Tivo stuck in reboot

[CheshireCat]

Well, my 2nd TiVo has stuck in the 'powering up' reboot cycle.

From my investigations, its either hard disk corruption/failure, or a power supply capacitor burnout killing the 7v line (but not the 5v line). Replacing the hard disk can be done by mailordering a pre-imaged one from the US ( http://www.weaknees.com/australia-new-zealand-tivo.php ) but this comes to about NZ$250 once you figure in postage and so on. Replacing power supply capacitors is cheaper (only a few $) but fiddly, awkward, and you need to work out which ones and so on.

Since a new TiVo can be picked up currently for <$200 I'll just do that, and keep the old one for spares. Illl see if it is the capacitors and if so then have a go at fixing.

It is worth noting there are NO TiVo service centers in NZ, only in Oz and the US, for which the postage to send it back would be prohibitive. After your 1 year warranty expires you're on your own!

Since I'm in this state, if the HDD is not damaged, I'm going to take a backup image of it for future recovery and disk replacement. Not sure of the legality of making this generally availableto people though - its only of use if you have the TiVo hardware, which means you must have a license for the software, but I doubt they'd look on it that way.

[Darren King]

Not sure of the legality of making this generally available to people though - its only of use if you have the TiVo hardware.

Making it "generally available" publicly would be frowned upon, for copyright reasons. However there are some of us who can privately help out for failed hard disk fix solutions if asked nicely and at a lot less than the prices you have been quoted - even free if you want to do the job yourself which is not hard for someone with some basic computer hardware knowledge.

While your comments about no NZ service centres is valid, and USA will not service an AUS/NZ unit, there are also other options open to people, especially if they can do some disassembly and send the relevant parts for repair.

The rest of your comments regarding your failed TiVo have been addressed in http://forums.oztivo.net/showthread....ng-failed-TiVo