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?