Series 1 - power reset - lost all recordings

My sister's Series 1 TiVo, with the 1.4 image, has lost all its recordings and has had its settings set back to the default USA ones (I think).

There was a power surge/blackout at her house last night when her niece tripped the safety switch. The TiVo rebooted, but came back with no recordings showing, and the internal tuner (installed by Darren) not showing (blue screen, no input source).

System information says:

TiVO Account Status: 0: Unknown, call 1-877-367-8486

The disk is still working, because the OzTiVO image boot screen appears, and TiVOweb is running.

Source input is still set to Coax RF in.

I can re-run guided setup, but what about her recordings? Should I run a MFS tools scan over it (telnet works). It seems like a corrupted directory.

Or should we just blow off the recordings and go and buy her a TiVO HD?

Kerry

In all my years working with TiVo's I have never heard this before.

There is no way the TiVo could revert back to the US Software as it should not exist on your Harddrive after you installed v1.4. Also TiVoWeb and Telnet would not work.

There are quite a few thing that it could be, and I am happy to help for a while to see if it is a simple fix.

Re-running Guided setup will not lose recordings, but they should be there now it was working ok.

Apart from the Blue screen, when you change channels are the correct station names coming up on the TiVo?

Peter.

I was amused to discover the other day when I redid guided setup on a TiVo that it had dialed the US server and was offering me lineups based on a US post code. I had had to enter the dial prefix during GS which was odd, so I wasn't really expecting it to work properly.

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Originally Posted by petestrash

In all my years working with TiVo's I have never heard this before.

There is no way the TiVo could revert back to the US Software as it should not exist on your Harddrive after you installed v1.4. Also TiVoWeb and Telnet would not work.

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I agree, it's just that the System Information message "TiVO Account Status: 0: Unknown, call 1-877-367-8486" made me think that.

I ran Tivoweb and rebooted into PAL maintenance mode. The OzTiVo maintenance screen came up and it went automatically into guided setup. It's a 1.4 iimage, and the current guided setup instructions are for 1.6, so I had a few problems trying to work out what to put for two sources, first internal turner, second AV input. Eventually I worked out to use the 1.6 notes, but go for the menu positions (as the menu options have been renamed in 1.6. to make guided setup easier). I coulnd't work out what to do for the two sources (or anyway, it couldn't find a video signal) so went back to one source, the internal tuner. Setup went fine, calls home worked, but still no signal and no recordings. The antenna works, as it passes through the TiVo to the TV. So it looks like the internal tuner has blown, and the recordings are missing due to disk corruption.

She can live with the tuner not working (she was on the verge of getting a TiVO HD, so this is the push), but access to the current recordings would be wonderful (like a lot of us, her disk (250gb) was nearly full).

Thanks for the help.

As I'm back at my own PC, I may take this off forum to the mailing lsit.

Kerry

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Originally Posted by KerryC

The antenna works, as it passes through the TiVo to the TV. So it looks like the internal tuner has blown

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The signal will pass through merely with power connected. There is no software involvement here.

As for the tuner being faulty ("blown") I doubt that very much. Never had a faulty one yet in hundreds fitted and although there is a slim chance it could be the tuner I can say that in 100% of cases people casting doubt on the tuner it has always been a software fault.

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Originally Posted by Darren King

The signal will pass through merely with power connected. There is no software involvement here.

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I guess what I meant from that is that the antenna (the source system) is working.

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As for the tuner being faulty ("blown") I doubt that very much. Never had a faulty one yet in hundreds fitted and although there is a slim chance it could be the tuner I can say that in 100% of cases people casting doubt on the tuner it has always been a software fault.

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Excellent. I'll go around tonight and re-run guided setup again. If I ignore the two source system (internal tuner and AV input) to keep it simple, could you remind me again how I setup for one source, the internal tuner? I used
Menu choice 2 ("I have one choice" in 1.6, I think it's called Cable in 1.4).

The problem with the Set Your First Input screen in 1.6 is that I had problems mapping to the choices in 1.4. I probably chose the wrong one. I was given the lineups for Victoria, and choose Analog VI.

Does anyone have a copy of the 1.4 guided setup instructions?

Kerry

To be honest I can't remember what the terminology for the internal tuner was in 1.4. Memory is hazy with the progression of time.

Be aware, however, that if there is software corruption then simply redoing Guided Setup won't restore the inputs. I've had people before try it and don't get any joy, then think that it is hardware problem and seek advice, but upon a fresh install of the software everything goes back to normal.

May I suggest that you put in another temporary hard disk of "reasonable" size for day-to-day use, do a complete fresh install with 1.6.2 and get the TiVo going again, and then play around with trying to extract whatever programs you wish to save off the current hard disk.

I agree with Darren.

Peter.

If you are getting a blue screen when selecting channels from the tuner have you checked/set the palmod tuner settings for you tuner (via telnet).

If there has been some form of data corruption the tuner frequency settings may not be set correctly.

Agreed, but as there appears to be damage to the MFS also(missing shows), it would be best to try a spare drive first to test the hardware before wasting time trying to find all the areas that have been corrupted.

I personally would not want to use this image again. I would save the drive for attempting to offline copy the video files before it got any worse.

Peter.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by petestrash

Agreed, but as there appears to be damage to the MFS also (missing shows), it would be best to try a spare drive first to test the hardware before wasting time trying to find all the areas that have been corrupted.

I personally would not want to use this image again. I would save the drive for attempting to offline copy the video files before it got any worse.

Peter.

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As my sister plans on getting a TiVo HD, and imaging a new disk for this one will take time (organising access to a suitable PC, for example, not as easy as it used to be since we had a big clean out at work), I'll retire this TiVo, extract the disk, and try (in the future) to extract the shows. I guess I'll add her disk to the one I took out of my TiVo two years :-) (and still haven't got the shows off)

Isn't there some sort of MFS utility that you can run to check for corruption, or would this damage the disk even more?

Thanks

Kerry

The main utils are mfscheck and fsfix, but they can both cause more damage. I would attempt to extract first.

Peter.

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Originally Posted by petestrash

The main utils are mfscheck and fsfix, but they can both cause more damage. I would attempt to extract first.

Peter.

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Thanks, Peter.

Kerry

Just some extra info, I must have done Guided Setup correctly after all.

My sister rang and said that she has a picture and guide data. The date is out. (I'm not sure by how much).

She has nothing in Now Playing, nothing in Season Passes and nothing in the To Do list. (all were populated before the power reboot)

I told her not to do any manual recordings, so that we can try to find her shows.

Thanks for the help

Kerry

Good luck, but don't fancy your chances.

Peter.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by petestrash

Good luck, but don't fancy your chances.

Peter.

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I was at my sister's at the weekend, and she said "What's this on the TiVo?".

They were recordings of TiVo suggestions (so much for not doing anymore recording on the disk), which had "come back on" (I had changed the option to do not record when I setup the TiVo).

It looks more and more as if the TiVo had a wipe and reset done to it (ie all recordings, season passes, manual recordings wiped and options set back to default (beep when using remote, record suggestions etc)). All that had happened was it suffered a power reset. Very odd.

Anyway, we bought and setup a TiVO HD (with extender drive) at the weekend, she is very happy. Whenever I get around to trying to get my old recordings off my old drive (two years old now :-) ) I'll try hers as well, but as Peter had already surmised, I reckon all the recordings were wiped ;-)

Thanks again for the help and suggestions

Kerry