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Is my Apple TV dead?

E

EvilMatty

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 2, 2009
26
0
Hi, first post so please be gentle!

My Apple TV 160GB (out of warranty:() is no longer booting up. The LED is flashing amber/white and the display is showing a picture of the Apple TV with a large question mark over the top. Judging by the clicking noise the unit is making I would guess that the hard drive has kicked the bucket. Was just wondering if there was anything I could do other than drop it in the bin?!

Thanks!
 
the clicking does sound like it could have something to do with the HD.

if you decide to get rid of it, please contact me via private message or email.
 
rickeym said:
Hmm, I think I would try to replace the hard drive.
Click to expand...


Thats ok if you have a image of the original harddrive to put on the new one. I would take out the old drive hook it up to a Mac and check it for errors first. That is if you have a Mac as a PC wont read it.
 
roidy said:
Thats ok if you have a image of the original harddrive to put on the new one. I would take out the old drive hook it up to a Mac and check it for errors first. That is if you have a Mac as a PC wont read it.
Click to expand...

Yep, sounds like a good idea. :)
 
OP have you tried pressing minus and menu on the remote and restore the os to factory default? I think its minus and menu I carn`t remember the exact buttons.
 
Thanks for all the replies - can't do a factory restore unfortunately as the menu won't come up - just displays the "?" and Apple TV icon.

Hopefully an updated version will be out next week then I won't feel so bad about having to buy a new one :)
 
Have you tried pressing - and menu when the apple logo appears, you dont need to get to the menu to do a recovery. You`ll know if it worked because it will reboot and show the language selector. Worth a try if you havn`t already.
 
That would be my favourite course of action but I don't have a disk image to put onto a new drive. I see there is someone advertising 250GB drive upgrades on eBay which would be great, however there is always the possibility that something else is wrong with it other than the disk.....
 
It may be just the os partition thats shot and the recovery partition may be alright as it dosn`t get use that often, if so you could use the recovery partition from the old drive to build your new drive. Assuming the appleTV os and recovery partitions are the same, I carn`t see why they wouldn`t be.

If it was mine I would take out the drive hook it up to a Mac and see if its a mechanical problem ie. faulty drive hardware or a software problem.
 
If that were the case then the factory restore should fix it. It's possible that the OP could download the ATV 2.3 (or other) disc image from Apple and use Disk Utility on his/her Mac to do a Restore to the OSBoot partition, but I suspect the problem is more than that. But, it's worth a shot. Only should take half an hour, tops.
 
Being that there was no Apple TV apdate this week then it looks like I may as well try and repair my broken one! You mention downloading the disk image from Apple - can you point me to where on Apple's site I can find this image as I've had no luck finding it...?

Thanks.
 
I doubt you`ll get a complete appleTV hard drive image from Apple, I think all you`ll find on the Apple site are the point upgrade packages eg 2.2 or 2.3 that are just the files need to upgrade a working appleTV. It would be very unlikely that Apple would give away the appleTV OS to anybody.

Apart from the illegal places that I wont mention I would take out the hard drive and see if the recovery partition is still intact and working and try to use that. Failing that if you look hard enougth I`m sure you`ll find a copy;)
 
This may be really... really stupid, but have you tried powering it down and leaving it for a few minutes with the power cord unplugged?

One time I booted up my iMac and it went to a grey folder with a white question mark, similar to your situation (minus the weird ticking noise), and I called an Apple rep. and he told me to power down and unplug the power and sit tight for a couple minutes, it seemed to do the trick.

Also, try tilting the actual unit side to side, maybe knock 'something' back into place.

I highly doubt the last option, but you never know.
 
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