are not the problem but a "kernel" problem??

No, no, no! The kernel is on the disk (just like a Windows system, infact). Therefore if you get to 'almost there' the disk is working well enough for the kernel to be pulled in to memory and the Linux boot sequence started.

If your MFS partitions are corrupted the screen will go green as mfsfix runs, so if you stick at 'almost there' something other than a hard drive problem prevented the kernel from completing the boot sequence.

I'm not sure this is a cast-iron diagnosis, but it's probably the way to bet.

Posted by: basil

Thanx for the info, but just to clarify. My screen does this partial boot sequence, says " Welcome, booting up" and then says "Almost there, a f ew more seconds". Then the screen dies and goes a lime green for a split second and then the whole process starts again. Are you saying this may be a HD problem or not? I will gladly pull the HDs and place the original image on the master drive again, if I knew this would resolve the issue.

Other than this, where else can I go for assistance / info?

Thanx for your patience.

Basil :(

Posted by: JCF

Thanks for the input. I kinda feel the same way, that it is most likely a mobo or other related hardware issue.

I called (again) Philips support, and after spending 25 minutes walking through the mandatory "unplug it again, now plug it in, now unplug it, blah blah blah", I finally got a return number. Oddly enough, even after I explained it was out of warranty, (16 months old), he still quoted me $129 for parts & labor.

Considering I paid $349, I didn't think that was too bad. Other than I'll get some refurbed POS. But hey, at least I'll have my DSS and Tivo back. Not to mention the fact that I can't find a DirecTiVo box anywhere in town.

So there you have it. Basil, good luck with your problem. I think you have a different issue than me anyway, my box is stock, and mine doesn't reboot. It just hangs. Good luck regardless!

Thanks
JCF

Posted by: jsoukeras

jcf,

It's very likely a toasted modem.

If you don't mind a little hacking you can get around the issue w/o fixing the modem.

To see if it's the modem...
stick the tivo drive in a pc. mount partition 4.

go to the tvbin directory

rename the modemtest file. call it modemtest.bak.

These instructions have a lot of holes. If you don't know how to take the drive out and boot off a linux cd or floppy that gives you tivo drive access in your pc then you'll spend a lot more time learning than $129 to do the repair.

Anyway...if you do rename the file and your tivo boots fine then it's the modem. then you can decide if you want to stick in a turbonet board or do ppp over the serial port or some alternate method.

Jason

Posted by: basil

Thanx for your response re my "re-cycling DSR6000".

Re the modem, I have no problem taking apart the unit, taking out the 2 drives, and trying to boot up with a Unix CD. A couple of questoins however.

1. Do I simply mount or add the primary drive or do I need both?

2. If by renaming the modem file as a backup and the TIVO then "boots" correctly, what can I do about the modem ? I am not familiar with "stick in a turbonet board or do ppp over the serial port" routine. Since I am paying for the monthly TIVO service, do these alternatives by pass that?

3. Finally what is this $129 repair cost? I amy be more willing to pay someone $129 than to spend all the time and energies involved. Who does such repairs, what does this $129 include, and do you have their numbers. (Keep in mind that I have modified the unit by adding the 2nd drive.)

thanx
Basil (basiladair@yahoo.com)

Posted by: Robert S

basil, the green screen is the file system checker running, so you probably do have a hard drive problem. How big are your two drives? If could be that mfsfix is running out of memory, if so we may be able to rescue your TiVo (in fact, we're looking for guinea pigs to help us work out the procedure).

Alternatively, restoring from backup should fix things if your hard drives are OK hardware-wise.

Posted by: basil

Hi again

I had a 15 and 30 G originally. I replaced the 15G and am using the original 30G as a master and I blessed the 80 gig I added. The drives are fairly fully of data but I don;t think they maxed out the 108 hours or whatever I have.

I would be happy enough to simply start again from scratch and implant my original image from the 15gig and lose my data. (I guess this would have the older original software version on it too?)

I have heard discussoins it might be my modem too. Is this possible?

Tell me about my other options. What is the guinea pig approach you refer to?

Basil

Posted by: Robert S

OK, now I understand (folks, saying 'I upgraded' really isn't enough, tell us your original config and what you did to it).

BlessTiVo can only be used to add a B drive to a lone A drive. Once the TiVo has booted with the B drive the A drive becomes 'married' to it and can no longer be regarded as a separate drive.

You might be able to go back to your original B drive, but your best bet is probably to download a suitable image and start from scratch on your 80Gb drive.

I was thinking your circumstances were different, the guinea pig scenario doesn't apply to you, after all.

Dual drive machines are always slightly tricky (the UK duals are horrible!). What you should've done is taken a backup of your original drive set. If your original B drive was married to your A drive, you could then have restored to your A drive and used BlessTiVo to marry it to the new B drive.

If your TiVo was infact a true twin drive setup, you would get a backup that's too large to go onto your A drive. You would then have restored to your new drive, expanded and possibly added the old A drive as a new B drive.

