Hanging at NOKIA splash screen

[skelso]

After a couple days of using my 770, I innocently turned it off and took out the battery to read the product ID. Now it won't boot past the initial "NOKIA" splash screen. I've seen others recover from similar situations by flashing (http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=654), but I can't get to a point where the WinXP flasher will talk to my 770. Will using the Linux flasher allow me to catch the device early enough in its startup sequence to fix this?

My experiments so far:

1) Pressing and holding the power button for a long time, with or without the power adapter attached -- nothing happens.

2) Pressing and holding the power button without the power adapter, then connecting the adapter while still holding the button -- the display immediately turns on and "NOKIA" splash screen appears. The progress bar at the bottom of the screen never shows up. After a few seconds, the backlight goes off, but in the right light, I can see the display is still on and hung at "NOKIA". It stays this way until I unplug power, at which point the display goes off.

3) Repeating the previous step with the USB cable attached to a WinXP PC -- The PC complains that an unknown USB device is attached, but the device isn't working correctly. If I continue to hold the power button, the display and backlight flash about once a second until I release the button. At the same time the PC cycles USB plug-unplug events until I pull the power adapter. I'd successfully transferred files from that PC to the 770 via USB before the 770 started misbehaving.

4) Attaching the power adapter with the unit off does nothing. The charging screen does not appear, and the display and backlight stay off.

[Mike Cane]

@ desktop:

Don't the instructions state you have to hold down the Power *and* Home buttons at the same time to put the 770 into USB mode -- while connected via USB to a PC -- so it can be flashed? (This is from memory...)

[skelso]

Yup, you're right. I forgot to mention that I'd tried that power + home too, sadly to no avail. I also tried powering on with the menu, escape, full-screen, and plus/minus buttons in hopes one of them might be a secret reset combination.

[pdafan]

When I've flashed with Linux, I haven't had to hold down the power button at all. Steps:
(removing battery is optional)

- Turn off the unit
- Remove battery and reinsert it
- Connect USB to PC
- Run flasher (it will say "Suitable device not found...") Look here for more info:
http://maemo.org/maemowiki/HOWTO_FlashLatestNokiaImageWithLinux
- Plug in power adapter
- Now the device is recognized and the image download should begin. The 770 should also power up on its own at this point.

Have you *ever* been able to flash the device, even when it was healthy? If not, perhaps the problem is with the USB setup on your PC.

[skelso]

This isn't looking good. From a Linux system, I first tried simply resetting the device using flasher:

"./flasher -R"

That didn't work, so I tried actually flashing it:

"./flasher -F Nokia_770_SE2005_3_2005_51-13.bin -f -R"

In both cases, I never got past "Suitable USB device not found, waiting". However, I could hear the Linux system's disk churning a little about once a second when I was holding the 770's power button, making me think my Linux system is seeing the same USB plug-unplug cycling I got on my WinXP system.

This is the first time I've tried to flash my 770, although the whole saga began when I took out the battery to get the product ID so I could flash-up to the latest release. I know positively the 770 + USB cable + WinXP system combination worked before, because I'd used it to move files on and off the MMC.

[fpp]

Have you tried *all* USB ports on your PC ? Sometimes the front ports (which often depend on a internal USB hub) won't work for some things, while the ones on the back (directly linked) will. Or vice versa. Maybe the linux flasher is more picky about this than the Windows one...

[skelso]

I hadn't thought of an internal hub getting in the way. I tried all of them, and unfortunately it behaved the same on every one.

I also tried flasher's "-c" cold-flash option, but it wanted a serial connection rather than USB. Anyone know the pinout to the mysterious connector next to the battery? I'm guessing a few of those pads are a serial port.

[putkowski]

I hadn't thought of an internal hub getting in the way. I tried all of them, and unfortunately it behaved the same on every one.

I also tried flasher's "-c" cold-flash option, but it wanted a serial connection rather than USB. Anyone know the pinout to the mysterious connector next to the battery? I'm guessing a few of those pads are a serial port.

May be a silly question, but are you root on the linux box?

Also, it's HOME then POWER.

