Help Please N18 Error TiVo support not cutting it

[The Yeti]

Hi TiVoers

I'm new to it, my wife finally wore me down and we purchased our 1st TiVo in late January,

I went home and aside from a small issue with the retailer not giving me the wireless adaptor as per the deal I connected via the existing wired network and have enjoyed trouble free viewing ever since

the trouble is however my wife was telling her mother how great TiVo is and how the whole season pass blah blah blah thing would suit them. So any how they buy a TiVo and as they aren't on wireless I run a cat5 cable under the house through the cavity (you know all the fun stuff a diligent son in law does) and connect it all up, at first I had issues getting the TiVo to connect to the network via DHCP but there now resolved.

The problem I have now is that it will connect via the DHCP and as we enter the step buy step guided setup I get to step 2 it lets me no its negotiating then configuring then errors out with N18.

the Machine suggests I power down and power back up so I do this (to both the modem/router & the TiVo) and run through the set up again, so far I have done this no less than 5 times, and well you know what they say about doing the exact same thing but expecting a different result.

Any how I got in to the modem / router settings and I see the TiVo is happily listed on the network, I noticed the security's were set to maximum so I switched them back to DZH Plus (or something like that) basically that means all ports are open, but still I powered down and power back up (if you have done it you would know how time consuming this is) and I still have the same error N18

I have tried calling tech support and as you know they don't offer that any more, so I emailed tech support and got the standard answer that I already read on the TiVo website basically saying try and off peek time and to open the ports up on my fire wall

this is really doing my head in, can some one suggest something I can try, I would really like to have this problem out of my life and also have them experience every thing that's great about TiVo

[petestrash]

N18 is a generic communication issue.

Have you tried using a laptop or other PC on the cable you ran to make sure it isn't a cabling issue?

Peter.