The other day my Mom gave me a call to let me know that the TiVo I gave her was broke. Like the good son that I am, I immediately went over to her house only to find out that it was broke 
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For some reason her TiVo doesn’t display anything on her TV and the lights on the front of the box are both orange (the picture makes it look like they are green and red but they aren’t). Does anybody know what might be wrong? Is her TiVo dead or do I just need to get her a new hard drive?
Usually an orange light means it’s downloading something, more than that I couldn’t hazard a guess…
Did you try pulling the power and hard rebooting it, watching what comes up to see if it boots, green screens, etc?
It may just be wedged.
I tried pulling the plug several times. The only thing that shows up on the tv is a black screen.
That’s what I read some where else. I don’t think it is downloading something. Any other suggestions?
Just a black screen? Huh. I’d check all the cabling to make sure the TiVo output is connected to the TV correctly, and the TV is set to the right input. There should be *something* from the TiVo when it is plugged in. Since the lights come on, it sounds like the power supply is still working.
If the power supply is working, but you’re not getting *anything* on video, I’d try another output – try S-Video, RCA, and RF. See if any of them work.
If one of them works then it could be blown video output on the other outputs. If not of them work at all, then it is probably the main board since if it were the drive you’d get the initial boot screens and it’d either hang or green screen later in the boot process.
Her TiVo may have blown the power supply. When this happens (and its well documented in the Tivo Community Forums), both LEDs on the front will usually light up with no video output. If the unit has lifetime, it is worth replacing the power supply. You can buy the appropriate one at Weaknees.
It could very well be a power supply issue. My Mom did say that a transformer blew in the area but I didn’t think anything of it since no other devices in the house was affected. Also, my Mom seems to think that it worked after the transformer blew. In any event, how could I test to see that it is a power supply problem? Any thoughts?
There’s really no way to test other than buying a power supply from a parts supplier (like Weaknees) and trying. I can just assure you that I’ve seen at least 20 posts on TivoCommunity that describe exactly what your Mom’s machine is doing (LEDs on, no video output) as a power supply failure. You could open it up and see if the hard drive is spinning up…
So what ended up happening with the Tivo and the orange light. Mine has exactly the same problem.
I don’t know because my mom ended up buying a dual-tuner TiVo. If you find out let me know because I have a broken TiVo laying around my house.
[...] back in October of last year when I blogged about my Mom’s broken Series 2 TiVo? Well, I was wondering if anybody wanted it? Based on the comments I received, it appears as though [...]
Where abouts are you…I won’t mind another series 2…power supply is easy enough to replace…John
I already gave away this S2 here:
http://www.tivoblog.com/archives/2007/07/28/anybody-want-a-broken-tivo/