I originally had questions about whether my Debian Sarge system would run the flasher but it works (even with only USB 1.x ports...)

[skelso]

I tried flashing both as a regular user and as root, but neither worked. The Linux box is running Fedora core 3. I've used other USB devices with it, but didn't have a chance to try out my 770 on it before the 770 stopped working.

[Robette]

Have you tried hitting it with your fist? Sometimes a shoe will work as well.

[arimanius]

I'm having the exact same problem. Ever get this fixed skelso?

[skelso]

I did get it going again, but it's not entirely good news, arimanius. I'm now convinced my problems are at least partly resulting from bad hardware, and I'll have to exchange my unit.

I finally removed and reinserted the battery enough times that my 770 started holding on long enough for the Linux flasher to get started. It flashed Nokia_770_SE2005_3_2005_51-13.bin smoothly and rebooted. Then it showed the "NOKIA" splash screen at middle brightness for about 4s, went to full brightness for 1s and cut-off, darn it! After 5-6 more cycles of flashing and cutting off the same way, a miracle happened and it booted. Once up, it survived all the normal sleep-wake and switch off-power on transitions without problem. However, starting the "Date and time" or "Display" applications on the control panel always caused the control panel to close.

Now to confirm the original cause: I shut off, pulled the battery and put it back in, and my 770 wouldn't boot. 12 hours of fiddling later I've got it flashing, but it simply would not boot until, in desperation, I tried putting it in R&D mode. This time, the "Date and time" and "Display" applications worked normally. Then I switched off and tried taking it out of R&D mode (leaving the battery in), and it wouldn't boot. I put it back in R&D mode, and it booted.

I also noticed charging appears to be blocked in R&D mode. That was the final nail in the coffin, practically forcing me to conclude something is broken in the power management and charging circuitry.

I cross-posted to the maemo-users mailing list in hopes someone from Nokia would either (a) recognize the symptoms and say "oh yeah, that's a bad thus-and-such", or (b) not recognize the symptoms and want to know more. No response so far. Two cases isn't a trend, but it is interesting. I wonder if our units are from the same factory, have similar manufacturing dates, etc.

[arimanius]

That is interesting Skelso. I finally got mine reflashed last night(after an hour of trying) and everything appears to be working, except the wpa auth but that's another thread. :P I haven't taken mine out of R&D mode and it appeared to charge fine yesterday. I'll double check when I get home.

[terrypchan]

Just thought I should mention that my 770 is behaving badly with a variant of this booting problem -- the WSOD (White Screen of Death). 770 was behaving fine, rebooted it one day and the screen brightness went all the way to full white. Unit will not display anything except full white. Tried several reflashes and it seems to complete and will reboot but immediately the full white screen comes back. 770 responds to some touch screen areas with beeps but its impossible to know whats going on. I've tried removing battery power and letting the unit sit for over a day and then re-inserting power and AC power cord, still no luck. Nokia tech support had no ideas and they suggested a warranty repair. I'll try flashing with the full original firmware image again, but I'm not very hopeful. Looks like its time to send it back to Nokia and hope they can do something with it.

[dr_kludge]

I finally removed and reinserted the battery enough times that my 770 started holding on long enough for the Linux flasher to get started. It flashed Nokia_770_SE2005_3_2005_51-13.bin smoothly and rebooted. Then it showed the "NOKIA" splash screen at middle brightness for about 4s, went to full brightness for 1s and cut-off, darn it!
skelso, I don't think there was anything that you did wrong. :( I googled for an article that I saw--couldn't find it naturally. I believe that I read about this problem. There are some defective screens out there. I believe these screens fail after the unit has been flashed. The battery has nothing to do with the problem that you are experiencing. :)

[miguel]

Make that another Nokia 770 with the white screen of death (with the NOKIA blue letters showing).

It's two months old and the only problem was spontaneously rebooting while browsing -- which is a common complaint.

I'll admit I would sometimes leave it on and walk away and wondered if that might be part of the reason? Perhaps I should have turned it off and inserted backwards in the case each time?

For $350 it was a handy device -- not as handy as an electronic paperweight.

Should I just return it to BestBuy or is it really worth trying to reflash it?