Mediabox trashed my N800, won't boot
 

After installing Mediabox and running a quick test, powered down and restarted - now my N800 won't boot, just keep cycling on the N800 logo. Already left the battery out for 15 minutes. Any other suggestions before I reflash? :mad:

Re: Mediabox trashed my N800, won't boot
 

Well, this is really, really annoying. :mad:

When I go to the official Nokia site and download the last OS2007 update, it sends me a PHP file instead of a bin file. What the heck do I do with that?? The updater software doesn't give me the option to select OS2007 unless I already have the bin file (which I don't).

And I'm afraid to do the firmware flash now because I can't recharge the battery - plugging in the charger causes the N800 to go into its loop with the screen on full brightness.

Re: Mediabox trashed my N800, won't boot
 

If it's a php file, post it here so that we can have some fun!
:)

Re: Mediabox trashed my N800, won't boot
 

Haha.

The link on the Nokia site says that it's supposed to be a .bin file, but what it actually sends is a file with the name Nokia_N800.php. Since I have no way of knowing what the .bin file should actually contain, and a bad flash would be disasterous, I don't want to just rename it without some assurance that it's the right file. I see that other people have had this problem before, but nobody seems have to received a satisfactory answer about it that I can find on this board. Does anyone have an MD5 for the last OS2007 update?

My opinion of Nokia is plummeting every minute.:mad: :mad:

Re: Mediabox trashed my N800, won't boot
 

When I downloaded the 0s2008 .bin, it saved it as a php...I ended up just chaging the extension and it worked perfectly.

Ive also had mine do the cycles like you are describing, except Im always able to cure it by plugging it in and waiting for the charging animation to become actve then powering on and im good as new.

Re: Mediabox trashed my N800, won't boot
 

Thanks. I've had endless boot cycles before too, and it recovered as you decribe, but not this time.

When I plug it in there's a short delay, then the charging icon appears in the middle of a black display (as usual). But then normally it seems to do a little mini-boot and "Charging" appears on a white screen for a while before the backlight shuts off. Now it goes into its aborted boot cycle instead. It looks like whatever corruption happened is in the loader before it even gets to the charging display.

For a minute I though I wasn't even going to be able to get the USB icon on the display for the updater, but after a couple of unsuccessful cycles it settled down and stayed on the USB display.

Looking at the PHP file, it appears to have the same header as my OS2008 .bin file, and it's about 88 Mbytes long. Could be the right .bin, but what the heck is wrong with Nokia that their official update site is sending the wrong file type?? :mad:

Re: Mediabox trashed my N800, won't boot
 

Ok, renamed the PHP file to .bin and reflashed successfully. Now I have a lot of work to do to restore my apps. :mad:

This could easily have been even more difficult to recover from if there hadn't been enough power left in the battery for a successful flash, since the recharge cycle wasn't working properly.

This experience leaves me very, very unhappy with Nokia. :mad: :mad:
(and I'm only fogiving Mediabox because it's beta software, use at own risk)

Re: Mediabox trashed my N800, won't boot
 

What browser are you using? I've had problems with I think Firefox or Opera once where any link for a downloaded item was a PHP..the site didn't meet the code standards, so maybe Nokia has a similar problem.

Re: Mediabox trashed my N800, won't boot
 

Yes, I thought of that right away, so I tried IE instead - same thing.

Re: Mediabox trashed my N800, won't boot
 

That is something that you have decided to be true.

Having the charger connected might not charge the battery, but certainly provides power through all the flashing procedure.

What makes you think that you cannot flash with the charger connected?

Re: Mediabox trashed my N800, won't boot
 

I flashed my N810 with charger attached - only plugging it in after the initial bootup and switch holding - was worried but it worked out ok.

Re: Mediabox trashed my N800, won't boot
 

I wouldn't want to make any assumptions, but Nokia says to disconnect the charger during flashing. Since the charger triggers a software routine in the O/S, I assume that may be because it could interfere with the flashing process.

I think it's likely that the charger does provide power throughout the flashing process if connected, but it's also quite possible that it doesn't, and there's no way to know for sure.

Re: Mediabox trashed my N800, won't boot
 

Ok, here's the catch: plugging in the charger in a device that is off will turn it on, so you are supposed to have already connected the usb cable and started the flasher program _before_ plugging in the charger.
But, when the charger is plugged in, it will provide power to the device.

