N900, virtually brand new, running PR1.2 (as supplied).

I noticed yesterday that phone had dropped off the network and had a Red Line through the SIM Card icon on the home screen. I rebooted it, and it came back. Didn't think anything more of it.

Today, the phone took a long time to boot, and a banner appeared during the boot up (blinking white dots) saying:

"All telephony functions, including emergency calls, are disabled due to a communication error. To recover, you might have to reboot the device".

Tapping the screen clears this, and boot continues. The same warning is repeated when reaching the desktop. The red line is through the SIM card, and sure enough, it's disappeared. I tried sending various dbus-commands to com.nokia.phone.sim, and dbus is claiming there is no .service present to handle the call. So it looks like either hardware failure, or driver failure.

I've reseated / cleaned the SIM (which is a newish SIM) and swapped SIMs in and out between different devices, so I'm confident it's not the SIM.

Ovi Suite 2.2.0.245 is claiming it can't recognise the device, when it was able to recognise it just fine yesterday.

I tried to flash the device, but the flasher is dying like this:

I've downloaded the latest image, both the UK variant (203) and the Global (MR0). It looks like my device has the Vodafone variant (205) on it, but I can't find a source for PR1.2 205, and anyway, should that matter?

Having tried this a number of ways, I concluded I had a real problem on my hands, and it was time to package it up for a warranty repair. Before doing that, I started to clear down personal data, and uninstall apps I had added in.

I tried to uninstall *# Starhash Enabler. It wouldn't properly uninstall, claiming there is a file missing. I had to reinstall it (from the command line) and then uninstall it again.

I also noticed that some of the thumbnails in my Photo library were broken, which makes me wonder if the drive has got corrupted or damaged somehow?

So, some advice needed:

• It is flashable? Nobody else has reported that same flashing error. Can I flash the eMMC and then the image, and would that work better or risk bricking it?
• Can I low-level format the entire device, marking off any faulty chunks (sorry - more used to dealing with physical disk drivers here)
• Any thoughts on the underlying cause? Faulty SIM card reader? Faulty memory? Corrupted install?
• Is it worth warranty returning it to Nokia? (It's in warranty)

Thanks,

I've got the exactly same problem. I cannot flash the fiasco image. It stops at "Flashing cmt-mcusw... Sending request 0x50 failed: No error"
But I could flash the eMMC image. Now the N900 won't boot anymore.

Edit:
Now it's dead. I can't even bring it in flash mode...

I'm sorry to hear that you N900 bricked. That's persuaded me to just take it back to Nokia.

It's not being recognised by the Ovi Suite or PC Suite (although it's installing the right USB drivers), and the SIM remains dead (and com.nokia.phone isn't loaded).

I'm pretty convinced now it's a hardware problem, which seems unusual. Hopefully an isolated incident, because I'm really enjoying the phone enormously.

Same problem here.. i am getting this=

Suitable USB device not found, waiting.
USB device found found at bus 005, device address 003-0421-0105-02-00.
Found device RX-51, hardware revision 2101
NOLO version 1.4.14
Version of 'sw-release': RX-51_2009SE_10.2010.19-1.002_PR_002
Sending xloader image (14 kB)...
100% (14 of 14 kB, avg. 557 kB/s)
Sending secondary image (106 kB)...
100% (106 of 106 kB, avg. 15267 kB/s)
Flashing bootloader... done.
Sending cmt-2nd image (79 kB)...
100% (79 of 79 kB, avg. 1987 kB/s)
Sending cmt-algo image (507 kB)...
100% (507 of 507 kB, avg. 13719 kB/s)
Sending cmt-mcusw image (5826 kB)...
100% (5826 of 5826 kB, avg. 25555 kB/s)
Flashing cmt-mcusw... Sending request 0x50 failed: Operation timed out

so I try to flash the eMMC (with vanilla image) and now when boot, the password screen come out as usual BUT little boxes rather than numbers,,,

as i know the numbers position, i enter my password
however no DESKTOP AT ALL
just little boxes

any help out there?

(I am using a mac book pro OSX)

To follow up, I left the phone for a couple of days, and now it appears to be completely dead. The charging LED lights up, but it will not boot up or go into flashing mode.

This leads me to believe my problems were the onset of a hardware failure, and the handset is now destined for warranty repair.

mine has been doing this for months now and is beginning to annoy me.

If I reset the device it works fine for a few hours then I get the error message .

I have had the screen replaced by my insurer so will I still be able to make a warranty claim?

Anyone have got the solution of that problem?

I can't wait more time without my N900!

I've the same problem.

Arnau

how did you flash it?

is Starhash Enabler necessary in pr1.2?

did u only flashed the emmc? i did the same b4, same result. i had to flash the firmware first then flash the emmc, then its fine again.