Fix TiVo

TiVo Repair and Troubleshooting: TiVo Rebooting at "Almost There"


Your TiVo: Symptoms you may be experiencing

If your TiVo DVR is cycling on bootup between "Welcome, Powering Up" and "Almost There, a Few More Minutes" and around again, you most likely have a bad TiVo hard drive.

Fix my TiVo! - Solutions

The most common cause for this problem is a bad hard drive, but depending on your TiVo model, it can also be caused by motherboard problems, or even, in rare instances, by bad power to the unit or a bad internal power supply.

The most likely possibility is a bad hard drive. The hard drive contains the TiVo OS. So when the unit boots, or attempts to boot, it needs to read the data from the hard drive and also to verify the storage partitions. If the motherboard is unable to read from the OS, the unit will either not boot, or, in some cases, it'll begin to boot, and then reboot as soon as it encounters a problem reading data. This cycle can be fixed in most cases with a replacement TiVo hard drive, already configured with the TiVo OS for your exact model unit. WeaKnees sells replacement TiVo hard drives for every TiVo model in existence.

In addition to the possibility of a bad drive, an improperly loaded TiVo OS, or the incorrect TiVo OS for your model on a hard drive can also result in this cycling behavior.

The easiest possibility to rule out is bad power, but it's also fairly rare. You can try your TiVo in another location and see if it boots.

Another rare possibility is a bad power supply. You'd have to try a replacement power supply inside the unit to see if that's causing the problem.

Finally, motherboards can cause this behavior - again, rarely. WeaKnees can fix many types of motherboards that exhibit this problem as part of the flat fee TiVo repair process (for Series 1 or Series 2 standard definition TiVos) or their TiVo repair and diagnostic service (for high definition TiVos).

More Information about this problem

Cycling between "Welcome Powering Up" and "Almost There. A Few Minutes More" is often a condition that doesn't last very long. Since it's usually caused by a failing drive, and since the unit keeps rebooting, the repeated stress on the hard drive generally won't allow this behavior to last very long, and eventually the hard drive fails completely and the unit stalls finally at the "Welcome Powering Up" screen. In this series of events, a hard drive is virutally always the culprit.

TiVo Bolt with Lifetime Service starting at $299.99 on Amazon

All information and text on fixmytivo.com is copywritten and reserved. No copies may be made or used with express written permission.