Re: Pr1.1 Has bricked my N900
 

I tried exactly this. It doesn't respond at all when holding the U key down. It will just shut off and restart again automatically. According to a few others on here I'll try charging the battery with an external charger once it arrives (ordered it on ebay) and post the results.

Re: Pr1.1 Has bricked my N900
 

I'm also completely stuck at this point.

* N900 died after on-line upgrade attempt (yes, battery was full).
* Got flasher tool, fiasco image
* Put N900 on charger. Yellow light on. Eventually it switched off.
* Then started flasher-3.5 -F <name of image> -f -R
* Got message 'no suitable USB device found', as expected
* Plugged in N900. Yellow light on. Did not go into flashing mode.
* Same, but pressing 'u' on N900 kbd, then plugging in cable. No go.
* Also tried removing battery, plugging it in while connected. No go.

Basically the problem seems to be that the N900 won't go into flashing mode, whatever I do. I have checked 'dmesg' output on my laptop and there is no indication that it is even plugged in. The only time I see any activity is if I remove and re-install the N900 battery, then there's a very quick 'new high speed USB device..' followed by 'USB disconnect'.

I have used this same laptop to flash my N800 several times, without a problem. I also tried to flash the N900 from a desktop computer, to no effect.

Does anyone sit on any idea not already posted in some thread or mentioned on the wiki? I believe I've tried everything. At this point my N900 looks totally bricked, the only sign of life is that it appears to be able to charge. There isn't a flicker of life on the screen.

Re: Pr1.1 Has bricked my N900
 

When you hold down U and plug in the cable, does it go into USB mode (non-backlit Nokia logo + USB icon)? If so, the N900 should be capable of being flashed. What OS are you using for flashing? I couldn't get my PC to recognise the N900 using flasher on Windows XP, but using a bootable Linux flash drive, it worked fine.

Re: Pr1.1 Has bricked my N900
 

No, it doesn't. The screen is always black. The yellow charging light goes on as soon as I plug in the cable. (even though it has been charged until light goes off, just before attempting flashing).
I'm using a Linux laptop. Also tried a Linux desktop. The laptop is what I used when flashing my old N800.

The flash-3.5 tool is apparently waiting for an USB event to detect the N900, but it doesn't see any - and 'dmesg' output doesn't indicate that it's been plugged in at all.

I have successfully used the same laptop to access the N900 filesystem, through the same (original) N900 USB cable, before I started the failed 1.1 upgrade attempt.

Re: Pr1.1 Has bricked my N900
 

By "until light goes off" do you mean until it goes green?

Re: Pr1.1 Has bricked my N900
 

Actually, it doesn't go green. When I plugged in the charger the yellow light turned on, and after a while (could've been half an hour or more) the yellow light simply turned off. It never went green. The yellow light is the only sign of life on the N900, the screen never flickers on and the power button doesn't work etc.

I'll be away for a few minutes, going to try a 3rd computer just for the heck of it.
EDIT: Did that, no go. :(

Re: Pr1.1 Has bricked my N900
 

That doesn't sound like it's charging at all then. When charging, the light should pulse yellow (slowly), then go green when it's fully charged. I'd suggest charging the battery up outside the N900 (desktop charger or compatible phone) and trying flashing again.

Re: Pr1.1 Has bricked my N900
 

Unfortunately I don't have anything else to charge the battery with. But it was fully charged before I started the 1.1 update attempt, and it's strange if it should have been run down so extremely quickly (fully charged before the N900 upgrade attempt, which failed quite quickly, and after that I left the battery out while waiting for the download server to be available - just because I didn't want anything starting to discharge the battery). I'll see what I can do though - thanks for the suggestion.

Edit: This is what the openpandora folks got right - there doesn't even need to be a battery in it. AC is enough.

Re: Pr1.1 Has bricked my N900
 

Have you tried the reset for firmware loads by removing the battery, then plugging in the USB cable to your PC and N900, yellow light comes on, then put the battery back in? I had to do this several times...

