[FIX] Get your ATV back to the original OS in 15mins!

Well, since installing Leopard didn't work out for my ideal download box (randomly restarted every few minutes), and I hadn't made a backup of the ATV HDD before I wiped it (tried to, but did something backwards and lost it), I was sitting with a box I couldn't use for 2 weeks - same as a lot of you!

I figured out a way to get your ATV back to the ATV OS, which I think is what a lot of you want to do!

There might be a way to do with without taking out the HDD, but it wasn't a problem for me to just pop the HDD out and format it.

Download this - AtvDrive.

Format your ATV HDD with it.

Download Firecore's ATV Flash via buying it or finding it at your favorite spot. I'd suggest buying it if you want to use their added features, if not, you're just downloading the latest ATV OS using their software. Up to you.

Start up ATV Flash, agree, next, ect., blah, blah, blah, download the OS.

It'll download the ATV OS and should save it to your Downloads folder.

Download Carbon Copy Cloner.

Mount the ATV OS in Downloads - Should be something like: latest1304246102600.dmg

Clone it to the OSBoot partition on your ATV HDD.

And... you should be good to go!

Hmm .. have you tried this? Sounds too easy.

ls

YES......!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WORKS LIKE A CHARM - Although i had to get the fire core to work first...

Thank you so much...!!!

I had to restore mine as well, and I thought I posted on how I did it, but I don't see it anywhere. I manually created the 4 partitions, then put the smallatv on it, and was able to boot/restore/update it back to 3.x
I will look into this way as well. I REALLY would like to get the 10.5.5 with working sound to putz with since I am almost certainly going to buy a used Mac Mini and want to test feasibility.

Another option may be
This is a bare linux install that boots XBMC only.
OpenELEC - The living room PC for everyone
On this page
Step 1 Prepare for Installation - OpenELEC Wiki
It states that the USB that you create apparently has the ability to redo the ATV!

"In the event that your AppleTV does experience "pink tint" all is not lost! The SwissArmyKnife USB can be used to prepare the AppleTV for a factory-restore boot to reset the HDMI setting. There is no quick way to do this; you need to backup, factory-restore, reinstall and restore from backup to fix it. These steps can be done via the SwissArmyKnife USB by using the backup, factoryfresh, download and restore keyword functions in sequence. "

oh thanks for the tutorials! you made it guys easier for us :)