I haven't been able to find anyother who has this problem so I start this new thread to see if there is any one else who has this problem.

My N900 gets stuck during reboot. On the screen it's the first white w/ a blue NOKIA-logo. At the bottom it reads:

Installing software update.
Please do not interrupt.
20%

The "20%" isn't there first but as soon at its indicates a start in installning it just freezes.

This is the background:

I have resently installed more software and yesterday during an update using Faster Application it got stuck halfway during installing "100 boxes". I forced the program to shut (after more than one hour), rebooted and tried again. Same thing happened. I tried to update another program (qthelllo)the original application manager. Then it also freezes at aprox 20%.

I rebooted and thought that I must probably fix this someway. Last night I connected my charger to the phone - but when I checked it later it wasn't showing any sign of charging (or beeing fully charged) just a black screen. I tried to boot it but I wasn't able to get any response from my phone.

I then removed the battery and tried to reboot it again, and after sevral tries I managed to get to the first white screen w/ the blue NOKIA logo. It was the first time I got to the first description.

Now when the screen is stuck, the charging indicator lamp is constant yellow (not the usual pulsing yellow when charging).


I guess that I must reflash it. (Even if I'm not really sure how to do it now when I don't get any response from the thing). But if anyone knows a way to get to rescue some of my files I would be glad.

On nokia's forum I got a tip:

Recharging my battery now (with a little help from a local shop) so I will test this when I get home.

if i were you, i would have reflashed it!did not you have a backup onto your memory card?

It is possible to flash just the kernel, which will leave all your data intact. There is also a rescue kernel you can flash which allows you to put the device in mass-storage mode with full access to the eMMC.

instructions to which can be found here.

Thanks so much for your help and effort. But still I haven't been able to fix my N900.

First off, what I understand the "Rescue Initrd" must be run under Linux? I onl have windows to work with so I couldn't get much further with this.

I have tried to flash it with 1.3 but then I only get a reply that "SW version [same as i try to flash(2010.36-2*) ] + a load of Image + version numbers, "
and ending with

"Nothing to do!"

I even made a lame effort to extract the rpm-pagages, but I wasn't able to get the flasher-3.5 to find the extracted files

So back to square one (or two). I know I can do a full flash (with VANILLA?) but then I defenitly will lose every file I've got. But if there is anyone who knows if I can do this rescue from a windows platform it would be worth to wait a day or two.

What do I learn from this? Hopefully to do more backups, but maybe some more of the functions and I might even get a step closer to using Linux in the future.

Sorry man you need to flash your n900 with vanilla

Hey! I managed to start the Rescue Initrd afterall. I just remembered that I had forgotten an extra dir in the pathway.

But I wasn't able to find the device anyway (should be found as a USB-memory, right?)- so I guess that I was close, but still far away from getting the result I wanted.

Now It's just the big flash thing to do.

Have you seen the rescue menu on N900?
With rescue menu you can:

* Toggle USB networking on/off (N)
* Reboot the device (R)
* Shutdown the device (S)
* Start recovery terminal (T)
o Contains busybox functionality
* Toggle USB storage mode on/off (U)

you'll probably want to hit U and hope for the best
windows won't be able to mount the ext3 partitions but ~/MyDocs should be able to mount

it's worth a shot, you could try a linux LiveCD too, they're easy to get (and free :P)