Misbehaving TiVo

I have an unmodified Samsung DirecTV receiver/TiVo. Generally speaking, this spectacular device bringeth me much joy. Lately it hath been sucking.

My beloved television de-tainter, while fully operational, has been ridiculously slow. When bringing up the guide, when accessing the menu, etc. it performs very poorly.

In discussing the issue with my A/V nerd friends, it turns out that it’s quite important to make the “Daily Call” fairly regularly. Maybe that’s what they meant by “daily”? Anyhow, not doing so makes the TiVo crufty and bloated (yes, that’s my expert technical description). It’s been well over a year since making the call. Oops.

I’ve spent much of my evening trying to get my TiVo to make its call. It turns out, not making the call also impairs your ability to make the call.

The connection status simply hangs at “Negotiating” for quite a while and then dies. It turns out
lots of folks have experienced this.

In reading the thread on tivocommunity.com about this issue, it sounds like the only solution is to simple keep trying. Gotta love that.

Other than a factory-reset, does anyone out there have any recommendations for getting around this?