Spontaneous reboots with DTivo?

[synthesis]

Anybody got a problem with reboots? I upgraded my DSR6k to 2.5 with the zeroed kernel a week ago and all has been good until it just shut down in the middle of a recording and rebooted! To my knowledge this is the first time, but I'm not around during the day...

The recording started back up with a 4-5 minute gap, but it is disturbing and annoying. Is this a common problem that has slipped under my radar???

[maynard]

I'm having a similar problem after upgrading to a 120GB disk with 25xtreme.

It's not a loop like most of the other reboot problems that I've read about... my reboots seem to be spontaneous. It rebooted twice this morning in an hour and 3 times during a half-hour show this evening. Hard to say how often it's rebooting while I'm not watching. I put the original disk back in and the reboots are gone...

I'm using a new 120G Western Digital disk that a friend primed using 25xtreme. He's got the same model 120G WD disk with the same model Phillips DirecTivo that he primed with the same 25xtreme software. His doesn't reboot as far as we know.

I'm going to mount the disk thing on my PC and look through the syslogs. I suppose I'll also look for core files. Anything else I should look for or try?

Thanks,
Maynard

[junkyardpizza]

This is wierd, but I suffered from reboots on my origional drive, but since I upgraded to the 100Gb Western Digital Sams Club deal, I have had no reboots. Whatever that means I don't know...


jyp

[Danno123]

Everything was OK except for the status 0:unknown. I did the touch thing to pppaddr and now my unit reboots sporatically. Also, the HD is making a lot of noise. Using a brand new 100g WD T60 with extreme and ice image. All functions work...but I have the rebooting problem.

Also, any luck on helping with a bash prompt? I need to know how to load the commands to the T60. Would like the locals.

Thanks and Good luck!!!

[drewzer]

I used to get this problem on my T60 more frequently than I am now. It does seem to happen ONLY on records. My theory as to why it happens less now is that I periodically restart the reciever. Does the os check and repair disk on boot?

DREW

[maynard]

I attached the WD disk (described in my earlier post) to a PC and mounted partitions 4 and 9 to take a look. I found 67 reboots in /var/log/messages (looks like partition 9 is /var) over the two days that the system was running...

Just reapplied 25xtreme and I'm waiting to see if it reboots...

-maynard

[BubbaJ]

yo-u may be running out of ram.

[synthesis]

it has only happened 1x since in the past month or so... whatever it was/is, seems to be infrequent.

[drewzer]

would eliminating channels you dont watch tax the system's RAM less?

[nm photodude]

I'm having the same problem with my wd 80 gig, has anyone found a fix for this or have any idea? I thought it might be a tivo power supply problem but really have no idea? HELP.

[rustyfinger]

The problems that you guys are encountering more then likely has to do with the voltage that is being supplied to the hard drives. I think the reason there is such a variety of reboot problems has to do with the way different drives react to the wrong voltage that is being supplied to them. This fixed my problem, along with many others, although this isn't guaranteed to be what is causing everyone's problem. The easy way to check, it to use a voltmeter on the hard drive harness comming from the power supply. The 5v lead is usually the culprit. Measure the voltage of the red wire and verify that it reads 5.05vdc. So far every one that I have checked read higher then it was supposed to. The Sony T60 are, most of the time, way to high at 5.24 to 5.3v. When the setting is this high, with the drive configuration that I have(original 40maxtor and added 80maxtor), I noticed that there are also spuratic voltage drops every so ofter which makes the drives go nuts. On the sony, there is a trim pot on the power supply right next to the ribbon cable that connects the power supply to the main board. Turning the pot counterclockwise until the voltmeter read 5.05vdc fixed my problem and I have been fine ever since. I don't know where the trim pots on the Hughes and Phillips units are, but they are not hard to find and usually have a phillips head.

rustyfinger

[nm photodude]

Thank you for your excellent idea. I will give this a try and pray as this siuation is very, very frustrating. ..Thanks again.

[rustyfinger]

Originally posted by nm photodude
Thank you for your excellent idea. I will give this a try and pray as this siuation is very, very frustrating. ..Thanks again.


I know all about the frustration part! I went and ran some diagnostics on my drives thinking that I have a bad drive before I came across someone posting this voltage problem. I ended up losing all my recorded shows and all my season pass and all other special settings because something got messed up with one of my drives during diagnostics. So after fixing the voltage problem, I had to do a fresh install of 25xtreme, bless my second drive, touch subtest, install all other hacks, ect. even though there was nothing wrong with the drives! That sucked! Good luck and let us know how it works for you.

rustyfinger

[smooothie]

I tried replacing the original untouched drive in the unit, left it alone last night, but first removed the sat feeds so if it rebooted it would hang up.. 18 hours, no reboot yet.
If any of you phillips 6000 pros know where the pot is, wish you could provide a path to it. This sure does seem like the answer.
Will advise if it crashes, or gets the volt adjust
thanks

[T_RJ]

The pot is in the same place on all the DTiVo's.
It is right next to the mylar ribbon cables that connects the Power Supply to the mother board.

An other culpret of the constant reboots is the mylar ribbon cable it self.

Reseating by pulling it out and reinserting on both the Mother Board and the power supply solved the problem on two of my DTiVo's

[Astrogoth]

My DSR6000 was set to 5.27 Volts from the factory. I've been having a reboot/lockup every two weeks or so. Replaced the ribbon cable. No improvement. Perhaps it's new 5.05 Volt setting will fix things. I hope so.




Single stock Quantum 40GB HD.
2.5Xtreme

[JosephBlowinsky]

I think I'm having reboot problems that are much worse than others have described...

The unit I have hacked up is just under a year old..

Now that I've installed a TurboNet and put a 120 and 80 gig drive in my hacked unit and have started trying to use it again, it's getting really frustrating..

Sometimes it will go for a day without rebooting, but more often it reboots a LOT .. like when recording the hockey playoffs, it will reboot two or three times in the middle..

It doesn't just reboot while recording stuff I've picked.. I turned off the logsNull for awhile to see how often it was rebooting and sometimes it's 10 or more times a day.. Sometimes when I come home, I'll find the unit stuck at the "Powering on.." screen or the "Almost there.." screen..

I'm now at the point where I'm think about selling this unit to someone who's a bit more electrically inclined than me can make heads or tails of the problems..

the only problem with that is I'd like to get a working unit and it seems you can't find them hardly anywhere..

off to eBay I guess..

[Astrogoth]

I was hoping the drive overvoltage issue was the cause of my weekly reboots. It's not. Yesterday I paused my DSR to answer the door. Salesman. Came back and hit play. Not 5 seconds later the screen froze and shortly thereafter the remote quit working. Reboot time.

I am not happy.

[TDW]

Has anyone found a fix for this reboot problem? I did my hack when the xtreme disk first came out, like over 6 months ago. This week it has been rebooting every 20- 30 mins. After it has rebooted 4 or 5 times it locks on the Powering up screen and I need to let it sit for a few hours before I can get it to actually power up. It has worked fine for so long and I haven't changed a thing. If anyone has any ideas, I would really appreciate some help.