My 3-week old N800 bricked
 

:mad: my first post here and it has to be this.

My shiny new N800 seems to have gone all bricky. It started acting a bit odd an hour ago (very lethargic switching between already loaded apps). So I thought I'd power-cycle it. I tapped the power button and selected the Shutdown option.

When I tried to power back up, I got the white Nokia logo screen. And that's it... no boot progress bar on the bottom. I let it sit for about 2 minutes like that before I tried to power cycle again. This time, holding the power button down did not cause it to turn off. I had to remove the battery to get it to shut down.

I try again... first removing the internal (512mb) and external (4gb) SD cards. Same thing: white Nokia screen followed by a lot of nothing, power down only by pulling the battery.

I hadn't flashed the new firmware (firmware was as delivered to me) so I thought I'd give it a try. I downloaded the updater software and followed the instructions for booting (power up with the Home key pressed). Still not getting past the white Nokia screen though.

There was another brick thread where someone suggested removing the battery, pressing the power button, putting the charger cable in, and replacing the battery. That didn't work either.

My guess is that the flash memory has given up the ghost prematurely but I'm hoping somebody may have an answer that doesn't require sending my precious out for service.

Misc troubleshooting facts:
1)Battery is fully chaged
2)I've never used Red Pill mode, R & D, or any of that wacky stuff
3)Never flashed the unit

Other than this I'm quite happily addicted. Really! :)

tia,
eric

Re: My 3-week old N800 bricked
 

Are you saying that after you get it powered down, the minute you plug it back in it lights up (without your pressing the power button)?

If so, I give up.

If not, (a) are you using the Nokia software that you downloaded from Nokia when you are getting ready to flash? (b) So you're in the Nokia software and you turn on the Nokia with the USB cable plugged in. Do you ever see the USB symbol?

Re: My 3-week old N800 bricked
 

I would suggest wait for about 3-5 minutes..... of late even mine is acting rather strange and it is taking 4-5 minutes to boot. It just shows the nokia screen and then nothing happens for a long long time.... after maybe 4 minutes the blue line starts to run across the screen and tehen the hands join with the nokia sound. I wanted to update to the latest firmware(sdhc bug fixed one) but i will hold on until the official firmware is realased and flash it without restoring the back up....
hope this helps

Re: My 3-week old N800 bricked
 

No, nothing that bad. When I pull the battery and then replace it the unit stays powered down. However, the unit doesn't respond to the power button when it is powered up. Only pulling the battery will power it down.

a) Yep, I am using the software I downloaded from the Nokia website
b) I never get the USB symbol, it is stuck on the white screen


eric

Re: My 3-week old N800 bricked
 

I let it sit overnight with the battery out. When I got up this morning it is still doing the same thing.


eric

Re: My 3-week old N800 bricked
 

This sounds like you may have got a unit that developed a defect. If you can't reflash it (following the proper procedure) then it sounds like hardware. As it's 3 weeks old I would get a warranty replacement (hopefully you made a backup on the card at some stage, in case you have something you would like to keep).

Re: My 3-week old N800 bricked
 

Mine did this. It wouldn't start, it wouldn't flash. I had to send it in for repair.

Re: My 3-week old N800 bricked
 

NO i meant with the battery in. Yesterday mine took more than 7 minutes to boot. So leave it for atleast 15 minutes with the blue nokia logo and try.

Re: My 3-week old N800 bricked
 

This looks familiar. My solution has been to re-flash. I need to figure out the whole 'booting from SD card' thing, because I've already encountered this twice. Reinstalling everything is such a pain. The only heavy app that I was using before it refused to boot was the latest kagu (which had frozen and I had to kill).

Re: My 3-week old N800 bricked
 

I would like to get a bug report filled out for this, so we should try to figure out what general circumstances cause this.

Re: My 3-week old N800 bricked
 

I think it may be related to one of the apps. My suspicions are with video center.... i may be wrong. But it started to act this way recently and the most recent app i installed is video center including the recent update. Another culprit may be canola.... after it finally boots up when i open the task manager it shows canola-conf- 267 cycles taking about 85 % cpu power....

IS this normal???

Re: My 3-week old N800 bricked
 

I had installed VideoCenter both times, just before the issue arose.

But, I had uninstalled Canola prior to the first time, and not at all the second. When I had canola running, I kept killing the canola-conf process.

Re: My 3-week old N800 bricked
 

Yeah same thing here..... it should'nt be canola because ive been using canola for almost 6 months and there were no updates. I think the culprit is video center. Ill uninstall video center and see if the boot up is fast...
But did you try to swittch it on for more than 10 minutes? what happened?

Re: My 3-week old N800 bricked
 

When I tried booting it up and it wasn't working, it'd sit for several hours and not move from the 'Nokia' screen. It would come up with the 'Nokia' screen, then after a period of time (minutes) it would flash black, then back to the 'Nokia' screen, and so on.

I just uninstalled VideoCenter and the boot up was quick. But, only time will tell.

Do you have kagu and/or a2dp installed?

Re: My 3-week old N800 bricked
 

I'd agree with this, if there's a hardware problem and it's only 3 weeks old then by far the best thing you can do is ask for a replacement.

Re: My 3-week old N800 bricked
 

Yeah i have kaju and use a2dp a lot. But it has been a while since i installed kaju. The problem i see with the boot up is of recent so i dont think kaju is the reason. Yeah i think the recent update for video center made it worse.

Re: My 3-week old N800 bricked
 

Good news regarding my brick:

After a few more tries I was able to re-flash my N800. It took pulling the battery and restarting with the Home button 3 times but I finally got the USB indicator. I jumped from the 26 to the 38 firmware.

Prior to the brickage, I had just installed VideoCenter. Well, maybe not "just" but I'm pretty sure that that the pre-brick power cycling was the first one since installing VideoCenter. I'd had Canola on there for a while with no issues.

thanks guys! I'm back up and running. This an awesome forum :)

Re: My 3-week old N800 bricked
 

Is that the part where you have powered down the N800, plugged the USB cable and started the PC flashing application? To 'turn on' the N800? If it is, then it's way simpler to just plug in the N800 charger at that point, which will switch it on. Much simpler than fiddling with the magic button combination.

Re: My 3-week old N800 bricked
 

Please go vote for, and comment on, the bug I just filed about this:

https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2095

Thanks.