Although it's more hassle, the latter method is actually safer. Firstly you can expand swap, which will help a lot if you want to expand further (use -s 127 as a restore option) and secondly you can test the new A drive to be sure it's working before trashing your A drive to turn it into a B drive.

In the last few days we have gained a clear understanding of how to use MFS Tools 2.0 (Tiger's docs are misleading, Hindsale has updated his guide in light of the new data). In any of the above scenarios it's now better to use MFS Tools 2.0's mfsadd function to add drives instead of BlessTiVo.

If reattaching the old B drive does bring the TiVo back to life, you may be able to save your old data and maybe even the recordings, but I think it's probably trashed.

Posted by: jsoukeras

Basil,

I agree with Robert. Your reboot is not modem related. I'm sure if you re-did your upgrade you'd be fine. I don't think there is anything physically wrong with your hardware. You just have a software (probably swapspace) glitch.

Jason

Posted by: basil

First off, Robert, I would like to say many thanx for your helpfulness. As a recent transplant to the US from Lancashire via many years Canada I would like to say it comes from your heritage, but I also know many on this forum are helpful.

My scenario is that I bought a DSR6000 with 2 HDs (15G + 30G). Before using the unit at all, I made (apparently) a combined image of this setup. The file was small enough so I was able to restore the combined image to the original 30G - B drive. I then made the 30G my new master (A drive) and added a new 80G as slave (B drive). In retrospect I probably should have made the 80G the master so I could add something larger as a slave in future. (I am using the terms master and slave and I know they really don't apply - bear with this newbie.)

Apart from the odd hiccup eveything was working fine til Monday when I got the "Welcome booting up" message followed by the "Almost there message" and finally a quick glimpse of a lime green screen. Then the system resets and the process starts all over again.

I read someone say try jiggling the power supply cable to the MB. I tried this with no luck. Some have said the modem is at fault. Then I read that external modems need TIVO software version 3 - which I don't think I had. I really don;t know what to do next or where to send it for repairs.

There was someone else in this thread with the same problem, I don;t know if he ever resolved his problems either but my sysmtoms seem identical - to me at least.

I am quite willing to start from scratch and re-image these drives. I can test the drives at my work by formatting them again under some DOS platform if this would help. I am quite open to trying most anything to get the system restored.

Thanx again to you and other's help and patience.

regards
Basil (basiladair@yahoo.com)

Posted by: Robert S

It sounds like you did do the upgrade correctly. You aren't over the 140Gb threshold for running out of swap for mfsfix (the 140Gb number is actually conservative, the true value is closer to 155Gb). So my guess would be a subtle hardware failure in the hard drive.

You can try Maxtor's PowerMax diagnostics, which is a non-destructive test (but often fails to find problems with drives). You could also try putting an A drive image on both your drives - the one that fails to boot is probably your problem.

(Use the A drive / B drive nomenclature to refer to TiVo drives as you may end up jumpering a drive as Slave for imaging, even if it's going to end up as an A drive.)

Apparently TiVo 3 is coming soon for DTiVoes. UK models look like they'll be on 2.5.5 for a while yet (probably a good thing what with all the complaints about 3.0!).

I think the guys with modem problems were actually sticking on 'almost there', not boot-looping. You could try the 'two lights' hardware self-test. Hold down Pause and plug the TiVo in. Two amber lights = pass. Like PowerMax it seems to miss a lot of problems, but I think it tests the modem.

Posted by: basil

Gentlemen

Just a quick update to my continous re-boot problem. It turned out to be a bad "new" hard disk. This was the Maxtor 80gig, 5400 rpm that I had only bought and added about 3-4 months ago. After reloading the original early vcersion software image to both this 80 gig and the original 30 gig, I found out that the 80 gig started acting up again and died. I did some checks at work using the Maxtor utilities software and it detected an error. I called maxtor and they said "send it back". So I ended up reinstalling the original 15 + 30 gig HDs and am usng that until I get another 80 gig replacement HD from Maxtor. Fortunatley, during this ordeal I made yet another backup of the working image with the latest software. So when I re-image or add the 80 gig I won't have to wait so long. Come to think of it, i think with the new 2.0 tools I believe I can somehow swap out my present 15 gig (drive B) with my soon to arrrive 80 gig maxtor (drive B). Is this correct or do I have to start form scratch again?

Thanx again for the great help and response from this forum group.

regards
Basil

Posted by: Robert S

Yes, you could do that - dd the B drive on to the new disk and use mfsadd.

It would be better to do a pipe transfer (see RESTORE sections of MFS Tools README - but add -s 127 to the restore options) to the new drive. This will save your recordings, without disturbing your current drive set (not that I'm saying lightning will strike twice...)

Posted by: mortonmanor

I had the same problem, would go to welcome, go to almost there and then would reboot and go through the whole thing again. Tried everything to fix it. Finally took the drive out and restored a backup image to the drive.

After the restore, everything worked perfectly.

BTW I didn't have a working copy of a backup image, but someone in this forum sent me a link to download.

David