I got home from work yesterday and left my IT on the coffee table after having it running all day playing music and having fun with the GPS.

So, my IT makes a beeping noise and shuts down. I tried holding down the power button to turn it on, and nothing happened. Thinking that the battery just ran down, I plugged it in overnight to re-charge, but this morning it still wouldn't start up. So, I went downstairs thinking I needed the new firmware, and I sadly am not going to be able to backup my settings beforehand.

I follow the instructions, and after starting the upgrade procedure the firmware takes 6 or 7 minutes to download and at that point my tablet no longer is lit up and the upgrade fails. Thinking I need to retry, the software starts to re-download the firmware again! I fire up my IT while holding the switch button and now this time the flashing software informs me that something is corrupted.

I left my 810 at home to charge and will try again tonight, but at this point I am pretty frustrated.

Should the Nokia flasher be re-attempting to download the firmware every time it runs?

I think it only does that if it was not able to download it before.
From what I have understood the flasher utility never tried to actually flash your unit, instead it tried several times to download it from the net. Am I correct ?

If this is the case, your unit is still untouched.

When you put it in charge, does its screen lit up ?
Does it show the "Charging" text and the charging icon ?
If so, what happens if you try to turn it on at that point without disconnecting the charger ?

The utility tried to flash my unit after finishing the download the first time, but failed because my unit was asleep or something by the time it finished downloading.

I restarted the process but the utility download the whole thing all over again ?! At that point my IT was asleep again and the utility informed me that "the file was corrupted" this time.

I haven't been able to completely turn my IT on since (I am guessing) that the battery drained.

After reading some threads here I guess some people leave the IT plugged in while the firmware is downloading. I wish my n810 didn't have to be unplugged for the flashing process and also that the flashing utility didn't re-download the firmware on retry attempts.

I won't be able to mess around with it though until tonight because I left it at home to charge.

Assuming you can get it booted, I believe following the steps I cover here should get you going. You're on OS2008 already, though, so you can skip installing xterm.

So if I can get it booted, I can run your instructions directly on the tablet?

And if I can't get the table to start, should I just keep trying to run the Nokia Utility?

If you can't get it to power up, how do you expect to run the flasher?

I was able to get my IT to start while holding down the application switcher twice this morning, even though the first time I tried to start it normally nothing happened. So, I had thought that it was some sort of "safe mode" or something- sounds like that isn't the case. So, hopefully that means that I will be able to start it normally when I get home.

Spartan,

Assuming the battery wasn't just dead and something else may be wrong, it's hard to know if it's really hardware or software related. Even so, here are some things I'd try (having just bought an N800 on clearance from CompUSSR which would get 2/3 through boot progress then power cycle automatically):

Pull the battery and any memory cards you have installed to the tablet. I hadn't flashed for so long, I thought for sure I was supposed to have power to the tablet when flashing - make sure you aren't using the power cord, only the USB cable.

Download the BIN image to flash and save it to your hard drive. What you describe and ask regarding "Is it supposed to download every time" well yes, unless you choose to Change prior to reaching that point in the Wizard. When you select change, you can browse for the locally stored image and flash it "manually", so to speak.

I would recommend inserting the battery with the USB cable already plugged in to the tablet and PC. Give it a couple of seconds, then try the power button if nothing lights up. Press it firmly but don't stress it for too long.

From there, press and hold the "swap" button (why'd they stop calling it the Home button?) to trip the USB icon.

If the USB icon doesn't stay long enough to click Next in the wizard you may need to run through the steps again.

If you continue to have problems, if you have a friend with an N800/N810 see if you can try their battery. I'm not sure on the pinouts, but you can also get a multimeter and measure the voltage to ensure it is charged fully/properly. I'm sure someone here, likely Thoughtfix and probably others, has that data. It wouldn't hurt to test your charger too just in case.

Let us know if you make any progress.

Thanks Dave, I was able to flash my tablet after downloading the binary. I am going to go ahead and download the updates beforehand from now on.