TiVo Community Forums Archives - Question...Green screen...Just a few moments.

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Question...Green screen...Just a few moments.
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Posted by: llogan

Restored from an HDR112 backup image, then ran mad/setup.sh (i'm running off of the boot disk. and the unit is just stuck on the Green Screen with the little tivo guy saying something like configuring your PVR, This will take a few moments or something like that.

I'm replacing the old A drive with a larger A drive (120GB). When I run mad/setup.sh does the new A drive 'have' to be set to Secondary Master? My configuration only works when my C drive is set to Primary Master, and my CD-ROM to Secondary Master.

Posted by: Robert S

The Windows drive has to be primary master because of byteswapping issues.

You MFS Tools 1 backup will be fine, but I strongly recommend you repeat your backup with MFS Tools 2.0:

mfsrestore -s 127 -xpi /mnt/dos/tivo.bak /dev/hdb

not only will this fix your green screen problem, you'll get a faster TiVo than if you leave it in its current state.

If you want to save your recordings, do a pipe transfer.

Posted by: llogan

Is byteswapping an issue when I'm replacing one drive with one drive? For whatever reason, I only thought byteswapping was relevant if you had more than one drive in the final unit.

Maybe I should explain my setup a little further. When I've done upgrades previously. I don't run any OS other than the boot CD. In this installation, I had drives set up as follows for restoring...

hda - Primary Master - hard drive with all of my backup images on it and nothing else

hdb - larger A drive

hdc - CD-ROM drive

hdd - empty

what' you're saying is that I need to run my CD-ROM as either Primary Master or Slave and take the drive i've got in hdb and put it in hdc (Secondary Master). That was going to be my next iteration of testing, need to get longer IDE cables for all of this madness, frustrating to work in tight quarters all of the time.

Unfortunately doing an MFS Tools 2.0 restore is not an option for me since I've recycled the original drive.

I could restore then backup again but don't think I should create a backup from a restored image...what do you think?

Posted by: Robert S

What I said was, 'your Windows drive needs to be primary master', most people put their backups on the same drive that Windows lives on, for obvious reasons.

If you use MFS Tools 2.0 you can connect the drive however you like because MFS Tools 2.0 has internal byteswapping. All the other boot disks (the ones you use) byteswap all the drives except primary master.

There's no problem taking a backup from a restored/expanded image. However you will lose your recordings if you do this so you may not want to bother if everything else is OK.

Posted by: llogan

so I didn't do anything wrong?

Posted by: Robert S

I didn't spot anything wrong in what you've said - I would've said so if I had, but I wanted to point out that if you're going to repeat the upgrade anyway MFS Tools 2.0 gives you a better upgrade and may be safer and more reliable than TiVoMad/BlessTiVo etc.

And, or course, to point out that there's a reason why your C: drive needs to be primary master if you use the usual TiVo boot disks.

Posted by: llogan

Damn! Yeah, would do the backup again if I could but I can't. And the point about why the C drive needs to be primary master is well taken. Great, so now what?

Posted by: Robert S

Hope that mfsfix can repair whatever corruption triggered the green screen. You're only at 120Gb so if the green screen doesn't clear increasing swap won't make any difference. There's no known way to repair a green screen machine other than by allowing mfsfix to complete, so if it doesn't recover on its own you'll have to restore from backup.

You might want to run PowerMax over the disk just to see if there's a problem with it. None of the tools go out of their way to validate the drive (it would take an hour or more anyway).

Posted by: llogan

actually, should clarify, not getting green screen (although that did happen once). The screen I get is the little Tivo guy surrounded by all of the balls saying Please wait a few moments or something like that. It just doesn't go away though. Probably just as serious as green screen in my opinion.

Posted by: Merle Corey

In that case, the next thing to do is verify that your backup is good - try restoring it again, but don't go through the TiVoMad expansion process yet.

FYI, you can restore MFST1 backups with MFST2. Also, MFST2 can take care of expansion itself, so you don't need to be using the TiVoMad process at all.

MC

Posted by: Merle Corey

Actually, come to that, you don't mention what kind of TiVo you're putting this in - you said you restored from an HDR-112 image, but your sig indicates that you don't currently have an SA TiVo - you're not trying to put that Philips SA image in a DTiVo, are you?

MC

Posted by: Robert S

I don't know, then. Yes, was talking about the 'Severe error' green screen - the UK boot sequence is slightly different to the US one's, so I don't always recognise which screen people are referring to.

If it really is stuck, then trying to take a backup wouldn't hurt, but I think we have to assume that restoring it would leave the TiVo in the same state it's in now.

I've just re-read your first post and realised I answered the wrong question (not that it bears on this problem). Your A drive is Secondary Master because that's the easiest connector to plug in to. Either of the slave connectors will work, but you can't use primary master if you're not using MFS Tools 2.0. Obviously you'll need to change hdc to hdb or hdd in the command line if your target drive is primary or secondary slave.

Posted by: llogan

LOL...no I'm not trying to use an HDR112 backup in a DirecTivo. I've done numerous upgrades for friends of mine, this is just another. Normally I do DirecTivo upgrades. This is the second standalone upgrade that I've done. And yes, I adjust the naming in my command line dependent upon where I have the relevant drive, in this case when I restored, instructed to restore to hdb.

Posted by: Robert S

I assumed you would know how to adjust the command line, but you never know who else is reading these posts.

It is looking more and more like a bad drive - upgrading isn't that hard and you obviously know enough not to do something dumb.

PowerMax.

Posted by: llogan

Yeah, I'll spool up my Powermax utility and have a look.