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Green Screen Of Death in Studio City, CA

My Tivo (SVR-2000) has been out for about 9 hours, and I am getting the Green Screen that says "A Severe Error has occurred..."

I called the Tivo number, I called the Sony number, and they want me to ship this thing to Boston.

I got the unit as a gift for xmas, and in April a friend "upgraded my hard drive" and I get like 125 hours of programming stored. I have never had a problem until today.

Thoughts? Solutions?

Thanks!

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Registered: Apr 2001
Location: Corpus Christi TX
Posts: 120

Try leaving it off for a few minutes first. If no go...
Can you or your friend can restore a backup or maybe borrow his drive(s) if it's the same model Tivo? I'd remove both drives and hook them to a PC and use the drives manufacturer's utilities to test the drives. If you have a bad one ask around here for a backup and start from scratch. Tivo'mad's disk will let you use any brand for a primary Tivo disk. The most likely cause is a bad drive so you're likely to lose everything anyway. If you end up sending it back for service remove anything you added to it cuz you won't get it back.

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i know, i am a complete maroon, but, i have unscrewed 5 screws from the back, but for the life of me i can not figure out how to open this damned thing...

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: Near Montgomery, Texas
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quote:

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Originally posted by mdnathan:
i know, i am a complete maroon, but, i have unscrewed 5 screws from the back, but for the life of me i can not figure out how to open this damned thing...

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Registered: Jun 2001
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He makes it sound easy .. Don't worry, you won't hurt it.. Push hard!

quote:

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Originally posted by DBCooper:
Place it on a non-skid surface, like the floor. While you are in front of it. place your hands on the top at both sides and press evenly toward the rear. It should pop off.

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OK, got the thing open (and again I totally apologize, I am not very technically oriented...) so the drive in there is an IBM Deskstar 76.8GB... now you are saying i need to hook it up to a computer to see if it works? There's about 24 hours of "Iron Chef" on there ... hmmm... somehow i feel like i should just throw the whole damned thing out and start over.

Anyone in Los Angeles??? Anyone want to come over and help me figure this out? I hate the green screen of death

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mdnathan,
Your problem is the exact same thing that happened to me about 3 weeks ago. The green screen of death on my sony SVR-2000 is Sony's way of telling you that you have a defective hard drive. I too got it for x-mas, so the life span of the sony hard drives seem to be only about 6 months or so. Anyway, I sent mine back to Sony and I should have received it by now, but UPS sat on it for 5 days before they realized that somebody actually wanted this package, and decided to move it from their hub in Boston. Anyway, I am lucky enough that I hadn't done anything to my Sony and didn't void the warranty. Before I even start using my Tivo again, since they replaced the Hard drive, I am going to make a back up of the virgin hard drive onto CDR's and keep them locked away. If your friend upgraded it for you, I hope he made a backup for you. If he didn't, you may have problems. You're going to have to get IBM or whoever to replace the Hard drive if it is indeed defective. Next thing you're going to have to do is restore your backup if you have one, and then add or have your friend add the second hard drive. Then you'll be good to go. Personally, I just ordered a 80 GB HD from Maxtor, which should be here shortly after I get my Tivo back. I wouldn't try this without making a backup first. Good luck to you.

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quote:

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Originally posted by mdnathan:
My Tivo (SVR-2000) has been out for about 9 hours, and I am getting the Green Screen that says "A Severe Error has occurred..."

I called the Tivo number, I called the Sony number, and they want me to ship this thing to Boston.

I got the unit as a gift for xmas, and in April a friend "upgraded my hard drive" and I get like 125 hours of programming stored. I have never had a problem until today.

Thoughts? Solutions?

Thanks!

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The same exact thing happened with my 30 hour Phillips unit upgraded with an 80GB Maxtor Diamond Max. Green-screen, reboot, green-screen, reboot, ad infinitum. I pulled the primary drive and had a look at the /var partition logs - it seemed to be a corrupt MFS filesystem from the look of it. I tried to force a check and a wipe of the MFS partition by editing the rc startup scripts and then reinstalling the drive in the TiVo and powering it up. No luck. I then pulled both drives and did a low-level check/format with the respective manufacturer's diagnostic utilities (Quantum & Maxtor). No errors were found.

Hmmm... At this point I was a bit stumped. Here's the big question - Is a corrupt MFS unrecoverable? It seemed so to me anyway. I restored from backup and returned both drives to the TiVo. It booted up fine and ran with no problems.

Anyone else seen this?

mdnathan, I would just restore from your backup (I hope you made one) rather than throwing the whole thing out. But, if you are determined to do that, I will send you $$$ for shipping it to me instead...

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Dan

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