Reply
Thread Tools
Posts: 59 | Thanked: 30 times | Joined on May 2010 @ UK
#1
As the title says, my N900 gets stuck in a loop showing the nokia logo, then a black screen, then flashing the LED and starting over. I found that if I hold the power button as soon as the nokia logo disappears then it will show the dots and boot ok.
I have seen this mentioned before but no solution to it.

Now, it has been a while since my phone has been rebooted so I can't think of what I have installed/removed since last reboot. The steps leading up to this were:

1. Decided that it would be a good time to make a backup with backup menu so restarted the phone. Backupmenu failed to start because of evkey errors

2. Removed battery, booted normally and copied evkey to /usr/sbin so backupmenu could find it. Also set the clock back to the proper time.

3. Reboot phone, do backup. Everything OK so far

4. After the backup finished I closed the keyboard and hold down the switch on the side to reboot. A little while later I realised my phone is stuck in a loop.

5. After a few attempts removing the battery to see if that fixed it I gave up and held the power button to turn it off... but somehow it booted up so I was kind of lucky to find that pressing the power button at the right time will boot it

Does anyone have any idea what might be causing the loop? I do not have any multiboot stuff installed. Only backupmenu and power50 kernel.
 

The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to af7567 For This Useful Post:
Posts: 59 | Thanked: 30 times | Joined on May 2010 @ UK
#2
Seems that backupmenu or bootmenu which gets installed along with it was causing the problem. I removed both power kernel and backupmenu and everything was ok. Installed power kernel, still ok. Installed backupmenu and then it got stuck in a loop again.

Since removing backupmenu and bootmenu again it is booting properly
 

The Following 5 Users Say Thank You to af7567 For This Useful Post:
Posts: 539 | Thanked: 518 times | Joined on May 2010 @ nanaurbusiness
#3
This is strange, I have u-boot, bootmenu, and backupmenu installed along with kp-50 and all are working just fine together.
__________________

N900 ~ $ make me a sandwich
-bash: no, make it yourself
N900 ~ $ sudo make me a sandwich
-bash: ok then...
 

The Following User Says Thank You to J4ZZ For This Useful Post:
Posts: 59 | Thanked: 30 times | Joined on May 2010 @ UK
#4
I just tried installing backupmenu again, and then I uninstalled backupmenu and deleted /etc/bootmenu/backupmenu.item. So now I only have bootmenu installed.

If I boot with the keyboard open then I see the bootmenu to choose Maemo 5 or to power off. If I boot with the keyboard closed then I get the boot loop. If I open the keyboard and choose Maemo 5 from the menu then I get a black screen and another reboot.

The only way to boot again is to hold the power at the same time as the nokia logo disappears. This is what I think is the strangest thing why does it boot if I hold the power button at the right time? Is this some kind of feature built into bootmenu?
 

The Following User Says Thank You to af7567 For This Useful Post:
Posts: 1,341 | Thanked: 708 times | Joined on Feb 2010
#5
I do not have u-boot, backupmenu nor bootmenu, but do have KP50; and I have had sometimes the same described problem, last time yesterday when I for a moment thought I have to reflash to get it working. But then after Nth trial it booted.
 

The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to zimon For This Useful Post:
Posts: 67 | Thanked: 32 times | Joined on Oct 2011
#6
it seems a bug from stock N900 which could trigger only with non-stock bootware. Or a bug in multiboot/bootmenu only. Why the approach helped? N900 were probably in locked state which couldn't be left normally (so-called reboot loop for example) and pressing the button changed hardware state which you were lucky enough to lock-out. It's common that devices are hardware-optimised to work faster and with less transistors to achieve a result, which renders undefined behaviour if happened something which shouldn't never happen (for example CPU got invalid command, or unstable because of eg overclocking chip changes a value of register to one which would never be there if it were stable). Of course many companies left a bit of optimisation just for a sake to device won't be bricked without physical damage for hardware reasons (burning some transistors because of overheat caused for example by overclocking is physical damage, wrong memory/register values because of unstable work of device aren't) but it's wasting at least thousands of dollars for fixing a problem which would happen to only 3 people which will use the device - so mostly companies don't mind it. As you saw most of such problems could be resolved in home way by just doing some voodoo-like tricks on the device like pressing Power button exactly in some second of bootprocess.
 

The Following User Says Thank You to majaczek For This Useful Post:
Posts: 59 | Thanked: 30 times | Joined on May 2010 @ UK
#7
Originally Posted by zimon View Post
I do not have u-boot, backupmenu nor bootmenu, but do have KP50; and I have had sometimes the same described problem, last time yesterday when I for a moment thought I have to reflash to get it working. But then after Nth trial it booted.
Ah, thanks for letting us know. I just tried a few reboots with only kp50 and on the 3rd time it got stuck in a loop. So it seems the problem is not with bootmenu, I was just lucky that it booted first time after removing bootmenu. I think I will make a backup and then reflash my N900 to see if I still have any problem, I guess it could be a hardware problem since it seems pretty random - but when the phone is running I have not had any crashes or strange messages in dmesg.
 

The Following User Says Thank You to af7567 For This Useful Post:
Posts: 105 | Thanked: 106 times | Joined on Jul 2011 @ Hungary
#8
i have the same problem, and i reflashed my device, not install backupmenu, and everything is fine

but it is frustrating
 

The Following User Says Thank You to dy1ng For This Useful Post:
Posts: 59 | Thanked: 30 times | Joined on May 2010 @ UK
#9
After a bit more playing I have found that removing backupmenu doesn't fix the problem, and reinstalling stock kernel doesn't fix it either. Even with no boot menu at all and no special kernel I can still get the boot loop.

Pressing the power button at the right time might have nothing to do with it either If I leave it long it enough it will eventually get there, usually after 3 or 4 reboots.

I do want to backup and then reflash still just to confirm it is not the hardware dying, but I haven't had time yet and I don't reboot very often anyway. I can't see anything else I have installed which could cause boot problems though.
 

The Following User Says Thank You to af7567 For This Useful Post:
Posts: 8 | Thanked: 3 times | Joined on Apr 2013 @ India
#10
i'm installing nitroid on my phone but after completion of process, i was rebooting my n900, but it stuck on multiboot menu, when pressing 0 it stuck on maemo default menu... Please tell me, how can i solve this problem and is it possible to flash n900 in this condition?????
 

The Following User Says Thank You to rahulalankar For This Useful Post:
Reply

Tags
nokia n9, nokia n900

Thread Tools

 
Forum Jump


All times are GMT. The time now is 10:11.