Its sounding like there is a problem with your connection to the servers (or possibly with the servers themselves, although that is unlikely). Perhaps you have a noisy phone line, or a bad cable.

You don't need to do a clear and delete everything on units like the Sony SVR-2000.

I'd recommend using a different phone line, if possible; or perhaps get a networking card such as a TurobNet or CacheCard from 9thTee and use your home network (if you have one) and its connection to the Internet to make your call as an alternative to the phone line, as that might solve your problem.

Its also possible that there just could be something wrong with your TiVo, although malfunctioning TiVo systems typically don't behave this way. I've seen the problem you are having before, and it typically just goes away over time, so my guess is that its either phone-line related or TiVo-service related.

For answers to commonly asked questions, please refer to the
InstantCake Instructions and Release Notes,
Official InstantCake Discussion Thread, and the
Official PTVnet Discussion Thread

Same problem

I'd like to second what Navigatr is saying. I have a Series 2 InstantCake upgrade that ran fine (performed software updates, made daily calls) over the phone for several months. But 72 days ago (according to the incessant nag from the Tivo), it stopped being able to make daily calls via the phone, USB ethernet interface, or anything else.

Numerous reboots, config file tweaks, and much debugging using a second Tivo and the original hard drive from the series 2 shows that nothing is wrong with the phone line and nothing wrong with the Tivo's modem. Obviously, the net connect works as well, since I can telnet to the unit.

So I'm curious to know A) what happened about 2 months ago that freaked out all these boxes that are having daily call problems, B) what this means for buying pay-per-view shows, and C) how to fix it.

I am suspicious that this is related to the default suppression of daily calls. I actually don't care if the unit makes daily calls and would prefer that it do so, since it is horribly inconvenient to order PPV shows via the web. What is the "approved" method for enabling daily calls if the original install used the default selection which suppresses them?