A note from the troubleshooting archives: The Welcome! Powering Up Screen.
When you first boot any TiVo DVR, you’ll see a version of the “Welcome! Powering Up” screen. For most units, it’s one of these two below. For the oldest TiVos, it looks a bit different.
This screen is built into the firmware on the motherboard of the unit. Software updates don’t affect it, and you’ll see it even without a hard drive installed in the unit.
The next screen is the “Almost There” screen. It’s at this point that the TiVo starts to read data off the hard drive. So if you get as far as “Almost There” that means you have a hard drive present and the motherboard has begun reading from it. Older units with the gray “Welcome” screen can progress to a gray or orange-and-black “Almost There” screen depending on the software version.
So the progress during start up is a good place to do some troubleshooting if you suspect you’ve got a hard drive problem. If you get to the “Welcome! Powering Up” screen and no further, the TiVo can’t read the OS from the hard drive. So in 99% of those cases, a replacement hard drive with the right TiVo OS on it, properly formatted, will fix the problem.
Have a different problem with your TiVo? If you get no screen at all, then you may have a bad power supply, or just a cabling issue. If you get further than this screen, then you could still have a hard drive problem or another issue.
