I tried searching the forum but couldn't find anything that corresponded to this problem.

Is there anything that can be done if an N800 gets stuck on the Nokia screen during startup?

It switches on fine, the logo appears, but there's no animated blue line at the bottom of the screen. It basically just stays on the Nokia logo until the screen switches itself off after a few minutes.

The N800's owner can't reflash it, they don't have a Windows PC or the technical knowledge to do it manually.

I've seen similar symptoms with a bad memory card (if I remember, it was the 128 MB nokia-branded one that came with N800). It got stuck after 2 seconds kernel is loaded (while trying to load memory card driver), and shut of after a minute or so. Removing the bad MMC helped.

Unfortunately seeing the actual cause is only possible with serial console.. So your case might be about N other things, too.

What is the correct procedure to get going again if your N800 develops a terminal software problem? If I plug the USB into to my PC and then hit the On button, I see something about firmware update mode - is that a reliable way to restore the unit to initial condition even if it's completely screwed up?

No terminal problems yet, but I'm a bit paranoid with all the experimental software I'm installing, and I haven't even tried any kernel hacks yet.

I got this same problem when fooling around with a .profile, and I had to re-flash to solve it.... Bad news for your situation, I guess.

Had the same after upgrading something linked with gtk. It couldn't start the GUI anymore. It was stuck.
So I reflashed

Isn't there a way to get a terminal opening? or any hack to get back the hand on the device?
I really miss more information during boot.

There is a way to SSH into your IT from your PC when it is stuck on the Nokia logo, but I never figured out how.

When this happened to me I ended up reflashing and it fixed everything. (Turned out that I installed an offending lib file that b0rked something in the system.)

Tim

Happened to me this past weekend. I was being "proactive" and upgraded a few things that it said needing upgrading - claws mail is the only one I remember, but there were several that I updated. Anyway, next reboot it never recovered. I reflashed. Such a PITA.

same problem here...I've updated and then rebooted my n800. Now are 2 days that is stuck on the nokia logo...maybe I've to reflash...

Depends on what you mean by "completely screwed up". You can always reflash if the problem is in root filesystem, initfs partition or linux kernel. (/dev/mtd4 3 or 2) You can really brick the device if you mess with bootloader or config partition (/dev/mtd0 or mtd1). 99.9% problems are because of something broken in rootfs.

Reflash will fix it but you can also install bootmenu (and optionally clone your system to card) before you start experimenting with your system. Then once this happens you can either boot into usb network recovery mode, ssh in over usb, mount rootfs and fix it or you can boot device with copy of clean system and mount and fix broken rootfs too. All this without reflashing and losing your data.

Thanks a ton for that info, that will prevent all future problems like this!
S.