I FINALLY fixed the problem.
Back in December or so I posted about JR not working with Tivo under vista but fine under XP. I literally had 2 boot disks and if I boot to XP, no problem, but with vista, the system would hang up after about 3 minutes, playing bursts of 10-30 seconds before stopping again.
Easily a software problem, right?
WRONG.
This one took, me months to work out. here's why, just a bit of complexity at home:
The problem finally worked out to one tivo, upstairs that would not work with vista and one that would. I swapped nics, I swapped units, the problem was maddening.
Then I stumbled onto the answer last night.
XP + Tivo series 2 with USB 1.1 and Linksys USB200M wired adapters = good
Vista + Tivo series 2 with USB 1.1 and Linksys USB200M wired adapters = bad
Vista + Tivo series 2 with USB 1.1 and Farallon wired adapters = Good!
Literally it comes down to the adapter. And it is not a bad Linksys adapter because I have 2 and both work fine on the USB 2.0 tivo, neither work on the USB 1.1 Tivo - except with XP.
What is going on? My thought is that there is some difference in the IP retry. Eventually the stack clogs up and starts to hang. But I have nothing to tell me how this is all tied together or where the problem actually stems from. I just know it works now.
What a nightmare.