If the instructions are stating anything else, please file a bug @ maemo.org, because they are bogus.

Any statement about the battery having to be charged before starting the flashing procedure is relevant only when the charger is not used.

Re: Mediabox trashed my N800, won't boot
 

While I totally understand your anger, please don't shoot at 3rd party software without being able to provide any evidence. If the installation of the package broke something, then it looks like the fault of a broken package installation. This is generally not the fault of a particular package, but can have many reasons.

Re: Mediabox trashed my N800, won't boot
 

I don't recall having to reflash the BIOS on my Windows PC when a bit of beta software went wrong. In fact, I've never even had to re-install Windows to fix a problem - and I've used a lot of beta-quality Windows software since Windows 1.0. I've certainly never been concerned that my hardware might need to be sent in for repair. I think it was a design error for the battery charging management routine not to be in ROM firmware. That's why I'm unhappy with Nokia. I don't know what it was about the Mediabox installation that broke it - does it matter?

Re: Mediabox trashed my N800, won't boot
 

Page 1 of the Updater instructions:

"Make sure that the battery is full."

Page 2 of the Updater instructions:

"Make sure the device is switched off, and the charger is disconnected from the device."

There's nothing further about connecting the charger. I would interpret those instructions to mean that it's only safe to reflash on battery power.

Re: Mediabox trashed my N800, won't boot
 

You have been lucky... I just had to reinstall Win XP on one computer when end user tried to install Netgear WiFi card drivers from original install CD... of course there was a fatal compatibility issue with the driver and XP SP2 that causes the XP computer to enter into continuous reboot loop. (Not even safe mode or command prompt did work.. Maybe some specific manual editing or registry would have worked but that likely would take more time than reinstall Windows...)

In my experience Windows world is not the ultimate heaven... :rolleyes:

(And in case you are asking... I do use Windows computers (XP and Vista) at home and also work PC run on XP... N800 is the only Linux computer I have.)

Re: Mediabox trashed my N800, won't boot
 

Well, it matters in that you opened a thread blaming particularly MediaBox in its title for your trouble. I don't think it was this software alone that broke your OS, but I'm definitely interested in the circumstances under which this has happened.

Re: Mediabox trashed my N800, won't boot
 

This humans are horrible, they do mistake!!


I understand the angriness but now you should
-> Direct your email to nokia or anywhere where they come. Nobody from nokia will read here.
-> If there is a bug in a software and you don't want to be hit again by it, then open a bug report maybe?


So... no php file :(

Re: Mediabox trashed my N800, won't boot
 

N800 running OS2007 (latest version, original Nokia installation, never flashed)

Downloaded https://garage.maemo.org/frs/downloa...92.1_armel.deb

1st attempt to install: needs Python 2.5
Installed Python 2.5 runtime from direct link in Application Manager (original version now gone of course, so can't verify exact file version)

2nd attempt to install successful.

Ran Mediabox. Worked successfully, but doesn't seem to auto-detect all the media on my N800. Playback of the default Nokia video is a bit choppy. Quit Mediabox.

Powered off N800.

Next attempt to power on: permanent boot loop.

As I said earlier, I don't mean to blame Mediabox unfairly - I understand what a difficult (and often thankless) job it is trying to develop and debug software like this - but it was most likely the action of installing and running Mediabox (and/or Python 2.5, which I didn't need before Mediabox) that trashed things somehow.

Re: Mediabox trashed my N800, won't boot
 

Lest you think I'm being overly critical of Nokia's design, let me point out that my other multi-purpose handheld unit, namely my WinCE-based GPS, does things quite differently and much better.

The GPS unit has all the basic WinCE firmware code to get the unit up and running in ROM. On a cold boot or hardware reset, it reloads the flash memory from the ROM, guaranteeing a good set of boot code no matter what havoc may have resulted from software gone bad. It then checks the SD card slot to see if there's an Autostart program in the root directory of the SD card, and if so it executes that program. Normal practice is for people to set up a full restore with all their custom apps on the SD card, triggered by the Autostart program, which gets you up and running again in the field in the event of a software disaster when you aren't near a computer.