My upgrade hassle to a solution is in this post. Only other thing to add is I would have to power down the N900 after each reboot. It stayed on technically, even thought the screen was blank and it appeared as good as dead. Holding the power button for ~2-3 seconds would illuminate the white status light and the brightness would slowly fade. The black blank screen would change to a different shade of black (easy to miss) and I'd know it was then really "off". This took <10-15 seconds total for the power off. Only then could I hold down the "u" keyboard key and plug it into the USB port to start the flasher.

Re: Pr1.1 Has bricked my N900
 

@speednut: Uh yeah, i had the same behaviour. It looks like off but the screen has to get balck-er.

@Ta-t3: It looks like your phone is one of the few really bricked. You also can't get a reaction with your power button i assume? When did the update fail? Or did it go all the way through? I would pass it back to Nokia and get a new one...

Anyways, quite a few ppl are reporting bricked devices after Pr1.1 now. It really is a shame.

Re: Pr1.1 Has bricked my N900
 

I have finally managed to recover my N900. Story follows:

1: Charged the device fully.
2: Started the 1.1 over-the-air upgrade
3: Looked fine. Until I noticed that wi-fi didn't work.
4: apt-get upgrade -s indicated that it had only upgraded half-through.
5: application manager still showed Maemo5 as upgrade. Selected it again.
6: After 5: application manager still showed Maemo5, and 21KB left to install.
7: N900 started showing UIBFS errors in 'dmesg' in terminal.
8: It suddenly died and would not power on.
9: Attempted reflash. No go.

At this point, and after hints from posters above, it turned out that the N900 battery was actually discharged (even though it had been fully charged before attempting the initial upgrade). I verified this by measuring the battery with a multimeter.

10: Bought stand-alone charger, recharged battery, checked with multimeter.

I still could not reflash, even with fresh battery:

* Pressing 'u' then connecting N900 to Linux computer did not result in anything (it did not go into reflash mode)
* Connecting, then re-inserting battery in N900 did not work either
* Checking DMESG output on Linux computer while connecting N900 showed no awareness on the USB bus at all
* Removing and re-inserting battery on N900 resulted in a 0.2 second cycle of USB connect, 'Nokia USB ROM' message (or some such), USB disconnect cycle. There was an USB event on the PC _only_ if re-inserting the battery, never if just connecting USB cable (with or without 'u' key).

I finally managed to fix everything by 'cold-flashing' the N900. This is what worked:

1: Make sure that 'usbfs' is mounted on /proc/bus/usb on Linux laptop
2: N900 battery fully charged, as indicated above
3: Remove battery from N900
4: Connect USB cable to Linux computer and N900
5: Execute the following on Linux computer (as root, or with sudo)
6: Re-insert battery in N900
7: Voila! N900 reflashes, then reboots.

Note that I did attempt step 5 on a desktop Linux computer with USB 2.0, but could not get it to work. Presumably the flasher didn't manage to detect the exceedingly short USB connect event when the battery was inserted. I finally got it working with an (old) laptop with USB 1.1.

This was hairy stuff. Apparently boot loader was destroyed on the N900, or something else that made the normal (warm) reflashing fail. NB: Note that "-S usb" is needed with -c, and -h needs "RX-51:2201". The wiki doesn't mention "-S usb" IIRC, and without it it'll try to cold-flash over the serial device instead. The wiki also says the device id (2201) should be visible under the battery, that is not the case.

Things would have been easier if the N900 could run on AC alone, like the Pandora.

Re: Pr1.1 Has bricked my N900
 

Finally I received the external battery charger... and it worked! I was able to flash my N900 but I had to use my Windows XP netbook (win 7 64-bit didn't seem to want to detect the device).

However, I can't get this thing to detect my micro-sd card...

EDIT: Nevermind, it seems to have been detected after waiting a couple of minutes.

Re: Pr1.1 Has bricked my N900
 

Mine worked too!

As I had mentioned before, mine was stuck in the cycle off attempting to charge for a few seconds, boot, run out of power and repeat.

I got my charger a few weeks ago, let it charge all day and then used a windows xp (instead of my Windows 7 - 64bit / beta) to flash with the flasher 3.5 software (instead of the software updater).

After I put the battery in I fallowed the steps and it worked flawlessly. Even my old data was still there.

