My Tivo is dead, long live my tivo...

I was watching telly, as you do, when my tivo suddenly reset. My tivo just shows the "Your recorder is starting up, Please wait a moment" message indefinitely.

Back when I first started setting up the tivo I noticed a nasty feature it has, if you get any of the startup scripts wrong the tivo will not boot and theres no way to fix it. But noone had done anything with the tivo before it rebooted and has been working fine for almost exactly 3 years I've had it.

So my first thought is this a hdd failure? What else will stop the tivo rebooting?

And assuming I do have to install fresh, should I get the v1.6 image and modify to nz settings, or no dif to just dl nz v1.5 image and save a little hassle on install?

Is there any way to see whats on a tivo hdd from windows or some other way without a tivo? I seem to remember that if you put a tivo hdd in a windows box and start up, it'll no longer work in the tivo even if hdd is fine?

Left it off for bout 30mins, working again now, but worried it could fail again at any time. I have a spare 120g hdd I'll install the new image onto ready just in case it happens again.

But question bout what image to use still stands. And would be nice to check health status of tivo hdd from windows if the tivo will have it back. It has been going pretty much non stop for 3 years, spose it will fail eventually. How long should they last?

Check your system fan Dalc and temp, might have cooled down enough to run again.... I bet it needs replacing.

You mean the fan on back of the box? Its working fine. Never had any problems in a lot hotter temps than now. I have the case slightly off, just enuf for a small gap at the front of the case, so any heat would have np escaping.

It happend again this afternoon, had to reset the tivo but wouldn't start up, so leaving it off for a while to see if that fixes it again.

Just going to have to start fresh with new image if its going to keep doing this, which in the long run isn't a bad thing as I'd be using a 120g instead of the 80g hdd it currently has, and if the 80g hdd health checks out ok I'll use that as a 2nd hdd for lots of recording time.

DON'T USE THE OLD DRIVE AS A 2nd DRIVE.

That is the worst you can do. Once the drives are married, if one fails you loose recordings on both. So infact if you have 2 new hard drives you are doubling the chance of loosing your recordings. Using an old drive in the pair increases the chances much more.

Just image the 120gb on it's own and use the 80gb in a PC which can map around problem areas.

Peter.