Newbie warning!! Maxtor HDD unlock problem no

**st200** · 01-05-2008, 06:05 PM

Hey Guys,
Will keep this short...

Philips hdr 31204 previously upgraded 160 maxtor HDD (from the US) with turbonet (nz model) I have installed. (thanks John)

I have tried to image the drive with no luck (restored to quick and networking didn't happen) so I guess the maxtor is locked??

So my problem is that I have only Windows XP and no floppy discs. I have tried doing a cd boot up with diskutil with no luck.

So what next?? Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!

By the way my programing knowledge is zero and this is already got me at the limit of my computer knowledge.

Thanks

**Skolink** · 01-05-2008, 07:30 PM

It's quite unlikely that it is locked since it is not an original HDD. Why don't you try imaging it again? Did you go through the menu options on the OzTiVo boot CD and choose Tubonet for your networking?
When you say restored too quick, you mean it didn't count up through the percentages, it just said 'done' and that was it?
What capacity does BIOS report for that drive when you power on your PC? 8Mb, or more?

Actually the TiVO could have locked it since it is a Maxtor drive
http://minnie.tuhs.org/twiki/bin/vie...ithMaxtor120GB

Did you have no luck creating a boot CD, or no luck using the boot CD with diskutil on it? Have you tried QUNLOCK?

**st200** · 01-05-2008, 08:05 PM

Thanks for the quick reply, when I tried to image the disk it replied that it was done very qucikly (within 10 secs). When going onto the networking it could not finish. As for the bios report on the drive it says 9mb. I tried running the imaging it several times with no change in the networking. I have not tried Qunlock as soem have reported it as being risky and turning drives into paper weights.

Originally Posted by Skolink

It's quite unlikely that it is locked since it is not an original HDD. Why don't you try imaging it again? Did you go through the menu options on the OzTiVo boot CD and choose Tubonet for your networking?
When you say restored too quick, you mean it didn't count up through the percentages, it just said 'done' and that was it?
What capacity does BIOS report for that drive when you power on your PC? 8Mb, or more?

Actually the TiVO could have locked it since it is a Maxtor drive
http://minnie.tuhs.org/twiki/bin/vie...ithMaxtor120GB

Did you have no luck creating a boot CD, or no luck using the boot CD with diskutil on it? Have you tried QUNLOCK?

**Darren King** · 02-05-2008, 07:44 AM

Originally Posted by st200

As for the bios report on the drive it says 9mb.

Yep. That's a locked drive. TiVo's will lock a fair percentage of Maxtor drives regardless of whether they are original factory fitted units or not.

I have not tried Qunlock as soem have reported it as being risky and turning drives into paper weights.

That's because people don't do it right, usually because they try in a DOS shell via Windows and stuff like that instead of doing it from a pure DOS booting machine. I've unlocked literally hundreds of drives with no problems at all. You need to create a pure DOS booting CD with QUNLOCK on it and boot to that and you will not have any issues at all.

**st200** · 02-05-2008, 09:30 AM

Thanks for the response,
I have tried to find a "pure DOS booting" download with no sucess. I have tried http://www.tivohelp.com/archive/tivo...ki.net/51.html but dylan's boot disk link appears to be gone. I have also tried a boot disk with http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm using "dos 6.22" with no luck. As I mentioned before this is at my limit for computer knowledge so any help would be greatfully appreciated!!! I still have the maxtor 160 attached to a PC I just dont have a floppy disk (worst case I could try to buy one)!. The PC I am using is XP but of course the drive has been removed. The PC has been set up to look at the CD drive first (was already set that way). If someone can post a working link to a "pure dos booting for cd" it would help a lot.
Thanks

Originally Posted by Darren King

Yep. That's a locked drive. TiVo's will lock a fair percentage of Maxtor drives regardless of whether they are original factory fitted units or not.

That's because people don't do it right, usually because they try in a DOS shell via Windows and stuff like that instead of doing it from a pure DOS booting machine. I've unlocked literally hundreds of drives with no problems at all. You need to create a pure DOS booting CD with QUNLOCK on it and boot to that and you will not have any issues at all.

**Darren King** · 02-05-2008, 12:40 PM

I'll put an image of the one I made and use on my website server later today and post the link here. It's not very big at all, approx 1MB, being the basic DOS boot files, CD-ROM drivers and QUNLOCK on the CD. It is enough to get you out of trouble

**Darren King** · 02-05-2008, 04:30 PM

File is here: http://www.kingey1971.com/tivo/qunlock.zip

Unzip and burn to a CD with Nero (file is a .nrg image). Boot the CD and when the DOS prompt appears you can use QUNLOCK like has been explained in other how-to's on how to use it.