Problems and solutions
From NLTiVo
This sections is mainly related to running version 3 of TiVo's software on US hardware TiVo's, but some solutions will apply to other versions of the software, and possibly UK hardware.
Feel free to add your own problems and solutions to this section, it's main purpose is to put everything in one place, rather than having to wade through old list postings looking for the solution to problems that others have had (and solved before).
If you don't see your problem here and you don't have a clue on how to fix it, please join our mailinglist mail us your problem.
My TiVo occasionaly stops responding. What could be wrong?
Under version 3.0 of the software there is an issue where the system will stop processing remote events. This seems to be caused by a process that hooks into the event system and later stops responding or is unable to process waiting events. It is commonly known as the '3.0 event bug'. To help reduce the risk you may wish to watch what TivoWeb modules and utilities you run. Modules such as 'Phone' hook into the event handler to perform various tasks. It also seems to happen more often after heavy use of a remote control which also implies that a process is not able to clear its queue before hanging.
The TiVo will still record programmes in this 'non-responsive state', it will just not repond to events (such as those created by the remote control). The system can be fixed by either killing the hung process (if you can determine which one it is), or by rebooting.
One of the known causes of the event bug is IR overload, but this is not just TiVo's remote we talk about but any IR signal from any remote or IR source. The TiVo tries to decode them all and they all get added to the queue for processing. It could be that something in your room is producing excessive IR and overloads the TiVo. It may be worth covering the eye at the front of your TiVo for a few days and see if improves your uptimes.
With all the different results and uptimes that people report it is suspected that there must be some hardware issues which causes the same software to act so differently on different TiVo's. Some people had success in curing problems by replacing their power supplies.
If you don't use TivoWeb often, it is better to disable it and start it as-needed. Reloading TivoWeb frequently (i.e. in a cron job) seems to increase the time until lock-up. This shows that TivoWeb is at least partially responsible for this problem.
From comments made on the Australian mailinglist it feels like the minority running the ozTiVo-image have uptimes of over a month and the majority have uptimes of 2 to 4 weeks. Which is liveable. Even a series-2 TiVo with minimal hacks installed, only averages about a month between reboots. Some people reboot their TiVo's each night in a cron-job to reduce the chance of a 'hanging' TiVo.
My video stutters, what is wrong?
Some people experience video-stuttering. This can have two causes:
- You are in "maintenance mode". Make sure you are out of "maintenance mode" (reboot the system and watch the bootscreen).
- You are running scripts / programs on your TiVo. You can fix the stuttering by telnetting to your tivo, and run "setpri fifo 1 $$", this will make all new processes spawned on the tivo run at low priority.
If "setpri" cannot be found, try: 'find / -name "setpri"' or else download it here and stick it in /var/hack/bin/
When the TiVo boots up, the animation sound breaks up and stops, starts, stutters and then finally the main menu appears.
It seems like I might not have imaged the hard disk properly or my TiVo is faulty.
No, your TiVo and hard disk is fine. What you are seeing is caused by playing back the original NTSC animation in PAL. Due to PAL being 5 frames a second less than NTSC the video buffer fills up and "spills over". This is what causes the audio breaks on the animation because it gets out of sync with the video and eventually "breaks". The original video can be replaced by a correct playing version using this howto.
You can see the long version of the intro, together with the story behind the character over here.
The TiVo menus don't fill the whole screen, there's a big black bar at the bottom of the screen.
The menu's don't fill the whole screen because NTSC has less lines than PAL, so blank lines appear to make up the difference. This only occurs on US TiVo's.
I've just completed Guided Setup but my video seems jerky or jittery like it is missing one frame every second.
Correct. It is missing one frame per second. This is because in "Maintenance Mode" you are still in an NTSC type of playback. To solve this wait a few hours and reboot the TiVo. The splash screen you see when booting should not say "Maintenance Mode". If it is still in Maintenance Mode then try a few more reboots.
I can't access "Recorder & Phone Setup", it just comes back to the menu again.
This is a known issue with Dutch TiVo's, this menu doesn't work while the TiVo is in PAL mode. You need to be in either NTSC or Guided Setup/Maintenance Mode to access those pages. To change modes access the pal/ntsc tivoweb module, set to "PAL Guided Setup" mode, or "NTSC" mode, and reboot. You will be able to access the menus. Change it back to "PAL" mode, and reboot when you are finished. But this is not required our workaround is to use the Phone page on TiVoWeb? to allow you to force a daily call which is the only thing you need that menu for.
To force a daily call use the "phone" menu on tivoweb or type "xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/Dcall" into your browsers address bar, where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is your Tivo's IP address.
My Maxtor hard disk is noisy in the TiVo
It is most likely in "Performance" or "Fast" mode. Google for "amset.exe", download it, extract it to a bootable floppy. Attach the disk from your TiVo to your pc, (disconnecting any Maxtor disks you use in your pc normally) and run "amset /quiet". This will set the disk into quiet mode, you should not be able to hear it in the TiVo now. If amset can't handle the acoustic management of your harddisk, you can try to use "ataac.zip"
My harddrive reports a size of 9-10MB. What is wrong?
This occurs sometimes when a Maxtor harddrive is imaged, placed in a TiVo and put back into a pc for upgrade-purposes. The drive has been wrongly recognized by your TiVo as a Quantum-drive and is locked. This howto describes how to unlock the drive.
TiVoWeb(plus) doesn't seems to start anymore. How do I fix this?
When you get errors trying to access TiVoWeb(plus), first try to start it from the console, using:
[TiVo [p0] ~]# /hack/TivoWebPlus/tivoweb console
If all goes well, maybe something is wrong in the startup-script. For instance, you might have commented out the tivoweb-service in /etc/sysinit.conf. But you also might get this message:
Warning: The last few sessions did not complete successfully We may be in a reboot loop... abort
To fix the reboot loop problem, what you need to do is telnet into the box and type:
rm -rf /var/log/*tivoweb*
This error can be caused when your unit has not fully started up and got rebooted again. Once you remove the tivoweb log files, with the aforementioned command, you should be able to start up tivoweb manually again; best way to do it is with the
./tivoweb console
command, that way you can watch the output. If all goes well, just reboot the device and you should be going again...
