I have the same problem and have given up after trying may different ways to flash the N900. I have now decided to drop it off at a repair center on tuesday this week. I'm waiting to see what they say and will let you all know when I get it back!

I got my N900 working again. I dismantled my N900 and washed the mainboard with hot soap water. I dried the mainboard with hot air and left it in a dry place for 2 days. Afterwards I could flash the fiasco and eMMC image. Now my N900 is working again but the WLAN module is still dead.

Just a quick update. My N900 is now on it's way to Nokia's central repair center as the local repair center couldn't fix it! So will have to wait longer to see what happenes!

update: 26th Sep, it's still at the reair center and they haven't been able to fix it yet!

Oh-oh.

I got this message today, all phone functions disabled. Cleaned the SIM, no dice.

What the?

Also, when I remove the battery, it asks me for date, time, region and language. Is it gone already? I'd not a year old.

are you SURE that you use the right fiasco image?
most of the sim problems happen because of firmware downgrade or wrong fiasco image.
and if you don't know how to flash you should let it cause you can brick your phone.
read the flashing wiki 5 times and try it another time.
http://wiki.maemo.org/Updating_the_firmware
EDIT: ok and it might be your pc too.try it on another pc,use winxp sp3 or ubuntu

If you wait to long before you take out the battery it will ask for date/time. So that is just normal... about the SIM i don't know. Could it have been damaged in some way? Do it work on another phone?

Not my first reflash. First I used this image a month or so ago. Worked fine. For a month.

The issue wasn't a post-flash, but during a routine reboot.

I did flash before. And, I might be new to Linux, but I am a Windows guru and I went through the incompatibilities of W7 x64 quite easily. I used an emulated XP in 32 bit mode and flash was successful.

Flashing it fixed it last night. Today I started the bulk reinstall of everything I had and at some point it went insane again.

Last reboot I had before insanity I installed Wireshark (had it before) and cleaned up some of those default "installers" Nokia puts in, like documents to go installer, AP news installer, etc. Rebooted, and got the dreaded message.

I started a reverse, uninstalling in batches, so that when it starts again I know which one was it. Didn't work. I was back to almost bare bones and it still refused to work.

BackupMenu was no help, I think my backup was too old. Wrong version. I'm having a chat with Robbie now to see if that could be the cause.

I'm suspecting, among others:
* bad rootfs. As it gets filled, stuff starts to happen
* erroneous data in optfs. As programs install and re-take the old and bad configs one could go bananas.
* hardware failure

I'd really want to know now, I'm one of the early adopters and my warranty will expire this month. If it's the board/flash chip, I want to fix it now.

Reflashed again (man it sucks bad to be disconnected for a day), and I am now installing again in small batches, rebooting in between, to figure out which one breaks it.

I'm at a loss. I don't want to be afraid to install anything lest I nuke it.

No, it isn't. I have removed the battery before, if I replace it within 3 seconds or so it should be fine. It's not. This is recent.

OTOH, I THINK that at some point it rebooted without a battery pull and it still reverted to the ask user for date time and region screen. Maybe it's not the battery after all. Digging ...

bulk reinstalls can get messy, i would recommend not installing lots of things at once

Unfortunately, it seems to randomly getting the error. I need to get to the bottom of this. Either it's a hardware issue, or a software issue, I have to know to get it to a Nokia service before the warranty expires.

Also, I can't simply have everything removed at a whim at any time. I need my phone. I don't want to reflash every reboot.