I wonder, is this some kind of bug that the phone can get stuck in this cycle? I would expect that I should have been able to get around this by just plugging it into the standard wall charger. Or is this just what happens when the firmware flash gets messed up?

Re: Pr1.1 Has bricked my N900
 

When the flash gets messed up, as you say, then charging won't work. That's the catch-22 that forced some of us to buy a desktop charger.

Re: Pr1.1 Has bricked my N900
 

TA-t3 I'm glad you got your n900 up and running again.

You must of absolutely sh1t yourself when you bricked it!

I'm really weary of updating to Pr1.1 specifically the wi-fi issues some users have had.

How is you n900 behaving itself since the update?
Have you encountered any other problems that other users have experienced?

Re: Pr1.1 Has bricked my N900
 

My N900 behaved perfectly fine on 1.0, and 1.0.1. The 1.1 upgrade left the device in a state needing reflash. After reflash it has behaved perfectly again - I don't suffer from reboot loops, battery problems, or anything else. If anyone have problems with e.g. wi-fi after the upgrade I recommend flashing the device right away, while the device can still be reflashed the "normal" way.

Re: Pr1.1 Has bricked my N900
 

So, avoid over-the-air flash and do local usb cold-flash instead?

(I'm just paranoid about wi-fi!)

Re: Pr1.1 Has bricked my N900
 

OTA works for some, not for others. I haven't found a pattern to it. My system failed and I couldn't see why - there was no apparent reason for not fully upgrading/installing OTA.

Re: Pr1.1 Has bricked my N900
 

I'd recommend going with OTA first. If you have issues then reflash using flasher. I'd recommend against using NSU at all - it seems to cause a lot of the flashing issues.

Re: Pr1.1 Has bricked my N900
 

Honestly, I am fed up! Tried everything, but nothing works. My N900 just won't go into flashing mode. IT JUST WON'T!!! I've never had any problems with my other Nokia cellphones, and this experience has left a bad taste. I've given the device at Nokia Care Centre. Once it is in it's original state, i'll probably just sell it off. I am using a 32- bit windows. The binary and flasher work fine, but the device won't go into usb mode due to which the flasher does not detect it. Just some bloody looping keeps happening. Fully charged battery too did not help. Super frustrated!

Re: Pr1.1 Has bricked my N900
 

What finally worked for me was to remove the (charged) battery, connect to PC, start flasher program in cold-flash mode (-c -h RX-51:2201 (or possibly 2101) -S usb -F <fiasco image> -f -R) and then plug in the battery. There's an exceedingly short moment where the flasher can detect the N900 and do its cold-flash thing.

Re: Pr1.1 Has bricked my N900
 

Vista or XP?
- Have you installed ANY other Nokia software?
- Have you connected phone directly to pc? No usb hub
- Have you connected any other device than mouse,keyboard and n900 to your computer?
- You used external battery charger?

Re: Pr1.1 Has bricked my N900
 

Just to keep you postet: My N900 is under repair, after the Nokia Care-Point guy tried to update it ;-)

Its one month now....

Re: Pr1.1 Has bricked my N900
 

And the end of the story:

The device was ent to Nokia on 15.02.2010. Today (23.03.2010) I got a replacement device, they couldnt repair it.

Cheers

Re: Pr1.1 Has bricked my N900
 

Guys .. T_T

I've becked my phone .. i got this error whilw trying with the cold flash like suggested from TA-t3 ....

USB device found found at bus bus-0, device adress \\.\libusb0-00001--0x0421-0x0106
Error setting USB configuration

.... I've tryed everything is possible... i have only to try lo charge the battery externally ...

EDIT:
http://i36.tinypic.com/2mmxt8i.png

Re: Pr1.1 Has bricked my N900
 

good to know this but can i do cold flasher on window xp or window 7 or mac
i dont have linux pc
so kindly please tell me as soon as possible
that how to cold flash on window xp or 7 or mac
waiting for reply

Re: Pr1.1 Has bricked my N900
 

You did notice that you responded to a 2 years old post? anyway, please read http://wiki.maemo.org/Updating_the_tablet_firmware for flashing info